The Cloister and the Hearth

A young scribe and illuminator leaves Holland to make his fortune, is separated from the woman he loves by a forged letter, and walks across fifteenth-century Europe — Burgundy, Germany, Rome — while she waits. Reade spent years in the chronicles and letters of the period; the son of the couple, historically, was Erasmus. It is the most thoroughly researched historical novel in English.