1. Overview
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (c. 1466 or 1469 - 12 July 1536), widely known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic priest, theologian, educationalist, satirist, and philosopher. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and a pivotal figure in Dutch and Western culture. Erasmus championed peace, religious tolerance, and a return to the foundational texts of Christianity, advocating for internal reform of the Catholic Church through biblical scholarship and patristic studies rather than radical institutional change. His vast literary output, including pioneering new Greek and Latin editions of the New Testament and the Church Fathers, along with popular satirical works like The Praise of Folly, significantly influenced both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Reformation. He remained a devout Catholic throughout his life, striving for a middle ground that emphasized piety, charity, and unity amidst the turbulent religious divisions of his era, often to the disappointment of partisans on both sides.
2. Life and Career
Erasmus's life spanned nearly 70 years, marked by significant personal challenges, extensive travels, and a flourishing literary career that profoundly influenced European thought. His experiences, from an impoverished, orphaned youth to a celebrated scholar, shaped his convictions on human flourishing, peace, and the reform of the Church.
2.1. Early Life
Desiderius Erasmus was born in Rotterdam on 27 or 28 October, with the year generally accepted as 1466, though some evidence suggests 1469. He was named after Erasmus of Formiae, a saint particularly favored by his father, Gerard (also known as Gerardus Helye). While closely associated with Rotterdam, he lived there for only about four years and never returned. His father, Gerard, was a Catholic priest who may have spent several years in Italy as a scribe and scholar. His mother, Margaretha Rogerius, was the daughter of a doctor from Zevenbergen, possibly Gerard's housekeeper.
Despite being born out of wedlock, Erasmus was cared for by his parents in a loving household and received the best education available at the time. However, the early deaths of both his parents from the Black Death in 1483 left him orphaned and impoverished, which imposed legal and social restrictions on his future career opportunities. His only known sibling, an elder brother named Peter, was born around 1463.
At the age of 6 (or 9, if born in 1469), Erasmus's family moved to Gouda, South Holland, where he attended the school of Pieter Winckel, who later became his guardian and potentially mishandled his inheritance. In 1478, at age 9 (or 12), he and Peter were sent to one of the best Latin schools in the Netherlands, located at Deventer and owned by the chapter clergy of the Lebuïnuskerk (St. Lebuin's Church). Here, under the renewed curriculum led by principal Alexander Hegius, Erasmus began learning Greek, which was a rarity for schools below university level north of the Alps. His formal education there concluded around 1483 due to a plague outbreak that also claimed his mother and, subsequently, his father. After his parents' deaths, he was supported by Berthe de Heyden, a compassionate widow.
In 1484, around the age 14 (or 17), Erasmus and his brother went to a cheaper grammar school or seminary at 's-Hertogenbosch run by the Brethren of the Common Life. While exposed to the Devotio Moderna movement and its influential book The Imitation of Christ, Erasmus resented the harsh rules and strict methods of the religious brothers and educators. He and his brother initially agreed to resist joining the clergy and instead pursue university studies, but Peter eventually entered the Augustinian canonry in Stein, South Holland, which Erasmus felt was a betrayal. He wrote to his friend Elizabeth de Heyden, "Shipwrecked am I, and lost, 'mid waters chill'." Eventually, around age 16 (or 19), Erasmus, facing poverty and pressure from his guardians, followed his brother and became a postulant at the same abbey in or before 1487. He suffered from Quartan fever for over a year during this period.
2.2. Vows, Ordination, and Canonry Experience
Poverty compelled the sickly, bookish, teenage orphan Erasmus into consecrated life, and he entered the novitiate in 1487 at the Augustinian canonry at rural Stein, South Holland, near Gouda. He professed his vows as a Canon regular in late 1488, at age 19 (or 22). He was ordained a Catholic priest either on 25 April 1492 or 25 April 1495, at age 25 (or 28). He did not, however, actively work as a choir priest for long. His later calls for reform within the Western Church from within were partly a reaction to what he viewed as abuses in religious orders, particularly the coerced or tricked recruitment of immature boys into monastic life, a class to which he felt he belonged, having joined "voluntarily but not freely."
While at Stein, 18- (or 21-)year-old Erasmus formed what he called a "passionate attachment" (fervidos amoresLatin) with a fellow canon, Servatius Rogerus, writing him a series of love letters in which he called Rogerus "half my soul", writing that "it was not for the sake of reward or out of a desire for any favour that I have wooed you both unhappily and relentlessly. What is it then? Why, that you love him who loves you." This emotional correspondence contrasts with his generally more detached later life, though he maintained deep male friendships with figures like Thomas More, John Colet, and Andrea Ammonio. No sexual accusations were ever made against Erasmus during his lifetime, and his later works notably praised moderate sexual desire in marriage between men and women.
In 1493, Erasmus's prior arranged for him to leave Stein and take up the post of Latin Secretary to the Bishop of Cambrai, Henry of Bergen, due to his exceptional Latin skills and literary reputation. This was his entry into the European network of Latin secretaries, a promising career path for humanists.
From 1500, Erasmus avoided returning to the canonry at Stein, arguing that the diet and hours would be detrimental to his health (he suffered from severe food intolerances, including to fish and beer, which were staple foods for monks). While he stayed with other Augustinian communities in his travels, he consistently sought to maintain his independence from the strictures of his order.
In 1505, Pope Julius II granted him a dispensation from the vow of poverty (to the extent of holding certain benefices) and from the control and habit of his order. However, he formally remained an Augustinian canon regular for the rest of his life. In 1517, Pope Leo X further granted legal dispensations for his "defects of natality" (illegitimacy) and confirmed the previous dispensation, solidifying his independence. In 1525, Pope Clement VII granted him a dispensation to eat meat and dairy during Lent and on fast days due to his health.
2.3. Travels and Academic Pursuits
Erasmus traveled widely and frequently, driven by poverty, a desire to escape his canonry, academic pursuits, employment opportunities, and a need to avoid various pressures such as the sweating sickness or religious persecution. He enjoyed horseback riding and was often on the move, searching libraries for manuscripts, working on his writings, seeking patronage, tutoring, chaperoning students, networking with scholars and royalty, and overseeing the printing of his books.
2.3.1. Paris
In 1495, with the consent and financial support of Bishop Henry, Erasmus began studies at the University of Paris in the Collège de Montaigu, a center of reforming zeal, under the direction of the ascetic Jan Standonck, of whose rigors he complained. The university was then the chief seat of Scholastic learning but already coming under the influence of Renaissance humanism. For instance, Erasmus became an intimate friend of Publio Fausto Andrelini, an Italian humanist poet and "professor of humanity" in Paris. During this time, he developed a deep aversion to exclusive or excessive Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and began working as a tutor for visiting English and Scottish aristocrats. There is no record of him graduating from the University of Paris.
2.3.2. First Visit to England (1499-1500)
Erasmus visited England at least three times, with periods of study in Paris, Orléans, and Leuven in between. His first visit in 1499 was at the invitation of William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy. This period was highly productive for forming lifelong friendships with prominent English thinkers of King Henry VIII's era, including Thomas More, John Colet, Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, William Lily, Andrea Ammonio, Juan Luis Vives, Cuthbert Tunstall, Henry Bullock, Thomas Lupset, Richard Foxe, Christopher Urswick, Robert Aldrich, Richard Whitford, Lorenzo Campeggio, Richard Reynolds, and Polydore Vergil. His patrons included William Blount, William Warham, John Fisher, John Longland, Margaret Beaufort, and Catherine of Aragon. He later wrote to Colet in 1509, "I can truly say that no place in the world has given me so many friends-true, learned, helpful, and illustrious friends-as the single city of London."
He studied or taught at the University of Oxford, though he did not earn a degree. Erasmus was particularly impressed by the biblical teaching of John Colet, whose approach mirrored the Church Fathers rather than the Scholastics. Colet's influence, characterized by pacifism, reform-mindedness, anti-Scholasticism, and pastoral esteem for the sacrament of confession, deeply impacted Erasmus's theological interests. This prompted Erasmus, upon his return to Paris, to intensely study Greek to delve deeper into theology.
Erasmus also formed a fast friendship with Thomas More, then a young law student. More's thought was influenced by 14th-century French theologian Jean Gerson, and his intellect was sharpened by his patron, Cardinal John Morton, who had attempted reforms of English monasteries.
Erasmus left London with a full purse from his generous friends, intending to complete his studies. However, English customs officials, due to poor legal advice received by Erasmus, confiscated all his gold and silver, leaving him impoverished and suffering from a night fever that lasted several months.
2.3.3. France and Brabant
Following his first trip to England, Erasmus returned first to poverty in Paris, where he began compiling his Adagia. He then moved to Orléans to escape the plague, and later to a semi-monastic life of scholarly studies and writing in France, notably at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Bertin at St Omer (1501-1502). Here, he wrote the initial version of his Enchiridion (Handbook of a Christian Knight). His French circle included Jean Vitrier (or Vourier), Jacob/James Batt, Publio Fausto Andrelini, Josse Bade, Louis de Berquin, Robert Fisher, Richard Whitford, Guillaume Budé, Thomas Grey, Hector Boece, Robert Gaguin, and Christopher Fisher. His patrons were Bishop Henry of Bergen, Thomas Grey, and Lady of Veere Anna van Borselen. A significant influence during this period was his encounter in 1501 with Jean Vitrier, a radical Franciscan who reinforced Erasmus's criticisms of excessive monasticism, ceremonialism, and fasting. Vitrier also introduced him to the writings of Origen.
In 1502, Erasmus moved to Brabant, eventually settling at the University of Louvain. In 1504, he was hired by the Brabantian "Provincial States" to deliver a public speech, a lengthy formal panegyric for Philip "the Fair", Duke of Burgundy and later King of Castille. The speech, later published as Panegyricus, began with conventional extravagant praise but transitioned into a strong critique of the miseries of war, advocating for neutrality and conciliation with France and England, and emphasizing that true courage in a leader lay in promoting peace, not waging war, by putting a bridle on greed. Erasmus then returned to Paris in 1504.
2.3.4. Second Visit to England (1505-1506)
For his second visit to England, Erasmus spent over a year staying at the home of the recently married Thomas More, who was by then a lawyer and Member of Parliament. During this time, Erasmus honed his translation skills. Erasmus preferred to live the life of an independent scholar and made a conscious effort to avoid any actions or formal ties that might inhibit his individual freedom. In England, Erasmus was approached with prominent offices, but he declined them all, until King Henry VII himself offered his support. He was inclined, but eventually did not accept and longed for a stay in Italy.
2.3.5. Italy (1506-1509)
In 1506, Erasmus was able to travel through Italy to Bologna, tutoring the sons of the English King's personal physician. His Italian circle included Aldus Manutius, Giulio Camillo, Aleander, Alexander Stewart, Pietro Bembo, Bombasius, Marcus Musurus, Janus Lascaris, Giles of Viterbo, Egnazio, Germain de Brie, Ferry Carondelet, Urbano Valeriani, Tommaso Inghirami, Scipio Carteromachus, and Domenico Grimani. His patrons were Popes Leo X, Adrian VI, Clement VII, Paul III, and King James IV. En route, his discovery of Lorenzo Valla's New Testament Notes was a major event, prompting Erasmus to pursue biblical studies using philological methods. In 1506, he arranged to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology from the University of Turin at age 37 (or 40). He stayed tutoring in Bologna for a year and witnessed Pope Julius II's victorious entry into the conquered city, which he had besieged.
Erasmus then traveled to Venice, working on an expanded version of his Adagia at the Aldine Press of the famous printer Aldus Manutius. He advised Manutius on which manuscripts to publish and was an honorary member of the Greek-speaking Aldine "New Academy" (NeakadêmiaΝεακαδημίαGreek, Modern). From Aldus, he learned efficient printing workflows, including making last-minute changes and immediately checking proofs. Aldus reportedly said Erasmus could do twice as much work in a given time as anyone he had ever met.
In 1507, according to his letters, he studied advanced Greek in Padua with the Venetian natural philosopher, Giulio Camillo. He found employment tutoring and escorting the Scottish nobleman Alexander Stewart, the 24-year-old Archbishop of St Andrews, through Padua, Florence, and Siena. Erasmus reached Rome in 1509, visiting notable libraries and cardinals, though his association with Italian scholars was less extensive than expected.
In 1509, William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Mountjoy, enticed him back to England, now under King Henry VIII, who was hoped to be a wise and benevolent ruler. They sent Erasmus £10 (equivalent to over 5.00 K USD today) to cover his travel expenses. During his journey over the Alps via Splügen Pass and down the Rhine, Erasmus began composing The Praise of Folly.
2.3.6. Third Visit to England (1510-1515)
In 1510, Erasmus arrived at Thomas More's bustling London home, where he recovered from a recurrent illness and wrote The Praise of Folly, which became a bestseller. More was then the undersheriff of the City of London. After his glorious reception in Italy, Erasmus returned broke and jobless, with strained relations with former continental friends, and he regretted leaving Italy, despite being horrified by papal warfare. There is a notable gap in his usually voluminous correspondence: his so-called "two lost years," possibly due to self-censorship of dangerous or disgruntled opinions. He shared lodgings with his friend Andrea Ammonio, Latin secretary to Lord Mountjoy and later to Henry VIII, provided at the London Austin Friars' compound, skipping out after a disagreement with the friars over rent that caused bad blood.
He assisted his friend John Colet by authoring Greek textbooks and recruiting staff for the newly established St Paul's School and was in contact when Colet delivered his notorious 1512 Convocation sermon, which called for ecclesiastical reform. At Colet's urging, Erasmus began work on De Copia.
In 1511, John Fisher, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, arranged for Erasmus to potentially become the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity, though whether he formally accepted or took up the position is debated by historians. He studied and taught Greek, and researched and lectured on Jerome. He justified his academic work to Servatius Rogerus by stating, "I do not aim at becoming rich, so long as I possess just enough means to provide for my health and free time for my studies and to ensure that I am a burden to none."
Erasmus primarily resided at Queens' College, Cambridge while lecturing at the university between 1511 and 1515. Despite chronic financial shortages, he succeeded in mastering Greek by an intensive, day-and-night study for three years, taught by Thomas Linacre, continuously begging in letters that his friends send him books and money for teachers.
Erasmus suffered from poor health and was particularly concerned with heating, clean air, ventilation, drafts, fresh food, and unspoiled wine: he complained about the draftiness of English buildings. He lamented that Queens' College could not supply him with enough decent wine (wine was the Renaissance medicine for gallstones, from which Erasmus suffered). As Queens' was an unusually humanist-leaning institution in the 16th century, Queens' College Old Library still houses many first editions of Erasmus's publications, many of which were acquired during that period by bequest or purchase, including Erasmus's New Testament translation, which is signed by his friend and Polish religious reformer Jan Łaski.
By this time, Thomas More was a judge on the poor man's equity court (Master of Requests) and a Privy Counsellor.
2.3.7. Flanders and Brabant (1515-1521)
Erasmus's residence at Louvain, where he lectured at the university, exposed him to considerable criticism from those ascetics, academics and clerics hostile to his principles of literary and religious reform. His Burgundy/Louvain circle included Adrian of Utrecht, Pieter Gillis, Martin Dorp, Hieronymus van Busleyden, Albrecht Dürer, Dirk Martens, Nicolas Cleynaerts, Cornelius Grapheus, Jan van Borssele, Jean de Neve, and Richard Sampson. His opponents included Latomus, Edward Lee, Ulrich von Hutten, and Nicolaas Baechem (Egmondanus). His patrons were Charles V. In 1514, en route to Basel, he made the acquaintance of Hermannus Buschius, Ulrich von Hutten and Johann Reuchlin who introduced him to the Hebrew language in Mainz. In 1514, he suffered a fall from his horse and injured his back.
Erasmus likely made several other short visits to England or English territory while living in Brabant. Fortunately for Erasmus, More and Cuthbert Tunstall were posted in Brussels or Antwerp on government missions around 1516, More for six months, Tunstall for longer. Their circle included Pieter Gillis of Antwerp, in whose house Thomas More wrote Utopia (published 1516) with Erasmus's encouragement, editing, and possibly even some fragment contributions. His old Cambridge friend Richard Sampson was the vicar general running the nearby diocese of Tournai.
In 1516, Erasmus accepted an honorary position as a Councillor to Charles V, with an annuity of 200 guilders (estimated over 100.00 K USD), rarely paid. He also tutored Charles's brother, the teenage future Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand of Hapsburg. In the same year, Erasmus published the first edition of his scholarly Latin-Greek Novum Instrumentum omne with annotations, his complete works of Jerome, and The Education of a Christian Prince (Institutio principis Christiani) for Charles and Ferdinand.
In 1517, he supported the foundation at the university of the Collegium Trilingue for the study of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, modeled after Cisneros's College of the Three Languages at the University of Alcalá, financed by his late friend Hieronymus van Busleyden's will. At the request of Jean Le Sauvage, former Chancellor of Brabant and now Chancellor of Burgundy, Erasmus wrote The Complaint of Peace. Tragically, in 1517, his close friend Andrea Ammonio died in England from the Sweating Sickness. In 1518, Erasmus was diagnosed with the plague, but was taken in and cared for by his Flemish friend and publisher Dirk Martens in Antwerp for a month, ultimately recovering.
By 1518, he reported to Paulus Bombasius that his income exceeded 300 ducats (over 150.00 K USD) per year, without including patronage. By 1522, he reported his annual income as 400 gold florins (over 200.00 K USD).
In 1520, he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold with Guillaume Budé, likely his last meetings with Thomas More and William Warham. His friends, former students, and old correspondents were the incoming political elite, and he had risen with them. By 1524, his disciples included, by his own account, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Kings of England, France, and Denmark, Prince Ferdinand of Germany, the Cardinal of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and numerous other princes, bishops, and scholars across Europe, including in Poland and Hungary. He stayed in various locations, including Anderlecht (near Brussels) in the summer of 1521.
2.3.8. Basel (1521-1529)
From 1514, Erasmus regularly traveled to Basel to coordinate the printing of his books with Johann Froben. He developed a lasting association with the great Basel publisher Johann Froben and later his son Hieronymus Froben (Erasmus's godson). Together, they published over 200 works by Erasmus, collaborating with expert scholar-correctors who went on to distinguished careers. His Swiss circle included Johannes Froben, Hieronymus Froben, Beatus Rhenanus, Bonifacius Amerbach, Bruno Amerbach, Hans Holbein the Younger, Johann Faber, Simon Grynaeus, Sebastian Brandt, Wolfgang Capito, Damião de Góis, Gilbert Cousin, Jakob Näf, and Augustinus Marius. His patrons were Antoine I de Vergy and Christoph von Utenheim. His initial interest in Froben's operation was aroused by his discovery of the printer's folio edition of the Adagiorum Chiliades tres (Adagia, 1513). Froben's work was notable for using new Roman type and Aldine-like Italic and Greek fonts, as well as elegant layouts using borders and fancy capitals. Hans Holbein the Younger cut several woodblock capitals for Erasmus's editions. The printing of many of his books was supervised by his Alsatian friend, the Greek scholar Beatus Rhenanus.
In 1521, Erasmus settled in Basel, seeking respite from the controversies and hostility he faced in Louvain and fearing deeper entanglement in the Lutheran controversy. He agreed to be the Froben press's literary superintendent, writing dedications and prefaces for an annuity and profit share. He maintained his own household in Basel, equipped with a fireplace as he required, a formidable housekeeper, a stable of horses, and up to eight boarders or paid servants, who acted as assistants, correctors, amanuenses, dining companions, international couriers, and carers. It was his custom to sit at times by a ground-floor window, to make it easier to see and be seen by strolling humanists for chatting.
In collaboration with Froben and his team, the scope and ambition of Erasmus's Annotations-his long-researched project of philological notes of the New Testament along the lines of Valla's Adnotations-had grown to also include a lightly revised Latin Vulgate, then the Greek text, then several edifying essays on methodology, then a highly revised Vulgate. All of this was bundled as his Novum Instrumentum omne and pirated individually throughout Europe. Finally, he produced his amplified Paraphrases.
In 1522, Erasmus's compatriot, former teacher (c. 1502), and friend from the University of Louvain, Pope Adrian VI, unexpectedly became Pope. Adrian had previously served as Regent and/or Grand Inquisitor of Spain for six years. Like Erasmus and Luther, he had been influenced by the Brethren of the Common Life. He tried to entice Erasmus to Rome. Adrian's reforms of the Roman Curia, which he hoped would meet the objections of many Lutherans, were stymied (partly because the Holy See was broke), though re-worked at the Council of Trent, and he died in 1523.
As the popular and nationalist responses to Luther gathered momentum, the social disorders, which Erasmus dreaded and Luther disassociated himself from, began to appear. These included the German Peasants' War (1524-1525), the Anabaptist insurrections in Germany and in the Low Countries, iconoclasm, and the radicalization of peasants across Europe. If these were the outcomes of reform, Erasmus was thankful that he had kept out of it. Yet he was ever more bitterly accused of having started the whole "tragedy" (as Erasmus dubbed the matter).
In 1523, he provided financial support to the impoverished and disgraced former Latin Secretary of Antwerp, Cornelius Grapheus, upon his release from the newly introduced Inquisition. In 1525, Jan de Bakker (Pistorius), a former student of Erasmus who had served at his father's former church at Woerden, became the first priest to be executed as a heretic in the Netherlands. In 1529, his French translator and friend Louis de Berquin was burned in Paris, following his condemnation as an anti-Rome heretic by the Sorbonne theologians.
2.3.9. Freiburg (1529-1535)
Following sudden, violent, and iconoclastic rioting in early 1529 led by Johannes Oecolampadius (his former assistant), in which elected Catholic councilmen were deposed, the city of Basel definitively adopted the Reformation, finally banning the Catholic Mass on April 1, 1529.
Erasmus, in company with other Basel Catholic priests, including Bishop Augustinus Marius, left Basel on April 13, 1529, and departed by ship to the Catholic university town of Freiburg im Breisgau to be under the protection of his former student, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. Erasmus wrote somewhat dramatically to Thomas More of his frail condition at the time: "I preferred to risk my life rather than appear to approve a programme like theirs. There was some hope of a return to moderation."
In early spring 1530, Erasmus was bedridden for three months with an intensely painful infection, likely carbunculosis, that, unusually for him, left him too ill to work. He declined invitations from the Bishop of Augsburg and the Papal legate Campeggio to attend the Diet of Augsburg, and he expressed doubt on non-theological grounds, to Campeggio and Melanchthon, that reconciliation was then possible. He wrote to Campeggio, "I can discern no way out of this enormous tragedy unless God suddenly appears like a Deus ex machina and changes the hearts of men," and later, "What upsets me is not so much their teaching, especially Luther's, as the fact that, under the pre-text of the gospel, I see a class of men emerging whom I find repugnant from every point of view."
He stayed for two years on the top floor of The Whale House (Haus zum Walfisch) as a guest of the city. Following another rent dispute, he bought and refurbished his own house, where he took in scholar-assistants as table-boarders, some of them fleeing persecution. These included Cornelius Grapheus's friend Damião de Góis.
Despite increasing frailty (his arthritic gout often confined him to his house and prevented writing), Erasmus continued to work productively, notably on a new magnum opus, his manual on preaching Ecclesiastes, and his small book on preparing for death. His boarder for five months, the Portuguese scholar-diplomat Damião de Góis, worked on his lobbying on the plight of the Sámi in Sweden and the Ethiopian church, and stimulated Erasmus's increasing awareness of foreign missions.
There are no extant letters between More and Erasmus from the start of More's period as Chancellor until his resignation (1529-1533), almost to the day. Erasmus wrote several important non-political works under the surprising patronage of Thomas Boleyn: his Ennaratio triplex in Psalmum XXII (Triple Commentary on Psalm 23, 1529); his catechism to counter Luther, Explanatio Symboli (A Playne and Godly Exposition or Declaration of the Commune Crede, 1533), which sold out in three hours at the Frankfurt Book Fair; and Praeparatio ad mortem (Preparation for Death, 1534), one of his most popular and often repurposed works.
2.3.10. Fates of Friends
In the 1530s, life became more dangerous for Spanish Erasmians when Erasmus' protector, the Inquisitor General Alonso Manrique de Lara, fell out of favor with the royal court and lost power within his own organization to friar-theologians. In 1530, the reforming French bishop Guillaume Briçonnet died. In 1532, Erasmus's friend, the converso Juan de Vergara (Cisneros's Latin secretary, who had worked on the Complutensian Polyglot and published Stunica's criticism of Erasmus), was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition and had to be ransomed by the humanist Archbishop of Toledo, Alonso III Fonseca, also a correspondent of Erasmus', who had previously rescued Ignatius of Loyola from them.
In 1532, his beloved long-time mentor, English Primate William Warham, died of old age. Erasmus wrote a moving letter about Warham to Charles Blount, stating, "I wrote this in sorrow and grief, my mind totally devastated... We had made a vow to die together; he had promised a common grave...I am held back here half-alive, still owing the debt from the vow I had made, which ...I will soon pay. ...Instead, even time, which is supposed to cure even the most grievous sorrows, merely makes this wound more and more painful. What more can I say? I feel that I am being called. I will be glad to die here together with that incomparable and irrevocable patron of mine, provided I am allowed, by the mercy of Christ, to live there together with him." Reforming cardinal Giles of Viterbo and Swiss bishop Hugo von Hohenlandenberg also died. In 1534, his distrusted protector Pope Clement VII died, as did his recent Italian ally Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (who was widely tipped as the next pope), and his old ally Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio retired.
As more friends passed away (in 1533, his friend Pieter Gillis; in 1534, William Blount; in early 1536, Catherine of Aragon), and as Luther and some Lutherans and powerful Catholic theologians renewed their personal attacks on Erasmus, his letters increasingly focused on concerns about the status of friendships and his safety, prompting him to consider moving from bland Freiburg despite his failing health.
In 1535, Erasmus's friends Thomas More, Bishop John Fisher, and the Brigittine monk Richard Reynolds were executed as pro-Rome traitors by Henry VIII, who Erasmus and More had first met as a boy. Despite illness, Erasmus wrote the first biography of More (and Fisher), the short, anonymous Expositio Fidelis, which Froben published, at the instigation of Damião de Góis.
After Erasmus's time, numerous of Erasmus' translators later met similar tragic fates at the hands of Anglican, Catholic, and Reformed sectarians and autocrats, including Margaret Pole, William Tyndale, and Michael Servetus. Others, such as Charles V's Latin secretary Juan de Valdés, fled and died in self-exile. Erasmus's friend and collaborator Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall eventually died in prison under Elizabeth I for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. Erasmus's correspondent Bishop Stephen Gardiner, whom he had known as a teenage student in Paris and Cambridge, was later imprisoned in the Tower of London for five years under Edward VI for impeding Protestantism, during which he occupied himself copying out quotations from Erasmus' Adages and formally complaining about the protestantized English translation of Erasmus' Paraphrases of the New Testament. Damião de Góis was tried before the Portuguese Inquisition at age 72, detained almost incommunicado, finally exiled to a monastery, and on release perhaps murdered. His amanuensis Gilbert Cousin died in prison at age 66, shortly after being arrested on the personal order of Pope Pius V.
2.4. Death in Basel
When his strength began to fail, Erasmus finally decided to accept an invitation from Queen Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands (sister of his former student Archduke Ferdinand I and Emperor Charles V), to move from Freiburg to Brabant. In 1535, he moved back to the Froben compound in Basel in preparation (his former assistant, Johannes Oecolampadius, having died, and private practice of his religion now being possible) and saw his last major works such as Ecclesiastes through publication, though he grew more frail.
On July 12, 1536, Erasmus died from an attack of dysentery. "The most famous scholar of his day died in peaceful prosperity and in the company of celebrated and responsible friends." His last words, as recorded by his friend and biographer Beatus Rhenanus, were apparently "Lord, put an end to it" (domine fac finemLatin), followed by "Dear God" (Lieve GodDutch).
He had remained loyal to Roman Catholicism throughout his life, but biographers have disagreed whether to treat him as an insider or an outsider. He may not have received or had the opportunity to receive the last rites of the Catholic Church; the contemporary reports of his death do not mention whether he asked for a Catholic priest or not, if any were secretly or privately in Basel. This is consistent with Erasmus's view that outward signs were not important; what mattered is the believer's direct relationship with God, though he did not dismiss the rites and sacraments out of hand but asserted a dying person could achieve a state of salvation without the priestly rites, provided their faith and spirit were attuned to God. He was buried with great ceremony in the Basel Minster (the former cathedral). The Protestant city authorities remarkably allowed his funeral to be an ecumenical Catholic requiem Mass.
Erasmus had received dispensations (from Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and from Emperor Charles V in 1530) to make a will rather than have his wealth revert to his order (the Chapter of Sion), or to the state, and had long pre-sold most of his personal library of almost 500 books to Polish humanist Jan Łaski. As his heir or executor, he appointed Bonifacius Amerbach to provide seed money to students and the needy. After paying all claims, the sum held by Amerbach and the two Basel executors amounted to 5.00 K Florin (valued between 500.00 K USD and 5.00 M USD today), which was invested in a loan to the duchy of Württemberg that yielded an annual income of 250 Florin (between 25.00 K USD and 250.00 K USD). The majority of this fund became scholarships for students at the University of Basel (in theology, law, and medicine); the rest went to a fund for the poor. One of the eventual recipients was the impoverished Protestant humanist Sebastian Castellio, who had fled from Geneva to Basel, who subsequently translated the Bible into Latin and French, and who worked for the repair of the breach and divide of Western Christianity in its Catholic, Anabaptist, and Protestant branches.
3. Thought and Views
Biographers often draw connections between Erasmus's convictions and his early life, such as his esteem for marriage, support for priestly marriage, concern for improving women's marriage prospects, opposition to inconsiderate rules (especially institutional dietary rules), a desire for engaging education, interest in classical languages, horror of poverty, distaste for mendicant friars, unwillingness to be controlled by authorities, valuing mercy and peace, anger over unnecessary war, and an awareness of mortality.
3.1. Manner of Thinking and Expression
Erasmus possessed a distinctive intellectual approach, characterized by a capacious perception, agile judgment, and unsettling irony, all grounded in a deep and abiding commitment to human flourishing. "In all spheres, his outlook was essentially pastoral."
He is described as a seminal rather than a consistent or systematic thinker, notably averse to over-extending from the specific to the general. He should be taken very seriously as a pastoral and rhetorical theologian, with a philological and historical approach-rather than a metaphysical approach-to interpreting Scripture, and interested in the literal and tropological senses. For Erasmus, dogmatics served the purpose of biblical exegesis and moral action. He was also known for his moderation, judiciousness, and constructive criticism, even when mocking extremes, but thin-skinned against slanders of heterodoxy.
3.1.1. Irony
Erasmus often wrote in a highly ironical idiom, especially in his letters, which makes them prone to different interpretations when taken literally rather than ironically.
- Ulrich von Hutten claimed that Erasmus was secretly a Lutheran; Erasmus chided him saying that von Hutten had not detected the irony in his public letters enough.
- Antagonistic scholar J.W. Williams denies that Erasmus's letter to Ammonius, "let your own interests be your standard in all things," was in apparent jest, as claimed by those more sympathetic to Erasmus.
- Erasmus's aphoristic quote on the persecution of Johann Reuchlin, "If it is Christian to hate Jews, we are all abundantly Christians here," is taken literally by Theodor Dunkelgrün and Harry S. May as being approving of such hatred; the alternative view would be that it was sardonic and challenging.
He frequently wrote about controversial subjects using the dialogue to avoid direct statements clearly attributable to himself. For Martin Luther, he was an eel, slippery, evasive and impossible to capture.
3.1.2. Copiousness
Erasmus's literary theory of "copiousness" endorses a large stockpile of rich adages, analogies, tropes and symbolic figures, which leads to compressed communication of complex ideas (between those educated in the stockpile) but some of which, to modern sensibilities, may promote as well as play off stereotypes.
- His lengthy collections of proverbs, the Adagia, established a vocabulary he and his contemporaries then used extensively and habitually. According to philosopher Heinz Kimmerle, it is necessary to know the explanations of various proverbs given by Erasmus' Adages to adequately understand many passages in Erasmus' and Luther's written debate on free will.
- When Erasmus wrote of 'Judaism,' he most frequently (though not always) was not referring to Jews, but instead he referred to those Catholic Christians of his time, especially in the monastic lifestyle, who mistakenly promoted excessive external ritualism over interior piety, by analogy with Second Temple Judaism. He famously stated, "Judaism I call not Jewish impiety, but prescriptions about external things, such as food, fasting, clothes, which to a certain degree resemble the rituals of the Jews." His counter-accusation to Spanish friars of "Judaizing" may have been particularly sharp and bold, given the prominent role that some friars with the Spanish Inquisition were playing in the lethal persecution of some conversos.
Terence J. Martin identifies an "Erasmian pattern" that the supposed (by the reader) otherness (of Turks, Lapplanders, Indians, Amerindians, Jews, and even women and heretics) "provides a foil against which the failures of Christian culture can be exposed and criticized." For example:
- In a 1518 letter to John Fisher, Erasmus wrote: "The cunning of princes and the effrontery of the Roman curia can go no further; and it looks as though the state of the common people would soon be such that the tyranny of the Grand Turk would be more bearable."
- In de bello Turcico, Erasmus personifies that Christians should "kill the Turk, not the man," and that "If we really want to heave the Turks from our necks, we must first expel from our hearts a more loathsome race of Turks: avarice, ambition, the craving for power, self-satisfaction, impiety, extravagance, the love of pleasure, deceitfulness, anger, hatred, envy." This can be interpreted as using prejudice to subvert it by turning the criticism inward.
3.2. Pacifism and Views on War
Peace, peaceableness, and peacemaking, in all spheres from the domestic to the religious to the political, were central distinctives of Erasmus' writing on Christian living and his mystical theology. He famously declared, "the sum and summary of our religion is peace and unanimity," adding that this requires defining as few matters as possible and leaving individual judgment free on many questions. At the Nativity of Jesus "the angels sang not the glories of war, nor a song of triumph, but a hymn of peace."
He believed: "He (Christ) conquered by gentleness; He conquered by kindness; he conquered by truth itself.[...] Long ago, he was called God of Powers, the 'Lord of Hosts/Armies'; for us he is called 'God of Peace.'"
Erasmus was not an absolute pacifist but promoted political pacificism and religious Irenicism. His notable writings on peace include De Concordia, On the War with the Turks, The Education of a Christian Prince, On Restoring the Concord of the Church, and The Complaint of Peace. Erasmus' ecclesiology of peacemaking held that the church authorities had a divine mandate to settle religious disputes in an as non-excluding way as possible, including by the preferably-minimal development of doctrine. In The Complaint of Peace, Lady Peace insists on peace as the crux of Christian life and for understanding Christ: "I give you my peace, I leave you my peace" (John 14:27). "He gives peace, leaves peace - peace with friends, peace with enemies." A historian has called him "The 16th Century's Pioneer of Peace Education and a Culture of Peace."
Erasmus' emphasis on peacemaking reflects a typical pre-occupation of medieval lay spirituality as historian John Bossy (as summarized by Eamon Duffy) puts it: "medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. "Christianity" in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal-constantly aspired to if seldom attained-was peace and mutual love."
3.2.1. War
Historians have written that "references to conflict run like a red thread through the writings of Erasmus." Erasmus had experienced war as a child and was particularly concerned about wars between Christian kings, who he believed should act as brothers and not start wars; a theme prominent in his book The Education of a Christian Prince. His Adages included the proverb "War is sweet to those who have never tasted it" (Dulce bellum inexpertisLatin), from Pindar's Greek. He argued that war is inherently wrong, forbidden by Christianity, and that "just cause" in war is often claimed by both sides and nearly impossible to determine fairly, rendering traditional Just War theory non-functional. He believed defeat should be endured rather than fighting to the end. In his Adages, he quoted the common translation, "A disadvantageous peace is better than a just war," derived from Cicero and John Colet's "Better an unjust peace than the justest war." Expansionism could not be justified. He argued that taxes to pay for war should cause the least possible hardship on the poor. He also detested sedition as, often, a cause of oppression.
Erasmus was highly critical of the warlike attitudes of influential European princes of his era, including some church leaders. He described these princes as corrupt and greedy. Erasmus believed that these princes "collude in a game, of which the outcome is to exhaust and oppress the commonwealth". He spoke more freely about this matter in letters sent to his friends like Thomas More, Beatus Rhenanus and Adrianus Barlandus: a particular target of his criticisms was the Emperor Maximilian I, whom Erasmus blamed for allegedly preventing the Netherlands from signing a peace treaty with Guelders and other schemes to cause wars in order to extract money from his subjects.
One of his approaches was to send and publish congratulatory and lionizing letters to princes who, though in a position of strength, negotiated peace with neighbors, such as King Sigismund I the Old of Poland in 1527. Erasmus "constantly and consistently" opposed the mooted idea of a Christian "universal monarch" with an over-extended empire who could supposedly defeat the Ottoman forces: such universalism did not "hold any promise of generating less conflict than the existing political plurality;" instead, advocating concord between princes, both temporal and spiritual. The spiritual princes, by their arbitration and mediation do not "threaten political plurality, but acts as its defender."
3.3. Intra-Christian Religious Toleration
Erasmus referred to his irenical disposition in the Preface to On Free Will as a secret inclination of nature that would make him even prefer the views of the Sceptics over intolerant assertions, though he sharply distinguished adiaphora (matters of indifference) from what was uncontentiously explicit in the New Testament or absolutely mandated by Church teaching. Concord demanded unity and assent: Erasmus was anti-sectarian as well as non-sectarian. To follow the law of love, our intellects must be humble and friendly when making any assertions: he called contention "earthly, beastly, demonic" and a good-enough reason to reject a teacher or their followers. In Melanchthon's view, Erasmus taught charity, not faith. The centrality of Christian concord to Erasmus' theology contrasted with the insistence of Martin Luther and, for example, later English Puritans, that (Protestant) truth naturally would create discord and opposition.
Certain works of Erasmus laid a foundation for religious toleration of private opinions and ecumenism. For example, in De libero arbitrio, opposing particular views of Martin Luther, Erasmus noted that religious disputants should be temperate in their language "because in this way the truth, which is often lost amidst too much wrangling may be more surely perceived." Gary Remer writes, "Like Cicero, Erasmus concludes that truth is furthered by a more harmonious relationship between interlocutors."
In a letter to Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, Erasmus lobbied diplomatically for toleration: "If the sects could be tolerated under certain conditions (as the Bohemians pretend), it would, I admit, be a grievous misfortune, but one more endurable than war." But the same dedication to avoiding conflict and bloodshed should be shown by those tempted to join (anti-popist) sects: "Perhaps evil rulers should sometimes be tolerated. We owe some respect to the memory of those whose places we think of them as occupying. Their titles have some claim on us. We should not seek to put matters right if there is a real possibility that the cure may prove worse than the disease."
3.3.1. Heresy and Sedition
Erasmus had been involved in early attempts to protect Luther and his sympathisers from charges of heresy. Erasmus wrote Inquisitio de fide (1523) to say that the Lutherans (of 1523) were not formally heretics: he pushed back against the willingness of some theologians to cry heresy fast in order to enforce their views in universities and at inquisitions.
For Erasmus, punishable heresy had to involve fractiously, dangerously, and publicly agitating against essential doctrines relating to Christ (i.e., blasphemy), with malice, depravity, obstinacy. As with St Theodore the Studite, Erasmus was against the death penalty merely for private or peaceable heresy or for dissent on non-essentials: "It is better to cure a sick man than to kill him." The Church has the duty to protect believers and convert or heal heretics; he invoked Jesus' parable of the wheat and tares.
Erasmus' pacificism included a particular dislike for sedition, which caused warfare: "It was the duty of the leaders of this (reforming) movement, if Christ was their goal, to refrain not only from vice, but even from every appearance of evil; and to offer not the slightest stumbling block to the Gospel, studiously avoiding even practices which, although allowed, are yet not expedient. Above all they should have guarded against all sedition."
He allowed the death penalty against violent seditionists to prevent bloodshed and war: he allowed that the state has the right to execute those who are a necessary danger to public order-whether heretic or orthodox-but noted (e.g., to Noël Béda) that Augustine had been against the execution of even violent Donatists. Historians state that Erasmus's endorsement of suppression of the Anabaptists springs from their refusal to heed magistrates and the criminal violence of the Münster Rebellion not because of their heretical views on baptism. Despite these concessions to state power, Erasmus suggested that religious persecution could still be challenged as inexpedient (ineffective).
3.4. Views on "Outsiders" (Non-Christians)
Most of Erasmus's political writing focused on peace within Christendom with almost a sole focus on Europe. In 1516, he wrote, "It is the part of a Christian prince to regard no one as an outsider unless he is a nonbeliever, and even on them he should inflict no harm," which entails not attacking outsiders, not taking their riches, not subjecting them to political rule, no forced conversions, and keeping promises made to them.
In common with his times, Erasmus regarded the Jewish and Islamic religions as Christian heresies (and therefore competitors to orthodox Christianity) rather than separate religions, using the inclusive term half-Christian for the latter, noting that they were "in large part half-Christian and perhaps nearer to true Christianity than most of our own folk."
However, there is a wide range of scholarly opinion on the extent and nature of antisemitic and anti-Muslim prejudice in his writings. Historian Nathan Ron has found his writing to be harsh and racial in its implications, with contempt and hostility to Islam.
3.4.1. Turks
In his last decade, he involved himself in the public policy debate on war with the Ottoman Empire, which was then invading Western Europe, notably in his book On the war against the Turks (1530), as the "reckless and extravagant" Pope Leo X had in previous decades promoted going on the offensive with a new crusade. Erasmus re-worked Luther's rhetoric that the invading Turks represent God's judgment of decadent Christendom, but without Luther's fatalism: Erasmus not only accused Western leaders of kingdom-threatening hypocrisy, he reworked a remedy already decreed by the Fifth Council of the Lateran: anti-expansionist moral reforms by Europe's disunited leaders as a necessary unitive political step before any aggressive warfare against the Ottoman threat, reforms which might themselves, if sincere, prevent both the internecine and foreign warfare.
3.4.2. Jews
Erasmus perceived and championed strong Hellenistic rather than exclusively Hebraic influences on the intellectual milieux of Jesus, Paul, and the early church: "If only the Christian church did not attach so much importance to the Old Testament!" For Erasmus, "...the relative importance we should ascribe to the different books of the Bible" accorded to how much "they bring us more or less directly to knowledge of (Christ)," which gave priority to the New Testament and the Gospels in particular. Perhaps the only Jewish book he published was his loose translation of the first-century Hellenistic-Judaic "On the Sovereignty of Reason", better known as 4 Maccabees.
Erasmus' pervasive anti-ceremonialism treated the early Church debates on circumcision, food, and special days as manifestations of cultural chauvinism by the initial Jewish Christians in Antioch. While many humanists, from Pico della Mirandola to Johannes Reuchlin, were intrigued by Jewish mysticism, Erasmus came to dislike it: "I see them as a nation full of most tedious fabrications, who spread a kind of fog over everything, Talmud, Cabbala, Tetragrammaton, Gates of Light, words, words, words. I would rather have Christ mixed up with Scotus than with that rubbish of theirs."
In his Paraphrase on Romans, Erasmus voiced, as Paul, the "secret" that in the end times, "all of the Israelites will be restored to salvation" and accept Christ as their Messiah, "although now part of them have fallen away from it." Several scholars have identified cases where Erasmus' comments appear to go beyond theological anti-Judaism into slurs or approving to an extent certain anti-semitic policies, though there is some controversy.
3.4.3. Slaves
On the subject of slavery, Erasmus characteristically treated it in passing under the topic of tyranny: Christians were not allowed to be tyrants, which slave-owning required, but especially not to be the masters of other Christians. Erasmus had various other piecemeal arguments against slavery: for example, that it was not legitimate to enslave people taken in an unjust war, but it was not a subject that occupied him. However, his belief that "nature created all men free" (and slavery was imposed) was a rejection of Aristotle's category of natural slaves.
3.5. Political Philosophy
Erasmus promoted the idea that a prince rules with the consent of his people, notably in his book The Education of a Christian Prince (and, through More, in the book Utopia.) He may have been influenced by the Brabantine custom of an incoming ruler being officially told of his duties and welcomed: the Joyous Entry was a kind of contract. A monarchy should not be absolute: it should be "checked and diluted with a mixture of aristocracy and democracy to prevent it ever breaking out into tyranny." The same considerations applied to church princes.
Erasmus contrasts the Christian Prince with the Tyrant, who has no love from the people, will be surrounded by flatterers, and can expect no loyalty or peace. Unspoken in Erasmus' views may have been the idea that the people can remove a tyrant; however, espousing this explicitly could expose people to capital charges of sedition or treason. Erasmus typically limited his political discussion to what could be couched as personal faith and morality by or between Christians, his business as a magister of theology.
3.6. Religious Reform and Theology
Erasmus expressed much of his reform program in terms of the proper attitude towards the sacraments and their ramifications: notably for the underappreciated sacraments of Baptism and Marriage (see On the Institution of Christian Marriage) considered as vocations more than events, and for the mysterious Eucharist, pragmatic Confession, the dangerous Last Rites (writing On the Preparation for Death), and the pastoral Holy Orders (see Ecclesiastes). Historians have noted that Erasmus commended the benefits of immersive, docile scripture-reading in sacramental terms. "It is because Christ is in the pages of the bible that we meet him as a living person. As we read these pages we absorb his presence, we become one with him."
3.6.1. Sacramental Theology
A test of the Reformation was the doctrine of the sacraments, and the crux of this question was the observance of the Eucharist. Erasmus was concerned that the sacramentarians, headed by Œcolampadius of Basel, were claiming Erasmus held views similar to their own in order to try to claim him for their schismatic and "erroneous" movement. When the Mass was finally banned in Basel in 1529, Erasmus immediately abandoned the city, as did the other expelled Catholic clergy.
In 1530, Erasmus published a new edition of the orthodox treatise by Algerus against the heretic Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century. He added a dedication, affirming his belief in the reality of the Body of Christ after consecration in the Eucharist, commonly referred to as transubstantiation. However, Erasmus found the scholastic formulation of transubstantiation to stretch language past its breaking point.
By and large, the miraculous real change that interested Erasmus, the author, more than that of the bread is the transformation in the humble partaker. Erasmus wrote several notable pastoral books and pamphlets on sacraments, always looking through rather than at the rituals or forms: on marriage and wise matches, preparation for confession and the need for pastoral encouragement, preparation for death and the need to assuage fear, training and helping the preaching duties of priests under bishops, and baptism and the need for that faithful to own the baptismal vows made for them.
3.6.2. Catholic Reform
The Protestant Reformation began in the year following the publication of his pathbreaking edition of the New Testament in Latin and Greek (1516). The issues between the reforming and reactionary tendencies of the church, from which Protestantism later emerged, had become so clear that many intellectuals and churchmen could not escape the summons to join the debate.
According to historian C. Scott Dixon, Erasmus not only criticized church failings but questioned many of his Church's basic teachings, laying foundations for a model of Christianity that called for a pared-down, internalized style of religiosity focused on Scripture rather than the elaborate, and incessant, outward rituals of the medieval church. However, according to biographer Erika Rummel, "Erasmus was aiming at the correction of abuses rather than at doctrinal innovation or institutional change." His principal aim was to foster piety and to deepen spirituality.
In theologian Louis Bouyer's interpretation, Erasmus' agenda was "to reform the Church from within by a renewal of biblical theology, based on philological study of the New Testament text, and supported by a knowledge of patristics, itself renewed by the same methods. The final object of it all was to nourish chiefly moral and spiritual reform."
At the height of his literary fame, Erasmus was called upon to take one side, but public partisanship was foreign to his beliefs, nature, and habits. Despite all his criticism of clerical corruption and abuses within the Western Church, especially at first he sided unambiguously with neither Luther nor the anti-Lutherans publicly (though in private he lobbied assiduously against extremism from both parties), but eventually shunned the breakaway Protestant Reformation movements along with their most radical offshoots. He consistently declared, "I have constantly declared, in countless letters, booklets, and personal statements, that I do not want to be involved with either party."
The world had laughed at his satire, The Praise of Folly, but few had interfered with his activities. He believed that his work had commended itself to the religious world's best minds and dominant powers. Erasmus chose to write in Latin (and Greek), the languages of scholars. He did not build a large body of supporters in the unlettered; his critiques reached a small but elite audience.
Erasmus was also notable for exposing several important historical documents of theological and political importance as forgeries or misattributions: including pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the Gravi de pugna attributed to St Augustine, the Ad Herennium attributed to Cicero, and (by reprinting Lorenzo Valla's work) the Donation of Constantine.
3.6.3. Protestant Reformers
The early reformers built their theology on Erasmus' philological analyses of specific verses in the New Testament: repentance over penance (the basis of the first thesis of the Luther's Ninety-five Theses), justification by imputation, grace as favour or clemency, faith as hoping trust, human transformation over reformation, congregation over church, mystery over sacrament, etc. In Erasmus' view, they went too far, downplayed Sacred Tradition such as Patristic interpretations, and irresponsibly fomented bloodshed.
Erasmus was one of many scandalized by the sale of indulgences to fund Pope Leo X's projects. His view, given in a 1518 letter to John Colet, was less theological than political: "The Roman curia has abandoned any sense of shame. What could be more shameless than these constant indulgences? And now they put up war against the Turks as a pretext, when their aim really is to drive the Spaniards from Naples."
3.6.4. Philosophical Approach
Erasmus has a problematic standing in the history of philosophy: whether he should be called a philosopher at all (as, indeed, some question whether he should be considered a theologian either). Erasmus deemed himself to be a rhetorician (rhetoric being the art of argumentation to find what was most probably true on questions where logic could not provide certainty) or grammarian rather than a philosopher. He was particularly influenced by satirist and rhetorician Lucian. Erasmus' writings shifted "an intellectual culture from logical disputation about things to quarrels about texts, contexts, and words."
3.6.5. Mystical Theology
Another important concept to Erasmus was "the Folly of the Cross" (which The Praise of Folly explored): the view that Truth belongs to the exuberant, perhaps ecstatic, world of what is foolish, strange, unexpected and even superficially repellent to us, rather than to the frigid worlds which intricate scholastic dialectical and syllogistic philosophical argument all too often generated; this produced in Erasmus a profound disinterest in hyper-rationality, and an emphasis on verbal, rhetorical, mystical, pastoral and personal/political moral concerns instead. He believed that: "Yet these ancient fathers were they who confuted both the Jews and Heathens [...]; they confuted them (I say), yet by their lives and miracles, rather than by words and syllogisms; and the persons they thus proselyted were downright honest, well meaning people, such as understood plain sense better than any artificial pomp of reasoning[...]"
3.6.6. Theological Writings
Several scholars have suggested Erasmus wrote as an evangelist not an academic theologian. Even "theology was to be metamorphic speech, converting persons to Christ." Erasmus did not conceive of Christianity as fundamentally an intellectual system. Historian William McCuaig commented "I have never read a work by him on any subject that was not at bottom a piece of evangelical literature."
As Louis Bouyer described, Erasmus' work followed four parallel and complementary lines: establishing and critically elucidating the biblical texts; alongside it, the editions of the great patristic commentators; then, the exegetical works properly so called, in which these two fundamental researches yield their fruit; and finally, the methodological works, which in their first state constitute a sort of preface to the various other studies, but which-in return-were nourished and enlarged by them as they went along.
Apart from these programmatic works, Erasmus also produce a number of prayers, sermons, essays, masses and poems for specific benefactors and occasions, often on topics where Erasmus and his benefactor agreed. His thought was particularly influenced by Origen, whom he believed had a deeper understanding of St Paul than Augustine.
He often set himself the challenge of formulating positive, moderate, non-superstitious versions of contemporary Catholic practices that might be more acceptable both to scandalized Catholics and Protestants of good will: the better attitudes to the sacraments, saints, Mary, indulgences, statues, scriptural ignorance and fanciful Biblical interpretation, prayer, dietary fasts, external ceremonialism, authority, vows, docility, submission to Rome, etc. For example, in his Paean in Honour of the Virgin Mary (1503) Erasmus elaborated his theme that the Incarnation had been hinted far and wide, which could impact the theology of the fate of the remote unbaptized and grace, and the place of classical philosophy:
"You are assuredly the Woman of renown: both heaven and earth and the succession of all the ages uniquely join to celebrate your praise in a musical concord. [...] During the centuries of the previous age the oracles of the gentiles spoke of you in obscure riddles. Egyptian prophecies, Apollo's tripod, the Sibylline books, gave hints of you. The mouths of learned poets predicted your coming in oracles they did not understand. [...] Both the Old and the New Testament, like two cherubim with wings joined and unanimous voices, repeatedly sing your praise. [...] Thus indeed have writers religiously vied to proclaim you, on the one hand inspired prophets, on the other eloquent Doctors of the church, both filled with the same spirit, as the former foretold your coming in joyful oracles before your birth and the latter heaped prayerful praise on you when you appeared."
4. Major Works
Erasmus was the most popular, most printed, and arguably most influential author of the early sixteenth century. His works were widely read across Western nations and frequently translated. By the 1530s, his writings accounted for 10-20% of all book sales in Europe. He was "undoubtedly the most read author of his age." His vast output of Latin and Greek publications included translations, paraphrases, letters, textbooks, plays for schoolboys, commentaries, poems, liturgies, satires, sermons, and prayers. A significant portion of his later works were defenses against attacks from Catholic and Protestant theological and literary opponents.
The Catalogue of the Works of Erasmus (2023) lists 444 entries (120 pages), almost all from the latter half of his life. He typically wrote books in particular classical literary genres with their different rhetorical conventions: complaint, diatribe, dialogue, encomium, epistle, commentary, liturgy, sermon, etc. His letter to Ulrich von Hutten on Thomas More's household has been called "the first real biography in the real modern sense."
From his youth, Erasmus had been a voracious writer. Erasmus wrote or answered up to 40 letters per day, usually waking early in the morning and writing them in his own hand. He did not work after dinner. His writing method (recommended in De copia and De ratione studii) was to make notes on whatever he was reading, categorized by theme: he carted these commonplaces in boxes that accompanied him. When assembling a new book, he would go through the topics and cross out commonplace notes as he used them. This catalog of research notes allowed him to rapidly create books, though woven from the same topics. Towards the end of his life, as he lost dexterity, he employed secretaries or amanuenses who performed the assembly or transcription, re-wrote his writing, and in his last decade, recorded his dictation; letters were usually in his own hand, unless formal. For much of his career he wrote standing at a desk, as shown in Dürer's portrait.
4.1. Key Publications and Scholarly Contributions
Erasmus wrote for educated audiences both on subjects of humanist interest, including language arts, education, and biblical studies. All of his works served as models of style, and he pioneered the principles of textual criticism. He also wrote on pastoral subjects: "to Christians in the various stages of lives: for the young, for married couples, for widows," the dying, clergy, theologians, religious, princes, partakers of sacraments, etc.
He is noted for his extensive scholarly editions of the New Testament in Latin and Greek, and the complete works of numerous Church Fathers. These formed the basis of the so-called Textus Receptus Protestant bibles.
The first printed New Testament in Greek was not by Erasmus, but by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros as part of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. The Complutensian Polyglot Bible was printed in 1514, but its publication was delayed until 1522 because it was awaiting the Old Testament portion and the approval of Pope Leo X. This delay allowed Erasmus's New Testament to be published first, in 1516.
Erasmus spent years working on two projects: compiling Greek texts and a new Latin New Testament. He began the Latin New Testament in 1512, gathering all available Vulgate manuscripts to create a critical edition, then refining the Latin. He initially focused on improving Jerome's text, stating, "My mind is so excited by the shadow of correcting Jerome's text, with notes, that I feel as if I am inspired by some god." He asserted he had almost finished correcting it by compiling a large number of ancient manuscripts at great personal expense. In the early stages, he never mentioned the Greek text. He later explained that he included the Greek text to allow capable readers to verify the quality of his Latin version, acknowledging that the Greek text had often been mistranslated due to carelessness or ignorance, and corrupted by unskilled scribes. He clearly indicated that his final product, Novum Instrumentum omne (later Novum Testamentum omne), presented a text with Greek and Latin versions consistently comparable to the essential core of the Church's New Testament tradition.
Erasmus can be seen as "synchronizing" or "unifying" the Greek and Latin traditions of the New Testament by simultaneously producing updated versions of both. Both were part of the canonical tradition, and he felt it necessary to ensure they presented the same content, making them "compatible" in modern terms. This is evident as his Greek text was not merely a basis for his Latin translation, but also vice versa; he edited the Greek text to reflect his Latin version. For example, as the last six verses of the Book of Revelation were missing from his Greek manuscript, Erasmus translated the Vulgate text back into Greek. He also translated Latin text into Greek whenever he found existing Greek text and commentaries confusing, or when he preferred the Vulgate reading.
Erasmus considered his work "hastily printed rather than edited," which led to several transcription errors. He wrote corrections between the lines of his manuscripts (including Minuscule 2) and sent them as proofs to Froben. The result of his rushed efforts was published in 1516 by Johann Froben in Basel as Novum Instrumentum omne, diligenter ab Erasmo Rot. Recognitum et Emendatum. Erasmus used several Greek manuscript sources, lacking access to any complete one. Most of these were late Greek manuscripts from the Byzantine textual family, and Erasmus used few of the oldest manuscripts, fearing their inconsistency. He also overlooked significantly older and better manuscripts that were available to him.
In his second edition (1519), the more common term Testamentum was used instead of Instrumentum. This edition was used by Martin Luther for his German translation of the Bible, written for those who did not understand Latin. The first and second editions collectively sold 3,300 copies, compared to only 600 copies of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. These first and second editions did not include 1 John 5:7-8, known as the Comma Johanneum, as Erasmus could not find it in any Greek manuscript. He only included it in the third edition after being presented with a single manuscript (now considered a 1520 creation from the Latin Vulgate, likely derived from a 5th-century marginal gloss in a Latin copy of 1 John). On June 2, 1927, the Catholic Church declared the Comma Johanneum open to debate, and it is rarely included in modern scholarly translations.
The third edition of 1522 was likely used by William Tyndale for the first English New Testament (Worms, 1526) and served as the basis for Robert Stephanus's 1550 edition, used by English Bible translators such as the Geneva Bible and the King James Version. Erasmus published a fourth edition in 1527, featuring parallel columns of Greek, Latin Vulgate, and Erasmus's Latin translation. This edition also included the Greek text of the last six verses of Revelation (which he had translated back from Latin in his first edition) from the Biblia Complutensis. In 1535, Erasmus published his fifth (and final) edition, without the Latin Vulgate column, but otherwise similar to the fourth. Later versions of the Greek New Testament by others, based on Erasmus's work, became known as the Textus Receptus.
Erasmus dedicated his work to Pope Leo X, whom he regarded as a patron of learning, considering it his primary service to the principle of Christianity. Shortly thereafter, he began publishing his Paraphrases of the New Testament, a popular presentation of the contents of several books. This work, like all his writings, was published in Latin but quickly translated into other languages with his support.
The only works with enduring popularity in modern times are his satires and semi-satires: The Praise of Folly, Julius Excluded from Heaven, and The Complaint of Peace. However, his other works, such as his several thousand letters, continue to be a vital source of information to historians of numerous disciplines. He is considered the originator of the idiom "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king" (from his Adagia). He is also largely credited with popularizing the phrase "Pandora's box" through a mistranslation of Hesiod's pithos (large storage jar) as pyxis (box).
His more serious writings began with Enchiridion militis Christiani (Handbook of a Christian Knight, 1503), later translated into English by the young William Tyndale. This short work outlined his views on normal Christian life, which he spent the rest of his life elaborating. He believed the primary evil of his time was formalism-following traditions without understanding their basis in Christ's teachings. Forms could teach the soul how to worship God but could also obscure the spirit or satisfy superficial piety. In addressing the dangers of formalism, Erasmus discussed monasticism, veneration of saints, war, factionalism, and minor societal flaws. The Enchiridion was written in a more sermonic than satirical style. In it, Erasmus challenged common assumptions, portraying clergy as educators who should share their knowledge with the laity. He emphasized individual spiritual disciplines and called for reform as a collective return to the Church Fathers and Scripture. Most importantly, he enthusiastically praised the reading of scripture as vital for its power to transform and motivate towards love. Like the Brethren of the Common Life, he wrote that the New Testament contained the law of Christ, which everyone was called to obey, and Christ was the model they were called to imitate.
Ernest Barker noted that, in addition to his work on the New Testament, Erasmus also diligently worked on the early Church Fathers. Among Latin Fathers, he edited works by Jerome, Hilary of Poitiers, and Augustine of Hippo; among Greek Fathers, he worked on Irenaeus, Origen, and John Chrysostom.
Erasmus also wrote about Pier Gerlofs Donia (Greate Pier), a legendary Frisian rebel and freedom fighter, though his comments were more critical than laudatory of Donia's actions, viewing him as foolish and brutal, preferring physical force over wisdom.
One of Erasmus's most famous works, influenced by Faustino Perisauli's De triumpho stultitiae, was The Praise of Folly, published with the dual titles Moriae encomium (Greek, Latinized) and Laus stultitiae (Latin). This satirical condemnation of superstitions and traditions in European society generally, and the Western Church specifically, was written in 1509, published in 1511, and dedicated to his good friend Thomas More ("Morias Encomium" can also be read as "Praise of More").
The Education of a Christian Prince (Institutio principis Christiani) (Basel, 1516) was written as advice to the young King Charles of Spain (later Charles V). Erasmus outlined general principles of honor and sincerity for the prince's specific functions, representing him as a servant of the people. The Education was published in 1516, three years after Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince; the comparison between the two works is notable. Machiavelli argued that for a prince to maintain political power, it was safer to be feared than loved. Erasmus preferred that the prince be loved and strongly advocated for comprehensive education so he would rule justly, mercifully, and without oppression.
As a result of his reform activities, Erasmus found himself in a difficult relationship with two opposing factions. His final years were plagued by controversies with people he had once sympathized with. One significant figure was Ulrich von Hutten, a brilliant but unstable individual who had embraced Lutheran beliefs and claimed Erasmus would do the same if he were honest with himself. In his 1523 response, Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni, Erasmus demonstrated his expertise in semantics. He accused Hutten of misinterpreting his expressions concerning reform and reaffirmed his determination never to separate from the Church.
Ciceronianus, published in 1528, criticized the scholarly Latin style that exclusively and fanatically based itself on the writings of Cicero. Etienne Dolet wrote a response titled Erasmianus in 1535. Erasmus's last major work was Ecclesiastes or "The Preacher" (Basel, 1536), published in the year of his death, offering commentaries on the utility of preaching.
- Table of Selected Major Works**
| Title | Publication Year(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Adagia | 1500 and later editions | Collection of Greek and Latin proverbs and idioms, expanded from ~800 to 4,658 entries. |
| Enchiridion militis Christiani | 1503 | Manual for Christian living, emphasizing inner piety over external rituals. |
| Moriae encomium | 1511 | Satirical critique of superstitions and church abuses, dedicated to Thomas More. |
| De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum Copia (De Copia) | 1512 | Text on rhetorical abundance and stylistic richness. |
| Disticha de moribus nomine Catonis | 1513 | Commentary on traditional moral distichs. |
| Sileni Alcibiadis | 1515 | Essay exploring deceptive appearances masking true value. |
| Novum Instrumentum omne | 1516 | The first critical edition of the Greek New Testament with a new Latin translation. |
| Institutio principis Christiani | 1516 | Guide for the moral and just governance of a Christian prince. |
| Bellum | 1517 | Essay on war and its miseries, arguing against its justification. |
| Colloquia familiaria | 1518; multiple editions until 1533 | Dialogues on various topics, satirizing contemporary life and religious practices. |
| Lingua, Sive, De Linguae usu atque abusu Liber utillissimus | 1525 | Treatise on the proper use and abuse of language. |
| Ciceronianus | 1528 | Critique of zealous Ciceronian imitation in Latin prose. |
| De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione | 1528 | Dialogue on the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek. |
| De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis | 1529 | Essay on the early and liberal education of children, condemning physical punishment. |
| De civilitate morum puerilium | 1530 | Guide to civility and manners for children. |
| Consultatio de Bello Turcis Inferendo | 1530 | Counsel on warfare against the Turks. |
| A Playne and Godly Exposition or Declaration of the Commune Crede | 1533 | Catechism and exposition of the Apostles' Creed. |
| Ecclesiastes | 1535 | Comprehensive manual on the art of preaching. |
| De octo orationis partium constructione libellus | 1536 | Grammatical treatise on sentence structure. |
| Apophthegmatum opus | 1539 | Collection of witty sayings and anecdotes from classical antiquity. |
| The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus vpon the newe testamente | 1548 | English translation of Erasmus's paraphrases on the New Testament. |
5. Personal Life
Erasmus's personal life was marked by chronic health issues and distinctive habits as a scholar-priest.
5.1. Health
Erasmus was a quite sickly man and frequently worked from his sickbed. As a teenager he contracted Quartan fever, a non-lethal type of Malaria which recurred numerous times for the rest of his life: he attributed his survival to the intercession of St Genevieve. His digestion gave him trouble: he was intolerant of fish, beer and some wines, which were the standard diet for members of religious orders; he eventually died following an attack of dysentery.
In Cambridge he was ill, possibly with the English Sweating Sickness. He suffered kidney stones from his time in Venice and, in late life, with gout. In 1514, he suffered a fall from his horse and injured his back. In 1528 he suffered recurrent episodes of the stone, "from which he almost died." In 1529 his self-removal from Basel was delayed because of headcold and fever. In 1530 while traveling he suffered some near-fatal illness which several doctors diagnosed as the plague (which had killed his parents) but several others diagnosed as not the plague.
Various illnesses have been diagnosed of the skeletons claimed to be his, including pustulotic arthro-osteitis, syphilis or yaws. Other doctors have diagnosed from his written descriptions ailments such as rheumatoid arthritis, enteric rheumatism and spondylarthritis.
5.2. Clothing
Until Erasmus received his 1505 and 1517 Papal dispensations to wear clerical garb, Erasmus wore versions of the local habit of his order, the Canons regular of St Augustine, Chapter of Sion, which varied by region and house, unless travelling: in general, a white or perhaps black cassock with linen and lace choir rochet for liturgical contexts, or otherwise with white sarotiumLatin (scarf) (over left shoulder), or almuce (cape), perhaps with an asymmetrical black cope of cloth or sheepskin (cacullaeLatin) or long black cloak.
From 1505, and certainly after 1517, he dressed as a scholar-priest. He preferred warm and soft garments: according to one source, he arranged for his clothing to be stuffed with fur to protect him against the cold, and his habit counted with a collar of fur which usually covered his nape.
All Erasmus' portraits show him wearing a knitted scholar's bonnet.
5.3. Signet Ring and Personal Motto
Erasmus chose the Roman god of borders and boundaries Terminus as a personal symbol and had a signet ring with a herm he thought depicted Terminus carved into a carnelian. The herm was presented to him in Rome by his student Alexander Stewart and in reality depicted the Greek god Dionysus. The ring was also depicted in a portrait of his by the Flemish painter Quentin Matsys.
The herm became part of the Erasmus branding at Froben, and is on his tombstone. In the early 1530s, Erasmus was portrayed as Terminus by Hans Holbein the Younger.
He chose Concedo NulliLatin (Latin: I concede to no-one) as his personal motto. The obverse of the medal by Quintin Matsys featured the Terminus herm. Mottoes on medals, along the circumference, included "A better picture of Erasmus is shown in his writing", and "Contemplate the end of a long life" and Horace's "Death is the ultimate boundary of things," which re-casts the motto as a memento mori. There were anachronistic claims that his motto was a favourable nod to Luther's "Here I stand" which Erasmus denied.
5.4. Representations
Erasmus frequently gifted portraits and medals with his image to friends and patrons.
- Hans Holbein the Younger painted him at least three times and perhaps as many as seven, some of the Holbein portraits of Erasmus surviving only in copies by other artists. Holbein's three profile portraits - two (nearly identical) profile portraits and one three-quarters-view portrait - were all painted in the same year, 1523. Erasmus used the Holbein portraits as gifts for his friends in England, such as William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Writing in a letter to Warham regarding the gift portrait, Erasmus quipped that "he might have something of Erasmus should God call him from this place." Erasmus spoke favourably of Holbein as an artist and person but was later critical, accusing him of sponging off various patrons whom Erasmus had recommended, for purposes more of monetary gain than artistic endeavor. There were scores of copies of these portraits made in Erasmus' time. Holbein's 1532 profile woodcut was particularly lauded by those who knew Erasmus.
- Albrecht Dürer also produced portraits of Erasmus, whom he met three times, in the form of an engraving of 1526 and a preliminary charcoal sketch. Concerning the former Erasmus was unimpressed, declaring it an unfavorable likeness of him, perhaps because around 1525 he was suffering severely from kidney stones. Nevertheless, Erasmus and Dürer maintained a close friendship, with Dürer going so far as to solicit Erasmus's support for the Lutheran cause, which Erasmus politely declined. Erasmus wrote a glowing encomium about the artist, likening him to famous Greek painter of antiquity Apelles. Erasmus was deeply affected by his death in 1528.
- Quentin Matsys produced the earliest known portraits of Erasmus, including an oil painting from life in 1517 (which had to be delayed as Erasmus' pain distorted his face) and a medal in 1519.
- In 1622, Hendrick de Keyser cast a statue of Erasmus in (gilt) bronze replacing an earlier stone version from 1557, itself replacing a wooden one of 1549, possibly a gift from the City of Basel. This was set up in the public square in Rotterdam, and today may be found outside the St. Lawrence Church. It is the oldest bronze statue in the Netherlands.
- In 1790, Georg Wilhelm Göbel struck commemorative medals.
- Canterbury Cathedral, England, has a statue of Erasmus on the North Face, placed in 1870.
- Actor Ken Bones portrays Erasmus in David Starkey's 2009 documentary series Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant
- The stern of the Dutch ship Liefde, which reached Japan in 1600, carried a wooden figure of Erasmus, relating to the ship's previous name, Erasmus. This figure, known as Kashoku Sonja (貨狄尊者) or "Cargo God," is now a Japanese Important Cultural Property, housed at the Tokyo National Museum. Locals reportedly believed it was a figure of a bean-grinding old woman.
5.5. Commemoration and Naming
Erasmus's name and legacy are commemorated in various ways:
- The European Erasmus Programme of exchange students within the European Union is named after him. The original program enabled European students to spend up to a year of their university courses in a university in another European country, commemorating Erasmus' impulse to travel. The European Union cites the successor Erasmus+ programme as a "key achievement": "Almost 640,000 people studied, trained or volunteered abroad in 2020." The parallel Erasmus Mundus project is aimed at attracting non-European students to study in Europe.
- The Erasmus Prize is one of Europe's foremost recognitions for culture, society or social science. It was won by Wikipedia in 2015.
- The Erasmus Lectures are an annual lecture on religious subjects, given by prominent Christian (mainly Catholic) and Jewish intellectuals, most notably by Joseph Ratzinger in 1988.
- A peer-reviewed annual scholarly journal Erasmus Studies has been produced since 1981.
- Rotterdam has the Erasmus University Rotterdam: It has the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE), which produces the Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics. Erasmus University College is an "international, interdisciplinary Bachelor of Science programme in Liberal Arts and Sciences."
- From 1997 to 2008, the American University of Notre Dame had an Erasmus Institute.
- The Erasmus Building in Luxembourg was completed in 1988 as the first addition to the headquarters of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The building houses the chambers of the judges of the CJEU's General Court and three courtrooms. It is next to the Thomas More Building.
- Rotterdam has an Erasmus Bridge.
- Queens' College, Cambridge, has an Erasmus Tower, Erasmus Building and an Erasmus Room. Until the early 20th century, Queens' College used to have a corkscrew that was purported to be "Erasmus' corkscrew", which was a third of a metre long; as of 1987, the college still had what it calls "Erasmus' chair".
- Several schools, faculties and universities in the Netherlands and Belgium are named after him, as is Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn, New York, US.
5.6. Exhumation
In 1928, the site of Erasmus' grave was dug up, and a body identified in the bones and examined. In 1974, remains were dug up in a slightly different location, accompanied by an Erasmus medal. Both remains have been claimed to be Erasmus'. However, it is possible neither is. The first bones were taller than expected and syphilitic; the second fitted the reported size and age but were accidentally smashed during photography.
6. Legacy and Evaluations
Erasmus was given the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists", and has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists". He has also been called "the most illustrious rhetorician and educationalist of the Renaissance".
Historian Christophe Ocker notes, "By the 1570s, "Everyone had assimilated Erasmus to one extent or another."
Historian W.S. Lily compared his influence to that of St Augustine and Voltaire, stating, "Since the origin of Christianity there have been perhaps only two other men-St Augustine and Voltaire-whose influence can be paralleled with Erasmus."
Despite his immense influence, he was at times viciously criticized, his works suppressed, his expertise corralled, his writings misinterpreted, his thought demonized, and his legacy marginalized. He was never judged and declared a heretic by the Catholic Church, during his lifetime or after: a semi-secret trial in Vallodolid Spain, in 1527 found him not to be a heretic, and he was sponsored and protected by Popes and Bishops.
6.1. Historical Reception and Controversy
Erasmus's The Praise of Folly was later used by Protestants as an anti-Catholic work, contrary to his intent, leading to its inclusion in the Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
His "philosophy of Christ" (Philosophia Christi) aimed to counter the emphasis on mere knowledge and pedantry in theology by directing focus back to the Bible, bringing it closer to its original form, and advocating for learning from it to understand Christ. This reflected the influence of the Devotio Moderna movement, particularly the work The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. Erasmus believed that the growing gap between clergy and laity could be bridged by both groups engaging with the Bible.
Luther, in his Table Talk, referred to Erasmus as "the most wicked among those who defile the world," criticizing him for mocking both God and humanity, and for using subtle, ambiguous language to conceal his true intentions. However, Erasmus was supported by many theologians of his time and gained immense popularity across Europe. He also significantly influenced figures in Western literature, including François Rabelais in France, Miguel de Cervantes in Spain, and William Shakespeare in England, who are considered foundational to modernity.
His collection of works was inscribed on the Memory of the World Programme Register in 2023.