Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction: Secrets in Humanist, Mystical, and Evangelical Literature -- 1 Secrets between Philosophy, Biblical Interpretation, and Literature: Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466/9–1536) -- 2 Mysticism and Aesthetics in French Evangelical Humanism (1450–1536) -- 3 Mystical and Courtly Secrets: Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549) -- 4 Evangelical Secrecy and Courtly News: The Heptameron (1559) -- Conclusion: Secrecy and Covers between Literature, Philosophy, and Theology -- Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Works -- Index.

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In Secrets: Humanism, Mysticism, and Evangelism in Erasmus of Rotterdam, Bishop Guillaume Briçonnet, and Marguerite de Navarre , Jacob Vance argues that Erasmus and French Evangelical humanists made secrecy central to their literary thought. They revived Scriptural, medieval, and early Renaissance notions of secrecy in their spiritual and profane literature to advance the reforms in church and society that they advocated. Erasmus, Briçonnet, and Marguerite expanded on Origenian, Augustinian, and pseudo-Dionysian concepts of divine mystery, as being secret, throughout their works. By developing the idea that the divine remains both transcendent and immanent in the world of creation, these humanists explored, through literature, how the human spirit can either accede, or fail to accede, to the secrets of Christian wisdom.