On Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Lorenzo Valla, see the Introduction (pp. xi-liii). Until shortly after the date of this letter, Erasmus's relations with Lefèvre were cordial, though scarcely intimate. There was however a dispute after the publication of the Novum Instrumentum and, once Luther had been condemned, the group of reformers in the diocese of Meaux, led by Lefèvre as vicar general in spiritualibus to the bishop Guillaume Briconnet, was never to trust Erasmus.