Erasmus

For other uses, see Erasmus (disambiguation).

See also: Legacy and evaluations of Erasmus

See also: Works of Erasmus

The Reverend Desiderius Erasmus
Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1523), "arguably…the most important portrait in England"
Born	c. 28 October 1466 Rotterdam or Gouda, Burgundian Netherlands, Holy Roman Empire
Died	12 July 1536(1536-07-12) (aged 69) Basel, Old Swiss Confederacy
Other names	Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
Known for	New Testament translations and exegesis, satire, pacificism, letters, author and editor
Awards	Counsellor to Charles V. (hon.)
Academic background
Education	University of Paris Queens' College, Cambridge University of Turin (STD, 1506)
Influences	Gospels Jerome Origen Lorenzo Valla John Colet Jean Vitrier John Fisher Aldus Manutius Cicero Socrates Augustine of Hippo Thomas Aquinas
Academic work
Era	Northern Renaissance
School or tradition	Renaissance humanism
Institutions	University of Cambridge University of Oxford University of Leuven
Main interests	Bonae litterae Philology Pastoral theology Patristics Catholic theology Political philosophy Philosophy of education Criticism of Protestantism
Notable works	The Praise of Folly Handbook of a Christian Knight On Civility in Children Julius Excluded The Education of a Christian Prince Novum Instrumentum omne On Free Will
Notable ideas	Philosophia Christi Biblical ad fontes Erasmian pronunciation Critique of just war theory accommodation Lectio difficilior potior
Influenced	Thomas More Martin Luther Philip Melanchthon Huldrych Zwingli Johannes Oecolampadius William Tyndale John Calvin Wolfgang Capito Damião de Góis François Rabelais Miguel de Cervantes William Shakespeare Ignatius of Loyola Francis De Sales John Henry Newman Henri de Lubac
Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Christianity
Church	Catholic Church
Ordained	25 April 1492

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (/ˌdɛzɪˈdɪəriəs ɪˈræzməs/ DEZ-i-DEER-ee-əs irr-AZ-məs, Dutch: [ˌdeːziˈdeːrijʏs eːˈrɑsmʏs]; 28 October c. 1466 – 12 July 1536), commonly known in English as Erasmus of Rotterdam or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic priest and theologian, educationalist, satirist, and philosopher. Through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.

Erasmus was an important figure in classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and natural Latin style. As a Catholic priest developing humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared pioneering new Latin and Greek scholarly editions of the New Testament and of the Church Fathers, with annotations and commentary that were immediately and vitally influential in both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, The Complaint of Peace, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style and many other popular and pedagogical works.

Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious reformations. He developed a biblical humanistic theology in which he advocated the religious and civil necessity both of peaceable concord and of pastoral tolerance on matters of indifference. He remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the church from within. He promoted the traditional doctrine of synergism, which some prominent reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favor of the doctrine of monergism. His influential middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps.

Life and career

Erasmus's almost 70 years may be divided into quarters.

• First was his medieval Dutch childhood, ending with his being orphaned and impoverished;
• Second, his struggling years as a canon (a kind of semi-monk), a clerk, a priest, a failing and sickly university student, a would-be poet, and a tutor;
• Third, his flourishing but peripatetic High Renaissance years of increasing focus and literary productivity following his 1499 contact with a reformist English circle notably John Colet and Thomas More, then with radical French Franciscan Jean Vitrier (or Voirier), and later with the Greek-speaking Aldine New Academy in Venice; and
• Fourth, his financially more secure Reformation years near the Black Forest: as a prime influencer of European thought through his New Testament and increasing public opposition to aspects of Lutheranism, first in Basel and then as a Catholic religious refugee in Freiburg.

Early life

Desiderius Erasmus is reported to have been born in Rotterdam on 27 or 28 October ("the vigil of Simon and Jude") in the late 1460s. He was named after Erasmus of Formiae, whom Erasmus' father Gerard (Gerardus Helye) personally favored. Although associated closely with Rotterdam, he lived there for only four years, never to return afterwards.

Statue of Erasmus in Rotterdam. Gilded bronze statue by Hendrick de Keyser (1622), replacing a stone (1557), and a wooden (1549).

The year of Erasmus' birth is unclear: in later life he calculated his age as if born in 1466, but frequently his remembered age at major events actually implies 1469. (This article currently gives 1466 as the birth year. To handle this disagreement, ages are given first based on 1469, then in parentheses based on 1466: e.g., "20 (or 23)".) Furthermore, many details of his early life must be gleaned from a fictionalized third-person account he wrote in 1516 (published in 1529) in a letter to a fictitious Papal secretary, Lambertus Grunnius ("Mr. Grunt").

His parents could not be legally married: his father, Gerard, was a Catholic priest who may have spent up to six years in the 1450s or 60s in Italy as a scribe and scholar. His mother was Margaretha Rogerius (Latinized form of Dutch surname Rutgers), the daughter of a doctor from Zevenbergen. She may have been Gerard's housekeeper. Although he was born out of wedlock, Erasmus was cared for by his parents, with a loving household and the best education, until their early deaths from the bubonic plague in 1483. His only sibling Peter might have been born in 1463, and some writers suggest Margaret was a widow and Peter was the half-brother of Erasmus; Erasmus on the other hand called him his brother. There were legal and social restrictions on the careers and opportunities open to the children of unwed parents.

Erasmus' own story, in the possibly forged 1524 Compendium vitae Erasmi was along the lines that his parents were engaged, with the formal marriage blocked by his relatives (presumably a young widow or unmarried mother with a child was not an advantageous match); his father went to Italy to study Latin and Greek, and the relatives misled Gerard that Margaretha had died, on which news grieving Gerard romantically took Holy Orders, only to find on his return that Margaretha was alive; many scholars dispute this account.

In 1471 his father became the vice-curate of the small town of Woerden (where young Erasmus may have attended the local vernacular school to learn to read and write) and in 1476 was promoted to vice-curate of Gouda.

Erasmus was given the highest education available to a young man of his day, in a series of monastic or semi-monastic schools. In 1476, at the age of 6 (or 9), his family moved to Gouda and he started at the school of Pieter Winckel, who later became his guardian (and, perhaps, squandered Erasmus and Peter's inheritance.) Historians who date his birth in 1466 have Erasmus in Utrecht at the choir school at this period.

In 1478, at the age of 9 (or 12), he and his older brother 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). A notable previous student was Thomas à Kempis. Towards the end of his stay there the curriculum was renewed by the new principal of the school, Alexander Hegius, a correspondent of pioneering rhetorician Rudolphus Agricola. For the first time in Europe north of the Alps, Greek was taught at a lower level than a university and this is where he began learning it. His education there ended when plague struck the city about 1483, and his mother, who had moved to provide a home for her sons, died from the infection; then his father. Following the death of his parents, as well as 20 fellow students at his school, he moved back to his patria (Rotterdam?) where he was supported by Berthe de Heyden, a compassionate widow.

Hieronymous Bosch, Temptation of St Anthony, triptych (c. 1501), painted in 's-Hertogenbosch, later owned by his friend Damião de Gois

In 1484, around the age 14 (or 17), he and his brother went to a cheaper grammar school or seminary at 's-Hertogenbosch run by the Brethren of the Common Life: Erasmus' Epistle to Grunnius satirizes them as the "Collationary Brethren" who select and sort boys for monkhood. He was exposed there to the Devotio moderna movement and the Brethren's famous book The Imitation of Christ but resented the harsh rules and strict methods of the religious brothers and educators. The two brothers made an agreement that they would resist the clergy but attend the university; Erasmus longed to study in Italy, the birthplace of Latin, and have a degree from an Italian university. Instead, Peter left for the Augustinian canonry in Stein, which left Erasmus feeling betrayed. Around this time he wrote forlornly to his friend Elizabeth de Heyden "Shipwrecked am I, and lost, 'mid waters chill'." He suffered Quartan fever for over a year. Eventually Erasmus moved to the same abbey as a postulant in or before 1487, around the age of 16 (or 19.)

Vows, ordination and canonry experience

Bust by Hildo Krop (1950) in Gouda, where Erasmus spent his youth

Poverty had forced the sickly, bookish, teenaged orphan Erasmus into the consecrated life, entering the novitiate in 1487 at the canonry at rural Stein, very near Gouda, South Holland: the Chapter of Sion community largely borrowed its rule from the larger monkish Congregation of Windesheim who had historical associations with the Brethren of the Common Life, but also with the notable pastoral, mystical and anti-speculative post-scholastic theologians Jean Gerson and Gabriel Biel: positions associated also with Erasmus. In 1488–1490, the surrounding region was plundered badly by armies fighting the Squire Francis War of succession and then suffered a famine. Erasmus professed his vows as a Canon regular of St. Augustine there in late 1488 at age 19 (or 22). Historian Fr. Aiden Gasquet later wrote: "One thing, however, would seem to be quite clear; he could never have had any vocation for the religious life. His whole subsequent history shows this unmistakably." But according to one Catholic biographer, Erasmus had a spiritual awakening at the monastery.

Certain abuses in religious orders were among the chief objects of his later calls to reform the Western Church from within, particularly coerced or tricked recruitment of immature boys (the fictionalized account in the Letter to Grunnius calls them "victims of Dominic and Francis and Benedict"): Erasmus felt he had belonged to this class, joining "voluntarily but not freely" and so considered himself, if not morally bound by his vows, certainly legally, socially and honour- bound to keep them, yet to look for his true vocation.

While at Stein, 18-(or 21-)year-old Erasmus fell in unrequited love, forming what he called a "passionate attachment" (Latin: fervidos amores), with a fellow canon, Servatius Rogerus, and wrote 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 correspondence contrasts with the generally detached and much more restrained attitude he usually showed in his later life, though he had a capacity to form and maintain deep male friendships, such as with More, Colet, and Ammonio. No mentions or sexual accusations were ever made of Erasmus during his lifetime. His works notably praise moderate sexual desire in marriage between men and women.

In 1493, his prior arranged for him to leave the Stein house and take up the post of Latin Secretary to the ambitious Bishop of Cambrai, Henry of Bergen, on account of his great skill in Latin and his reputation as a man of letters.

He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood either on 25 April 1492, or 25 April 1495, at age 25 (or 28.) Either way, he did not actively work as a choir priest for very long, though his many works on confession and penance suggests experience of dispensing them.

From 1500, he avoided returning to the canonry at Stein even insisting the diet and hours would kill him, though he did stay with other Augustinian communities and at monasteries of other orders in his travels. Rogerus, who became prior at Stein in 1504, and Erasmus corresponded over the years, with Rogerus demanding Erasmus return after his studies were complete. Nevertheless, the library of the canonry ended up with by far the largest collection of Erasmus' publications in the Gouda region.

In 1505, Pope Julius II granted a dispensation from the vow of poverty to the extent of allowing Erasmus to hold certain benefices, and from the control and habit of his order, though he remained a priest and, formally, an Augustinian canon regular the rest his life. In 1517, Pope Leo X granted legal dispensations for Erasmus' defects of natality and confirmed the previous dispensation, allowing the 48-(or 51-)year-old his independence but still, as a canon, capable of holding office as a prior or abbot. In 1525, Pope Clement VII granted, for health reasons, a dispensation to eat meat and dairy in Lent and on fast days.

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Life timeline

Travels

Cities and Routes of Erasmus
Walsingham Oxford, Cambridge London Reading Canterbury Deventer Woerden Calais Stein, Gouda Rotterdam St Omer 's-Hertogenbosch Cambrai/Bergen Brussels, Antwerp Paris Louvain Orléans Lyon Liège, Cologne Mainz Turin Strasbourg Bologna Freiburg im Breisgau Besançon, Basel † Florence, Ferrara Konstanz Sienna, Padua Rome, Venice Cumae
Green: early life Dark circles: residence Thin line: alpine crossings Red and green lines: horseback, carriage Blue lines: Rhine and English Channel

Erasmus traveled widely and regularly, for reasons of poverty, "escape" from his Stein canonry (to Cambrai), education (to Paris, Turin), escape from the sweating sickness plague (to Orléans), employment (to England), searching libraries for manuscripts, writing (Brabant), royal counsel (Cologne), patronage, tutoring and chaperoning (North Italy), networking (Rome), seeing books through printing in person (Paris, Venice, Louvain, Basel), and avoiding the persecution of religious fanatics (to Freiburg). He enjoyed horseback riding.

Paris

In 1495 with Bishop Henry's consent and a stipend, Erasmus went on to study at the University of Paris in the Collège de Montaigu, a centre 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 an Italian humanist Publio Fausto Andrelini, poet and "professor of humanity" in Paris.

During this time, Erasmus developed a deep aversion to exclusive or excessive Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and started finding work as a tutor/chaperone to visiting English and Scottish aristocrats. There is no record of him graduating.

First visit to England (1499–1500)

Erasmus stayed in England at least three times. In between he had periods studying in Paris, Orléans, Leuven and other cities.

In 1499 he was invited to England by William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, who offered to accompany him on his trip to England. His time in England was fruitful in the making of lifelong friendships with the leaders of English thought in the days of King Henry VIII.

During his first visit to England in 1499, he studied or taught at the University of Oxford. There is no record of him gaining any degree. Erasmus was particularly impressed by the Bible teaching of John Colet, who pursued a style more akin to the church fathers than the Scholastics. Through the influence of the humanist John Colet, his interests turned towards theology. Other distinctive features of Colet's thought that may have influenced Erasmus are his pacifism, reform-mindedness, anti-Scholasticism and pastoral esteem for the sacrament of Confession.

This prompted him, upon his return from England to Paris, to intensively study the Greek language, which would enable him to study theology on a more profound level.

Erasmus also became fast friends with Thomas More, a young law student considering becoming a monk, whose thought (e.g., on conscience and equity) had been influenced by 14th century French theologian Jean Gerson, and whose intellect had been developed by his powerful patron Cardinal John Morton (d. 1500) who had famously attempted reforms of English monasteries.

Erasmus left London with a full purse from his generous friends, to allow him to complete his studies. However, he had been provided with bad legal advice by his friends: the English Customs officials confiscated all the gold and silver, leaving him with nothing except a night fever that lasted several months.

France and Brabant

Following his first trip to England, Erasmus returned first to poverty in Paris, where he started to compile the Adagio for his students, then to Orléans to escape the plague, and then to semi-monastic life, scholarly studies and writing in France, notably at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Bertin at St Omer (1501,1502) where he wrote the initial version of the Enchiridion (Handbook of the Christian Knight.) A particular influence was his encounter in 1501 with Jean (Jehan) Vitrier, a radical Franciscan who consolidated Erasmus' thoughts against excessive valorization of monasticism, ceremonialism and fasting in a kind of conversion experience, and introduced him to Origen.

In 1502, Erasmus went to Brabant, ultimately to the university at Louvain. In 1504 he was hired by the leaders of the Brabantian "Provincial States" to deliver one of his few public speeches, a very long formal panegyric for the Philip "the Fair", Duke of Burgundy and later King of Castille: the first half being the conventional extravagant praise, but the second half being a strong treatment of the miseries of war, the need for neutrality and concilliation (with the neighbours France and England), and the excellence of peaceful rulers: that real courage in a leader was not to wage war but to put a bridle on greed, etc. This was later published as Panegyricus. Erasmus then returned to Paris in 1504.

Second visit to England (1505–1506)

Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger. Louvre, Paris.

For Erasmus' second visit, he spent over a year staying at recently married Thomas More's house, now a lawyer and Member of Parliament, honing 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 the King himself offered his support. He was inclined, but eventually did not accept and longed for a stay in Italy.

Italy

In 1506 he was able to accompany and tutor the sons of the personal physician of the English King through Italy to Bologna.

His discovery en route of Lorenzo Valla's New Testament Notes was a major event in his career and prompted Erasmus to study the New Testament using philology.

In 1506 they passed through Turin and he arranged to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology (Sacra Theologia) from the University of Turin per saltum at age 37 (or 40.) Erasmus stayed tutoring in Bologna for a year; in the winter, Erasmus was present when Pope Julius II entered victorious into the conquered Bologna which he had besieged before.

Book printed and illuminated at the Aldine Press, Venice (1501): Horace, Works

Erasmus travelled on to Venice, working on an expanded version of his Adagia at the Aldine Press of the famous printer Aldus Manutius, advised him which manuscripts to publish, and was an honorary member of the graecophone Aldine "New Academy" (Greek: Neakadêmia (Νεακαδημία)). From Aldus he learned the in-person workflow that made him productive at Froben: making last-minute changes, and immediately checking and correcting printed page proofs as soon as the ink had dried. Aldus wrote that Erasmus could do twice as much work in a given time as any other man 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 Scottish nobleman Alexander Stewart, the 24-year old Archbishop of St Andrews, through Padua, Florence, and Siena Erasmus made it to Rome in 1509, visiting some notable libraries and cardinals, but having a less active association with Italian scholars than might have been expected.

In 1509, William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Mountjoy lured him back to England, now ruled by what was hoped would be a wise and benevolent king (Henry VIII) educated by humanists. Warham and Mountjoy sent Erasmus £10 to cover his expenses on the journey. On his trip over the Alps via Splügen Pass, and down the Rhine toward England, Erasmus began to compose The Praise of Folly.

Third visit to England (1510–1515)

In 1510, Erasmus arrived at More's bustling house, was confined to bed to recover from his recurrent illness, and wrote The Praise of Folly, which was to be a best-seller. More was at that time the undersheriff of the City of London.

Sir Thomas More, by Hans Holbein the Younger

After his glorious reception in Italy, Erasmus had returned broke and jobless, with strained relations with former friends and benefactors on the continent, and he regretted leaving Italy, despite being horrified by papal warfare. There is a gap in his usually voluminous correspondence: his so-called "two lost years", perhaps due to self-censorship of dangerous or disgruntled opinions; he shared lodgings with his friend Andrea Ammonio (Latin secretary to Mountjoy, and the next year, 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 securing members of staff for the newly established St Paul's School and was in contact when Colet gave his notorious 1512 Convocation sermon which called for a reformation of ecclesiastical affairs. At Colet's instigation, Erasmus started work on De copia.

In 1511, the University of Cambridge's chancellor, John Fisher, arranged for Erasmus to be (or to study to prepare to be) the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity, though whether he actually was accepted for it or took it up is contested by historians. He studied and taught Greek and researched and lectured on Jerome.

Erasmus mainly stayed at Queens' College while lecturing at the university, between 1511 and 1515. Erasmus' rooms were located in the "I" staircase of Old Court. Despite a chronic shortage of money, he succeeded in mastering Greek by an intensive, day-and-night study of 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 especially concerned with heating, clean air, ventilation, draughts, fresh food and unspoiled wine: he complained about the draughtiness of English buildings. He complained 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 friend and Polish religious reformer Jan Łaski.

By this time More was a judge on the poorman's equity court (Master of Requests) and a Privy Counsellor.

Flanders and Brabant

His residence at Leuven, where he lectured at the University, exposed Erasmus to much criticism from those ascetics, academics and clerics hostile to the principles of literary and religious reform to which he was devoting his life. 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.

Quinten Matsys - Portrait of Peter Gillis or Gilles (1517), half of a diptych with a portrait of Erasmus below, painted as a gift from them for Thomas More.

Erasmus may have made several other short visits to England or English territory while living in Brabant. Happily for Erasmus, More and Tunstall were posted in Brussels or Antwerp on government missions around 1516, More for six months, Tunstall for longer. Their circle include Pieter Gillis of Antwerp, in whose house Thomas More's wrote Utopia (pub. 1516) with Erasmus' encouragement, Erasmus editing and perhaps even contributing fragments. His old Cambridge friend Richard Sampson was 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 (over US$100,000), rarely paid, and tutored Charles' brother, the teenage future Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand of Hapsburg.

In 1516, Erasmus published the first edition of his scholarly Latin-Greek New Testament 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—after the model of Cisneros' College of the Three Languages at the University of Alcalá—financed by his late friend Hieronymus van Busleyden's will. On being asked by Jean Le Sauvage, former Chancellor of Brabant and now Chancellor of Burgundy, Erasmus wrote The Complaint of Peace.

In 1517, his great friend Ammonio died in England of the Sweating Sickness. In 1518, Erasmus was diagnosed with the plague; despite the danger, he was taken in and cared for in the home of his Flemish friend and publisher Dirk Martens in Antwerp for a month and recovered.

By 1518, he reported to Paulus Bombasius that his income was over 300 ducats per year (over US$150,000) without including patronage. By 1522 he reported his annual income as 400 gold florins (over US$200,000.)

The Field of the Cloth of Gold, showing King Henry VIII arriving at left. The figure on horseback with raised sword ahead of Henry VIII is Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, a former pupil of Erasmus.

In 1520 he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold with Guillaume Budé, probably his last meetings with Thomas More and William Warham. His friends and former students and old correspondents were the incoming political elite, and he had risen with them.

He stayed in various locations including Anderlecht (near Brussels) in the summer of 1521.

Basel (1521–1529)

Desiderius Erasmus dictating to his ammenuensis Gilbert Cousin or Cognatus. From a book by Cousin, and itself claimed to be based on fresco in Cousin's house in Nozeroy, Burgundy. Engraving possibly by fr:Claude Luc.

From 1514, Erasmus regularly traveled to Basel to coordinate the printing of his books with Froben. He developed a lasting association with the great Basel publisher Johann Froben and later his son Hieronymus Froben (Eramus' godson) who together published over 200 works with Erasmus, working with expert scholar-correctors who went on to illustrious careers.

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 the new Roman type (rather than blackletter) 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' editions. The printing of many his books was supervised by his Alsatian friend, the Greek scholar Beatus Rhenanus.

In 1521 he settled in Basel. He was weary of the controversies and hostility at Louvain, and feared being dragged further into the Lutheran controversy. He agreed to be the Froben press' literary superintendent writing dedications and prefaces for an annuity and profit share. Apart from Froben's production team, he had his own householdwith a formidable housekeeper, 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 habit 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' Annotations, Erasmus' 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 bundled as his Novum testamentum omne and pirated individually throughout Europe— then finally his amplified Paraphrases.

In 1522, Erasmus' compatriot, former teacher (c. 1502) and friend from University of Louvain unexpectedly became Pope Adrian VI, after having 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. His reforms of the Roman Curia which he hoped would meet the objections of many Lutherans were stymied (party because the Holy See was broke), though re-worked at the Council of Trent, and he died in 1523.

Pope Adrian VI

As the popular and nationalist responses to Luther gathered momentum, the social disorders, which Erasmus dreaded and Luther disassociated himself from, began to appear, including the German Peasants' War (1524–1525), the Anabaptist insurrections in Germany and in the Low Countries, iconoclasm, and the radicalisation 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, on his release from the newly introduced Inquisition. In 1525, a former student of Erasmus who had served at Erasmus' father's former church at Woerden, Jan de Bakker (Pistorius) was the first priest to be executed as a heretic in the Netherlands. In 1529, his French translator and friend Louis de Berquin was burnt in Paris, following his condemnation as an anti-Rome heretic by the Sorbonne theologians.

Freiburg (1529–1535)

Following sudden, violent, iconoclastic rioting in early 1529 led by Œcolampadius his former assistant, in which elected Catholic councilmen were deposed, the city of Basel definitely 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 the 13 April 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."

Damião de Góis

In Spring early 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 to attend the Diet of Augsburg to which both the Bishop of Augsburg and the Papal legate Campeggio had invited him, 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, then following another rent dispute bought and refurbished a house of his own, where he took in scholar/assistants as table-boarders such as Cornelius Grapheus' friend Damião de Góis, some of them fleeing persecution.

Despite increasing frailty 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' 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 Bolyn: his Ennaratio triplex in Psalmum XXII or Triple Commentary on Psalm 23 (1529); his catechism to counter Luther Explanatio Symboli or 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 or Preparation for Death (1534) which would be one of Erasmus' most popular and most hijacked works.

Fates of friends

William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury

Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham

In the 1530s, life became more dangerous for Spanish Erasmians when Erasmus' protector, the Inquisitor General Alonso Manrique de Lara fell out of favour with the royal court and lost power within his own organization to friar-theologians. In 1532 Erasmus' friend, converso Juan de Vergara (Cisneros' 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 from them by the humanist Archbishop of Toledo Alonso III Fonseca, also a correspondent of Erasmus', who had previously rescued Ignatius of Loyola from them.

There was a generational change in the Catholic hierarchy. In 1530, the reforming French bishop Guillaume Briçonnet died. In 1532 his beloved long-time mentor English Primate Warham died of old age, as did reforming cardinal Giles of Viterbo and Swiss bishop Hugo von Hohenlandenberg. In 1534 his distrusted protector Clement VII (the "inclement Clement") died, his recent Italian ally Cardinal Cajetan (widely tipped as the next pope) died, and his old ally Cardinal Campeggio retired.

As more friends died (in 1533, his friend Pieter Gillis; in 1534, William Blount; in early 1536, Catherine of Aragon;) and as Luther and some Lutherans and some powerful Catholic theologians renewed their personal attacks on Erasmus, his letters are increasingly focused on concerns on the status of friendships and safety as he considered moving from bland Freiburg despite his health.

In 1535, Erasmus' friends Thomas More, Bishop John Fisher and Brigittine 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 de Góis.

After Erasmus' time, numerous of Erasmus' translators later met similar fates at the hands of Anglican, Catholic and Reformed sectarians and autocrats: including Margaret Pole, William Tyndale, Michael Servetus. Others, such as Charles V's Latin secretary Juan de Valdés, fled and died in self-exile.

Erasmus' friend and collaborator Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall eventually died in prison under Elizabeth I for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. Erasmus' correspondent Bishop Stephen Gardiner, who he had known as a teenaged student in Paris and Cambridge, was later imprisoned in the Tower of London for five years under Edward VI for impeding Protestantism. 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.

Death in Basel

Epitaph for Erasmus in the Basel Minster

When his strength began to fail, he finally decided to accept an invitation by 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 (Œcolampadius having died, and private practice of his religion now possible) and saw his last major works such as Ecclesiastes through publication, though he grew more frail.

On July 12, 1536, he died at 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" (Latin: domine fac finem, the same last words as Melanchthon) then "Dear God" (Dutch: Lieve God).

He had remained loyal to Roman Catholicism, 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.

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 Ferdinand Archduke 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 instated Bonifacius Amerbach to give seed money to students and the needy. 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.

Thought and views

Biographers, such as Johan Huizinga, frequently draw connections between many of Erasmus' convictions and his early biography: esteem for the married state and appropriate marriages, support for priestly marriage, concern for improving marriage prospects for females, opposition to inconsiderate rules (notably, institutional dietary rules), a desire to make education engaging for the participants, interest in classical languages, horror of poverty and spiritual hopelessness, distaste for friars begging when they could study or work, unwillingness to be under the direct control of authorities, laicism, the need for those in authority to act in the best interest of their charges, a prizing of mercy and peace, an anger over unnecessary war, especially between avaricious princes, an awareness of mortality, etc.

Manner of thinking

Erasmus had a distinctive manner of thinking, a Catholic historian suggests: one that is capacious in its perception, agile in its judgments, and unsettling in its irony with "a deep and abiding commitment to human flourishing". "In all spheres, his outlook was essentially pastoral."

Erasmus has been called a seminal rather than a consistent or systematic thinker, notably averse to over-extending from the specific to the general; who nevertheless 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. French theologian Louis Bouyer commented, "Erasmus was to be one of those who can get no edification from exegesis where they suspect some misinterpretation."

A theologian has written of "Erasmus’ preparedness completely to satisfy no-one but himself." He has been called moderate, judicious and constructive even when being critical or when mocking extremes; but thin-skinned against slanders of heterodoxy.

Manner of expression

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.

• Erasmus himself chided Ulrich von Hutten's claims that he (Erasmus) was a Lutheran, saying that von Hutten had not detected the irony in his public letters enough.
• Antagonistic scholar J.W. Williams denies that Erasmus' 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' aphoristic quote on the persecution of 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.

Terence J. Martin identifies an "Erasmian pattern" that the supposed (by the reader) otherness (of Turks, Lapplanders, Indians, Amerindans, Jews, and even women and heretics) "provides a foil against which the failures of Christian culture can be exposed and criticized."

• 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 metonymizes that we should "kill the Turk, not the man.[...]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."

Erasmus' literary theory of "copiousness" uses a large stockpile of tropes and symbolic figures without modern disclaimers of their reality or qualms about the cumulative impact.

• When Erasmus wrote of 'Judaism,' he most frequently (though not always) was not referring to Jews: 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.
  • "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."
  • Erasmus' 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.

Pacifism

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: "the sum and summary of our religion is peace and unanimity" At the Nativity of Jesus "the angels sang not the glories of war, nor a song of triumph, but a hymn of peace.":

He (Christ) conquered by gentleness; He conquered by kindness; he conquered by truth itself

— Method of True Theology, 4

Erasmus was not an absolute pacifist but promoted political pacificism and religious Irenicism. Notable writings on irenicism 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 latter, 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). You hear what he leaves his people? Not horses, bodyguards, empire or riches – none of these. What then? He gives peace, leaves peace – peace with friends, peace with enemies.

— The Complaint of Peace

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."

War

See also: Erasmus § The Complaint of Peace (1517)

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 should be brothers and not start wars; a theme in his book The Education of a Christian Prince. His Adages included "War is sweet to those who have never tasted it" (Dulce bellum inexpertis from Pindar's Greek.)

He promoted and was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold, and his wide-ranging correspondence frequently related to issues of peacemaking. He saw a key role of the Church in peacemaking by arbitration and mediation, and the office of the Pope was necessary to rein in tyrannical princes and bishops.

He questioned the practical usefulness and abuses of Just War theory, further limiting it to feasible defensive actions with popular support and that "war should never be undertaken unless, as a last resort, it cannot be avoided." Defeat should be endured rather than fighting to the end. In his Adages he discusses (common translation) "A disadvantageous peace is better than a just war", which owes to Cicero and John Colet's "Better an unjust peace than the justest war." Expansionism could not be justified. Taxes to pay for war should cause the least possible hardship on the poor. He hated sedition as, often, a cause of oppression.

Erasmus was highly critical of the warlike way of important European princes of his era, including some princes of the church. 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 neighbours, 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."

Intra-Christian religious toleration

He 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 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.

Portrait of Erasmus, after Quinten Massijs (1517)

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."

— Erasmus, The Sileni of Alcibiades (1517)

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 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.

— Letter to Martin Bucer

Erasmus 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 fr:Noël Béda) that Augustine had been against the execution of even violent Donatists: Johannes Trapman states that Erasmus' 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).

Outsiders

Most of his political writing focused on peace within Christendom with almost a sole focus on Europe. In 1516, Erasmus 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.

However, there is a wide range of scholarly opinion on the extent and nature of antisemitic and anti-Moslem 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.

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.

Jews

See also: Legacy and evaluations of Erasmus § Controversy on Antisemitism

Juan Luis Vives

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!" 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.

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.

Politics

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.

Religious reform

Personal reform

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.

Sacraments

Johannes Œcolampadius by Asper (1550)

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 of 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,
• baptism and the need for that faithful to own the baptismal vows made for them.

Catholic reform

Institutional reforms

Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Erasmus, sketch: black chalk on paper, 1520.

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; however, according to biographer Erika Rummel, "Erasmus was aiming at the correction of abuses rather than at doctrinal innovation or institutional change."

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.

"I have constantly declared, in countless letters, booklets, and personal statements, that I do not want to be involved with either party."

— Erasmus, Spongia (1523)

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.

Anti-fraternalism

Reacting from his own experiences, Erasmus came to believe that monastic life and institutions no longer served the positive spiritual or social purpose they once may have: in the Enchiridion he controversially put it "Monkishness is not piety." At this time, it was better to live as "a monk in the world" than in the monastery.

Many of his works contain diatribes against supposed monastic corruption and careerism, particularly against the mendicant friars (Franciscans and Dominicans). These orders also typically ran the university's Scholastic theology programs, from whose ranks came his most dangerous enemies. The more some attacked him, the more offensive he became about what he saw as their political influence and materialistic opportunism.

Alastor, an evil spirit: "They are a certain Sort of Animals in black and white Vestments, Ash-colour'd Coats, and various other Dresses, that are always hovering about the Courts of Princes, and [to each side] are continually instilling into their Ears the Love of War, and exhorting the Nobility and common People to it, haranguing them in their Sermons, that it is a just, holy and religious War. [...]"

Charon: "[...] What do they get out of it?"

Alastor: "Because they get more by those that die, than those that live. There are last Wills and Testaments, Funeral Obsequies, Bulls, and a great many other Articles of no despicable Profit. And in the last Place, they had rather live in a Camp, than in their Cells. War breeds a great many Bishops, who were not thought good for any Thing in a Time of Peace."

— Erasmus, "Charon", Colloquies

He was scandalized by superstitions, such as that if you were buried in a Franciscan habit, you would go direct to heaven. crime and child novices. He advocated various reforms, including a ban on taking orders until the 30th year, the closure of corrupt and smaller monasteries, respect for bishops, requiring work, not begging (reflecting the practice of his own order of Augustinian Canons,) the downplaying of monastic hours, fasts and ceremonies, and a less mendacious approach to gullible pilgrims and tenants.

However, he was not in favour of speedy closures of monasteries nor of larger reformed monasteries with important libraries: in his account of his pilgrimage to Walsingham, he noted that the funds extracted from pilgrims typically supported houses for the poor and elderly.

These ideas widely influenced his generation of humanists, both Catholic and Protestant, and the lurid hyperbolic attacks in his half-satire The Praise of Folly were later treated by Protestants as objective reports of near-universal corruption. Furthermore, "what is said over a glass of wine, ought not to be remembered and written down as a serious statement of belief," such as his proposal to marry all monks to all nuns or to send them all away to fight the Turks and colonize new islands.

He believed the only vow necessary for Christians should be the vow of Baptism, and others such as the vows of the evangelical counsels, while admirable in intent and content, were now mainly counter-productive.

However, Erasmus frequently commended the evangelical counsels for all believers, and with more than lip service: for example, the first adage of his reputation-establishing Adagia was Between friends all is common, where he tied common ownership (such as practiced by his order's style of poverty) with the teachings of classical philosophers and Christ.

His main Catholic opposition was from scholars in the mendicant orders. He purported that "Saint Francis came lately to me in a dream and thanked me for chastising them." After his lifetime, scholars of mendicant orders have sometimes disputed Erasmus as hyperbolic and ill-informed. A 20th-century Benedictine scholar wrote of him as "all sail and no rudder".

Erasmus did also have significant support and contact with reform-minded friars, including Franciscans such as Jean Vitrier and Cardinal Cisneros, and Dominicans such as Cardinal Cajetan the former master of the Order of Preachers.

Protestant reform

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 95 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."

Increasing disagreement with Luther

Portraits of Martin Luther (left) and Philip Melanchthon by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Erasmus and Luther impacted each other greatly. Each had misgivings about each other from the beginning (Erasmus on Luther's rash and antagonistic character, Luther on Erasmus' focus on morality rather than grace) but strategically agreed not to be negative about the other in public.

Noting Luther's criticisms of corruption in the Church, Erasmus described Luther to Pope Leo X as "a mighty trumpet of gospel truth" while agreeing, "It is clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls" (e.g., the sale of indulgences) "are urgently needed." However, behind the scenes Erasmus forbade his publisher Froben from handling the works of Luther and tried to keep the reform movement focused on institutional rather than theological issues, yet he also privately wrote to authorities to prevent Luther's persecution. In the words of one historian, "at this earlier period he was more concerned with the fate of Luther than his theology."

In 1520, Erasmus wrote that "Luther ought to be answered and not crushed." However, the publication of Luther's On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Oct 1520) and subsequent bellicosity drained Erasmus' and many humanists' sympathy, even more as Christians became partisans and the partisans took to violence.

Luther hoped for his cooperation in a work which seemed only the natural outcome of Erasmus' own, and spoke with admiration of Erasmus's superior learning. In their early correspondence, Luther expressed boundless admiration for all Erasmus had done in the cause of a sound and reasonable Christianity and urged him to join the Lutheran party. Erasmus declined to commit himself, arguing his usual "small target" excuse, that to do so would endanger the cause of bonae litterae which he regarded as one of his purposes in life. Only as an independent scholar could he hope to influence the reform of religion. When Erasmus declined to support him, the "straightforward" Luther became angered that Erasmus was avoiding the responsibility due either to cowardice or a lack of purpose.

However, any hesitancy on the part of Erasmus may have stemmed, not from lack of courage or conviction, but rather from a concern over the mounting disorder and violence of the reform movement. To Philip Melanchthon in 1524 he wrote:

I know nothing of your church; at the very least it contains people who will, I fear, overturn the whole system and drive the princes into using force to restrain good men and bad alike. The gospel, the word of God, faith, Christ, and Holy Spirit – these words are always on their lips; look at their lives and they speak quite another language.

Catholic theologian George Chantraine notes that, where Luther quotes Luke 11:21 "He that is not with me is against me", Erasmus takes Mark 9:40 "For he that is not against us, is on our part."

Though he sought to remain accommodative in doctrinal disputes, each side accused him of siding with the other, perhaps because of his perceived influence and what they regarded as his dissembling neutrality, which he regarded as peacemaking accommodation:

I detest dissension because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature. I doubt that either side in the dispute can be suppressed without grave loss.

— "On Free Will"

Dispute on free will

Main article: De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio

Further information: § On Free Will (1524)

By 1523, and first suggested in a letter from Henry VIII, Erasmus had been convinced that Luther's ideas on necessity/free will were a subject of core disagreement deserving a public airing, and strategized with friends and correspondents on how to respond with proper moderation without making the situation worse for all, especially for the humanist reform agenda. He eventually chose a campaign that involved an irenical 'dialogue' "The Inquisition of Faith", a positive, evangelical model sermon "On the Measureless Mercy of God", and a gently critical 'diatribe' "On Free Will."

The publication of his brief book On Free Will initiated what has been called "The greatest debate of that era" which still has ramifications today. They bypassed discussion on reforms which they both agreed on in general, and instead dealt with authority and biblical justifications of synergism versus monergism in relation to salvation.

Luther responded with On the Bondage of the Will (De servo arbitrio) (1525).

Erasmus replied to this in his lengthy two volume Hyperaspistes and other works, which Luther ignored. Apart from the perceived moral failings among followers of the Reformers—an important sign for Erasmus—he also dreaded any change in doctrine, citing the long history of the Church as a bulwark against innovation. He put the matter bluntly to Luther:

We are dealing with this: Would a stable mind depart from the opinion handed down by so many men famous for holiness and miracles, depart from the decisions of the Church, and commit our souls to the faith of someone like you who has sprung up just now with a few followers, although the leading men of your flock do not agree either with you or among themselves – indeed though you do not even agree with yourself, since in this same Assertion you say one thing in the beginning and something else later on, recanting what you said before.

— Hyperaspistes I

Continuing his chastisement of Luther – and undoubtedly put off by the notion of there being "no pure interpretation of Scripture anywhere but in Wittenberg" – Erasmus touches upon another important point of the controversy:

You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture.

— Hyperaspistes, Book I

"False evangelicals"

In 1529, Erasmus wrote "An epistle against those who falsely boast they are Evangelicals" to Gerardus Geldenhouwer (former Bishop of Utrecht, also schooled at Deventer).

You declaim bitterly against the luxury of priests, the ambition of bishops, the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, and the babbling of the sophists; against our prayers, fasts, and Masses; and you are not content to retrench the abuses that may be in these things, but must needs abolish them entirely. ...

Here Erasmus complains of the doctrines and morals of the Reformers, applying the same critique he had made about public Scholastic disputations:

Look around on this 'Evangelical' generation, and observe whether amongst them less indulgence is given to luxury, lust, or avarice, than amongst those whom you so detest. Show me any one person who by that Gospel has been reclaimed from drunkenness to sobriety, from fury and passion to meekness, from avarice to liberality, from reviling to well-speaking, from wantonness to modesty. I will show you a great many who have become worse through following it. [...] The solemn prayers of the Church are abolished, but now there are very many who never pray at all. [...]
I have never entered their conventicles, but I have sometimes seen them returning from their sermons, the countenances of all of them displaying rage, and wonderful ferocity, as though they were animated by the evil spirit. [...]
Who ever beheld in their meetings any one of them shedding tears, smiting his breast, or grieving for his sins? [...] Confession to the priest is abolished, but very few now confess to God. [...] They have fled from Judaism that they may become Epicureans.

— Epistola contra quosdam qui se falso iactant evangelicos.

Other

According to historian Christopher Ocker, the early reformers "needed tools that let their theological distinctions pose as commonplaces in a textual theology;[...] Erasmus provided the tools" but this tendentious distinction-making, reminiscent of the recent excesses of Scholasticism to Erasmus' eyes, was "was precisely what Erasmus disliked about Luther" and "Protestant polemicists."

Erasmus wrote books against aspects of the teaching, impacts or threats of several other Reformers:

• Ulrich von Hutten Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni (1523) see below
• Martin Bucer Responsio ad fratres Inferioris Germaniae ad epistolam apologeticam incerto autoreproditam (1530)
• Heinrich Eppendorf Admonitio adversus mendacium et obstrectationem (1530)

However, Erasmus maintained friendly relations with other Protestants, notably the irenic Melanchthon and Albrecht Duerer.

A common accusation, supposedly started by antagonistic monk-theologians, made Erasmus responsible for Martin Luther and the Reformation: "Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it." Erasmus wittily dismissed the charge, claiming that Luther had "hatched a different bird entirely". Erasmus-reader Peter Canisius commented: "Certainly there was no lack of eggs for Luther to hatch."

Philosophy and Erasmus

Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger and workshop

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 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."

Classical

Erasmus syncretistically took phrases, ideas and motifs from many classical philosophers to furnish discussions of Christian themes: academics have identified aspects of his thought as variously Platonist (duality), Cynical (asceticism), Stoic (adiaphora), Epicurean (ataraxia, pleasure as virtue), realist/non-voluntarist, and Isocratic (rhetoric, political education, syncretism.) However, his Christianized version of Epicureanism is regarded as his own.

Erasmus was sympathetic to a kind of epistemological (Ciceronian not Cartesian) Scepticism:

A Sceptic is not someone who doesn't care to know what is true or false…but rather someone who does not make a final decision easily or fight to the death for his own opinion, but rather accepts as probable what someone else accepts as certain…I explicitly exclude from Scepticism whatever is set forth in Sacred Scripture or whatever has been handed down to us by the authority of the Church.

— Erasmus

Historian Kirk Essary has noted that from his earliest to last works Erasmus "regularly denounced the Stoics as specifically unchristian in their hardline position and advocacy of apatheia": warm affection and an appropriately fiery heart being inalienable parts of human sincerity; however historian Ross Dealy sees Erasmus' decrial of other non-gentle "perverse affections" as having Stoical roots.

Erasmus wrote in terms of a tri-partite nature of man, with the soul the seat of free will:

The body is purely material; the spirit is purely divine; the soul…is tossed back and forwards between the two according to whether it resists or gives way to the temptations of the flesh. The spirit makes us gods; the body makes us beasts; the soul makes us men.

— Erasmus

According to theologian George van Kooten, Erasmus was the first modern scholar "to note the similarities between Plato's Symposium and John's Gospel", first in the Enchiridion then in the Adagia, pre-dating other scholarly interest by 400 years.

Anti-scholasticism

Thomas Aquinas inspiring himself on Free Will from the writings of previous theologians such as Augustine. (1652)

Erasmus did not have a metaphysical bone in his frail body, and had no real feeling for the philosophical concerns of scholastic theology.

— Lewis W Spitz

He usually eschewed metaphysical, epistemological and logical philosophy as found in Aristotle: in particular the curriculum and systematic methods of the post-Aquinas Schoolmen (Scholastics) and what he regarded as their frigid, counter-productive Aristoteleanism: "What has Aristotle to do with Christ?"

"They can deal with any text of scripture as with a nose of wax, and knead it into what shape best suits their interest."

— The Praise of Folly

Erasmus held that academics must avoid philosophical factionalism as an offense against Christian concord, in order to "make the whole world Christian." Indeed, Erasmus thought that Scholastic philosophy actually distracted participants from their proper focus on immediate morality, unless used moderately. And, by "excluding the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the beauty of revelation." "They are windbags blown up with Aristotle, sausages stuffed with a mass of theoretical definitions, conclusions, and propositions."

Nevertheless, church historian Dr Ernst Kohls has commented on a certain closeness of Erasmus' thought to Thomas Aquinas', despite Erasmus' skepticism about runaway Aristotelianism and his methodological dislike of collections of disconnected sentences for quotation. Ultimately, Erasmus personally owned Aquinas' Summa theologiae, the Catena aurea and his commentary on Paul's epistles.

Philosophia Christi

Everything in the pagan world that was valiantly done, brilliantly said, ingeniously thought, diligently transmitted, had been prepared by Christ for his society.

— Erasmus, Antibarbari

(Not to be confused with his Italian contemporary Chrysostom Javelli's Philosophia Christiana.)

Erasmus approached classical philosophers theologically and rhetorically: their value was in how they pre-saged, explained or amplified the unique teachings of Christ (particularly the Sermon on the Mount): the philosophia Christi.

"A great part of the teaching of Christ is to be found in some of the philosophers, particularly Socrates, Diogenes and Epictetus. But Christ taught it much more fully, and exemplified it better..."

— Erasmus, Paraclesis

In fact, Christ was "the very father of philosophy" (Anti-Barbieri.)

In works such as his Enchiridion, The Education of a Christian Prince and the Colloquies, Erasmus developed his idea of the philosophia Christi, a life lived according to the teachings of Jesus taken as a spiritual-ethical-social-political-legal philosophy:

Christ the heavenly teacher has founded a new people on earth,…Having eyes without guile, these folk know no spite or envy; having freely castrated themselves, and aiming at a life of angels while in the flesh, they know no unchaste lust; they know not divorce, since there is no evil they will not endure or turn to the good; they have not the use of oaths, since they neither distrust nor deceive anyone; they know not the hunger for money, since their treasure is in heaven, nor do they itch for empty glory, since they refer all things to the glory of Christ.…these are the new teachings of our founder, such as no school of philosophy has ever brought forth.

— Erasmus, Method of True Theology

In philosopher Étienne Gilson's summary: "the quite precise goal he pursues is to reject Greek philosophy outside of Christianity, into which the Middle Ages introduced Greek philosophy with the risk of corrupting this Christian Wisdom."

Useful "philosophy" needed to be limited to (or re-defined as) the practical and moral:

You must realize that 'philosopher' does not mean someone who is clever at dialectics or science but someone who rejects illusory appearance and undauntedly seeks out and follows what is true and good. Being a philosopher is in practice the same as being a Christian; only the terminology is different."

— Erasmus, Anti-Barbieri

Theology of Erasmus

Three key distinctive features of the spirituality Erasmus proposed are accommodation, inverbation, and scopus christi.

In the view of literary historian Chester Chapin, Erasmus' tendency of thought was "towards cautious dulcification of the traditional [Catholic] view".

Accommodation

Historian Manfred Hoffmann has described accommodation as "the single most important concept in Erasmus' hermeneutic".

For Erasmus, accommodation is a universal concept: humans must accommodate each other, must accommodate the church and vice versa, and must take as their model how Christ accommodated the disciples in his interactions with them, and accommodated humans in his incarnation; which in turn merely reflects the eternal mutual accommodation within the Trinity. And the primary mechanism of accommodation is language, which mediates between reality and abstraction, which allows disputes of all kinds to be resolved and the gospel to be transmitted: in his New Testament, Erasmus notably translated the Greek logos in John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word" more like "In the beginning was Speech: using Latin sermo (discourse, conversation, language) not verbum (word) emphasizing the dynamic and interpersonal communication rather than static principle: "Christ incarnate as the eloquent oration of God": "He is called Speech [sermo], because through him God, who in his own nature cannot be comprehended by any reasoning, wished to become known to us."

The role models of accommodation were Paul, that "chameleon" (or "slippery squid") and Christ, who was "more mutable than Proteus himself."

Following Paul, Quintillian (apte diecere) and Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Erasmus wrote that the orator, preacher or teacher must "adapt their discourse to the characteristics of their audience"; this made pastoral care the "art of arts". Erasmus wrote that most of his original works, from satires to paraphrases, were essentially the same themes packaged for different audiences.

In this light, Erasmus' ability to have friendly correspondence with both Thomas More and Thomas Bolyn, and with both Philip Melanchthon and Pope Adrian VI, can be seen as outworkings of his theology, rather than slippery insincerity or flattery of potential patrons. Similarly, it shows the theological basis of his pacificism, and his view of ecclesiastical authorities—from priests like himself to Church Councils—as necessary mediating peace-brokers.

Inverbation

For Erasmus, further to accommodating humans in his Incarnation, Christ accommodated humans by a kind of inverbation: we now knowing the resurrection, Christ is revealed by the Gospels in a way that we can know him better by reading him than those who actually heard him speak; this will or may transform us.

Since the Gospels become in effect like sacraments, for Erasmus reading them becomes a form of prayer which is spoiled by taking single sentences in isolation and using them as syllogisms. Instead, learning to understand the context, genres and literary expression in the New Testament becomes a spiritual more than academic exercise. Erasmus' has been called rhetorical theology (theologia rhetorica.)

Scopus christi

Scopus is the unifying reference point, the navigation goal, or the organizing principle of topics. According to his assistant-turned-foe, Œcolampadius, Erasmus's rule was "nihil in sacris literis praeter Christum quaerendum" ("nothing is to be sought in the sacred letters but Christ").

What Erasmus contributes[...]is a counsel of restraint in metaphysical speculation, an accent on the revelatory breadth of the eternal Word of God, and an invitation to think of Christ incarnate as the eloquent oration of God. But the central impulse[...]is the affirmation of the full incarnation of Christ in human existence[...]for the transformation of human life. With that, the ethical capstone of Erasmus’ reflections on Christ centers on the responsibility to imitate Christ’s love for others, and thus for advancing the cause of peace in personal and social life.

— Terrence J. Martin, The Christology of Erasmus (Publisher's description [6])

In Hoffmann's words, for Erasmus "Christ is the scopus of everything": "the focus in which both dimensions of reality, the human and the divine, intersect" and so He himself is the hermeneutical principle of scripture": "the middle is the medium, the medium is the mediator, the mediator is the reconciler". In Erasmus' early Enchiridion he had given this scopus in typical medieval terms of an ascent of being to God (vertical), but from the mid-1510s life he moved to an analogy of Copernican planetary circling around Christ the centre (horizontal) or Columbian navigation towards a destination.

In Hoffmann's words, for Erasmus "Christ is the scopus of everything": "the focus in which both dimensions of reality, the human and the divine, intersect" and so He himself is the hermeneutical principle of scripture": "the middle is the medium, the medium is the mediator, the mediator is the reconciler". In Erasmus' early Enchiridion he had given this scopus in typical medieval terms of an ascent of being to God (vertical), but from the mid-1510s life he moved to an analogy of Copernican planetary circling around Christ the centre (horizontal) or Columbian navigation towards a destination.

One effect is that scriptural interpretation must be done starting with the teachings and interactions of Jesus in the Gospels, with the Sermon on the Mount serving as the starting point, and arguably with the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer at the head of the queue. This privileges peacemaking, mercy, meekness, purity of heart, hungering after righteousness, poverty of spirit, etc. as the unassailable core of Christianity and piety and true theology.

The Sermon on the Mount provides the axioms on which every legitimate theology must be built, as well as the ethics governing theological discourse, and the rules for validating theological products; Erasmus' philosophia christi treats the primary and initial teaching of Jesus in the first Gospel as a theological methodology.

For example, "peacemaking" is a possible topic in any Christian theology; but for Erasmus, from the Beatitude, it must be a starting-, reference- and ending-point when discussing all other theological notions, such as church authority, the Trinity, etc. Moreover, Christian theology must only be done in a peacemaking fashion for peacemaking purposes; and any theology that promotes division and warmongering is thereby anti-Christian.

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.

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:

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[...]

— Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

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."

We may distinguish four different lines of work, parallel with each other, and complementary. First, the establishing and critical elucidation of 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.

— Louis Bouyer

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.

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."

— Erasmus, Paean in Honour of the Virgin Mary (1503)

Works

Main article: Works of Erasmus

See also: List of Erasmus's correspondents

Erasmus was the most popular, most printed and arguably most influential author of the early sixteenth century, read in all nations in the West and frequently translated. By the 1530s, his writings accounted for 10-20% of book sales in Europe. "Undoubtedly he was the most read author of his age." His vast number of Latin and Greek publications included translations, paraphrases, letters, textbooks, plays for schoolboys, commentary, poems, liturgies, satires, sermons, and prayers. A large number of his later works were defences of his earlier work from attacks by Catholic and Protestant theological and literary opponents.

The Catalogue of the Works of Erasmus (2023) runs to 444 entries (120 pages), almost all from the latter half of his life. He usually 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.

Notable writings

Main article: Works of Erasmus § Notable writings

Erasmus wrote for educated audiences both

• on subjects of humanist interest: "Three areas preoccupied Erasmus as a writer: language arts, education, and biblical studies. [...]All of his works served as models of style. [...]He pioneered the principles of textual criticism." and
• 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 only works with enduring popularity in modern time 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.

Legacy and evaluations

Main article: Legacy and evaluations of Erasmus

Holbein's studies of Erasmus's hands, in silverpoint and chalks, ca. 1523 (Louvre)

Since the origin of Christianity there have been perhaps only two other men—St Augustine and Voltaire—whose influence can be paralleled with Erasmus.

— W.S. Lily, Renaissance Types

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".

By the 1570s, "Everyone had assimilated Erasmus to one extent or another."

— Christophe Ocker

However, at times he has been 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.

Personal

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.

Clothing

Visitation Momento mori, painter unknown, c.1500, juxtaposing pregnancy and death, with four Augustinan canons regular of the Chapter (Abbey) of Sion. Left, with a little lion behind him, is St Jerome; right, holding a heart, is St Augustine. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

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 sarotium (scarf) (over left shoulder), or almuce (cape), perhaps with an asymmetrical black cope of cloth or sheepskin (Latin: cacullae) 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.

Signet ring and personal motto

Signet rings of Erasmus of Rotterdam: Amerbach Kabinett

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.

Painting of Erasmus as Terminus by Hans Holbein the Younger

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.

Quinten Metsys (Massijs), medal commissioned by Desiderius Erasmus. 1519, bronze, 105 mm

He chose Concedo Nulli (Lat. 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.

Representations

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus by Albrecht Dürer, 1526, engraved in Nuremberg, Germany

Commemorative coins or medals of Erasmus by Göbel, Georg Wilhelm (1790)

Further information: Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Portrait of Erasmus (Dürer)

Erasmus frequently gifted portraits and medals with his image to friends and patrons.

• Hans Holbein 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

Name used

• The European Erasmus Programme of exchange students within the European Union is named after him.
  • The original Erasmus Programme scholarships enable 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.

Exhumation

In 1928, the site of Erasmus' grave was dug up, and a body identified in the bones and examined. In 1974, a body was dug up in a slightly different location, accompanied by an Erasmus medal. Both bodies have been claimed to be Erasmus'. However, it is possible neither is.

Further reading

Biographies

• Augustijn, Cornelis (1995). Erasmus: his life, works, and influence (Reprinted in paperback ed.). Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802071775.
• Barker, William (2022). Erasmus of Rotterdam: The Spirit of a Scholar. Reaktion Books
• Bentley-Taylor, David (2002). My dear Erasmus: the forgotton reformer. Fearn: Focus. ISBN 9781857926958.
• Christ-von Wedel, Christine (2013). Erasmus of Rotterdam: Advocate of a New Christianity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
• Dickens, A. G.; Jones, Whitney R. D. (2000). Erasmus: the reformer. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413753301.
• Emerton, Ephraim (1899). Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. OCLC 312661.
• Froude, James Anthony (1894). Life and Letters of Erasmus: lectures delivered at Oxford 1893-4. Scribner's Sons.
• Halkin, Leon E. (1994). Erasmus: A Critical Biography. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-631-19388-3.
• Huizinga, Johan; Flower, Barbara (1952). Erasmus and the Age of Reformation,with a Selection from the Letters of Erasmus. Harper Collins. in series, Harper Torchbacks, and also in The Cloister Library. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. xiv, 266 pp
  • Dutch original by Huizinga (1924)
• Jebb, Richard Claverhouse (1897). Erasmus. Cambridge University Press.
• Pennington, Arthur Robert (1875). The Life and Character of Erasmus, pp. 219.
• Rummel, Erika (2004). Erasmus. London: Continuum. ISBN 9780826491558.
• Tracy, James D. (1997). Erasmus of the Low Countries. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press
• Zweig, Stefan (1937). Erasmus of Rotterdam. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. Garden City Publishing Co., Inc

Topics

• Contemporaries of Erasmus: a biographical register of the Renaissance and Reformation; volumes 1 - 3, A - Z (Paperback, [Nachdr. der 3-bändigen Ausg. 1985 - 1987] ed.). Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press. 2003. ISBN 9780802085771.
• Bietenholz, Peter G. (2009). Encounters with a Radical Erasmus. Erasmus' Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Europe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
• Dart, Ron (2017). Erasmus: Wild Bird.
• Dodds, Gregory D. (2010). Exploiting Erasmus: The Erasmian Legacy and Religious Change in Early Modern England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
• Furey, Constance M. (2009). Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press
• Gulik, Egbertus van (2018). Erasmus and His Books. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
• Payne, John B. (1970). Erasmus, His Theology of the Sacraments, Research in Theology
• Martin, Terence J. (2016). Truth and Irony - Philosophical Meditations on Erasmus. Catholic University of America Press
• MacPhail, Eric (ed) (2023). A Companion to Erasmus. Leiden and Boston: Brill
• Massing, Michael (2022). Fatal Discord - Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind. HarperCollins
• McDonald, Grantley (2016). Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe: Erasmus, the Johannine Comma, and Trinitarian Debate. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press
• Ron, Nathan (2019). Erasmus and the “Other”: On Turks, Jews, and Indigenous Peoples. Palgrave Macmillan Cham
• Ron, Nathan (2021). Erasmus: Intellectual of the 16th Century. Palgrave Macmillan Cham
• Quinones, Ricardo J. (2010). Erasmus and Voltaire: Why They Still Matter. University of Toronto Press, 240 pp. Draws parallels between the two thinkers as voices of moderation with relevance today.
• Winters, Adam. (2005). Erasmus' Doctrine of Free Will. Jackson, TN: Union University Press.

Non-English

• Bataillon, Marcel (1937) Erasme et l'Espagne , Librairie Droz (1998) ISBN 2-600-00510-2
  • Erasmo y España: Estudios Sobre la Historia Espiritual del Siglo XVI (1950), Fondo de Cultura Económica (1997) ISBN 968-16-1069-5
• Garcia-Villoslada, Ricardo (1965) 'Loyola y Erasmo, Taurus Ediciones, Madrid, Spain.
• Lorenzo Cortesi (2012) Esortazione alla filosofia. La Paraclesis di Erasmo da Rotterdam, Ravenna, SBC Edizioni, ISBN 978-88-6347-271-4
• Pep Mayolas (2014) Erasme i la construcció catalana d'Espanya, Barcelona, Llibres de l'Índex

Primary sources

• Collected Works of Erasmus (U of Toronto Press, 1974–2023). 84/86 volumes published as of mid 2023; see U. Toronto Press, in English translation
• The Correspondence of Erasmus (U of Toronto Press, 1975–2023), 21/21 volumes down to 1536 are published
• Rabil, Albert (2001). "Erasmus: Recent Critical Editions and Translations". Renaissance Quarterly. 54 (1): 246–251. doi:10.2307/1262226. ISSN 0034-4338. JSTOR 1262226. S2CID 163450283. Discusses both the Toronto translation and the entirely separate Latin edition published in Amsterdam since 1969

External links

• "Desiderius Erasmus" entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• "Desiderius Erasmus". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "Desiderius Erasmus" entry in Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909 by Joseph Sauer
• Works by Erasmus at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Erasmus at the Internet Archive

Non-English

• Index of Erasmus's Opera Omnia (Latin)
• Opera (Latin Library)
• Literature by and about Erasmus in the German National Library catalogue
• Works by and about Erasmus in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library)
• Publications by and about Erasmus in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library

Media

• Works by Erasmus at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• In Our Time podcast from BBC Radio 4 with Melvyn Bragg, and guests Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, and Jill Kraye.
• Desiderius Erasmus: "War is sweet to those who have no experience of it ..." - Protest against Violence and War ( Publication series: Exhibitions on the History of Nonviolent Resistance, No. 1, Editors: Christian Bartolf, Dominique Miething). Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 2022. PDF
• Sporen van Erasmus (Traces of Erasmus), documentary TV series, 5 episodes ("Sporen van Erasmus". www.ngnprodukties.nl. NGN produkties Amsterdam.)