Desiderius Erasmus

Dutch scholar

• Born: October 1, 1466
• Birthplace: Rotterdam, Holland (now in the Netherlands)
• Died: July 12, 1536
• Place of death: Basel, Switzerland

Of the intellectuals who transmitted and adapted the Renaissance spirit to northern Europe, Erasmus was the greatest. Taken together, his writings reflect a rare combination of practical Christian piety, biblical and patristic scholarship, and broad Humanistic learning.

Early Life

Desiderius Erasmus (dehz-ih-DEHR-ee-uhs eh-RAS-muhs) was born in Rotterdam to Margaret, a physician’s daughter, and a priest probably named Gerard, for whom she served as housekeeper. As one of two illegitimate sons born to this couple, the sensitive Erasmus (he took the additional name Desiderius later in life) would endure shame and legal problems, but his parents lived together for many years and appear to have been devoted parents. Erasmus’s childhood coincided with the ongoing war between the duchy of Burgundy, which controlled Holland, and France. He grew to despise the Burgundian knights, whose cruelty belied the chivalric ideal expressed by Charles the Bold. He also developed an aversion to the provinciality and social rigidity of his homeland.

Around 1478, Erasmus’s mother enrolled the two boys at a school in Deventer, about seventy-five miles inland, conducted by the Brethren of the Common Life, a lay society dedicated to the imitation of primitive Christianity. Although Erasmus later expressed contempt for the Brethren’s teaching methods, both their piety and a Humanistic strain that entered the school at this time helped shape the young student. His schooling at Deventer ended in 1483 or 1484, when the plague claimed the lives of both his parents. Three guardians appointed by his father sent Erasmus to another more conservative and even less congenial of the Brethren’s schools for three additional years.

Erasmus entered the Augustinian priory at Steyn about 1487. There, the critical young man learned to dislike the ascetic routine and prevailing mysticism, but he enlarged his grasp of classical literature and wrote the first two of his many books, a conventional treatise on monastic life and a book of Latin verse. His years at Steyn climaxed with his ordination as priest on April 25, 1492.

Life’s Work

About a year after his ordination, Erasmus accepted a post as Latin secretary to the ambitious Henri, bishop of Cambray. While in his service, Erasmus wrote, in the form of a Platonic dialogue, an attack on Scholasticism, the dominant philosophy of the Church, although the book remained unpublished for nearly thirty years. In 1495, Bishop Henri assisted Erasmus in gaining entrance to the University of Paris, a hotbed of Scholasticism, presumably to study for his doctorate in theology. At the College of Montaigu in Paris, he made Humanist friends, including an elderly man named Robert Gaguin, who had been a pupil of the noted Florentine Platonist Marsilio Ficino, and who now encouraged Erasmus to study the Neoplatonists. Constantly seeking the independence that would enable him to spend his life studying in reasonable comfort, he accepted in 1499 the patronage of the Englishman William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, and thus visited England for the first time. There he established friendships with leading scholars such as William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre, John Colet, and preeminently Sir Thomas More.

Already the wandering pattern of the person who later called himself a citizen of the world was being established. He returned to France the next year and began a routine of scholarly activity that included the study of Greek, the compilation of a book of proverbial wisdom, Adagia (1500; Proverbs or Adages, 1622), and a manual of Christianity written for the laity from the point of view of a monk who, at this point, was living in the manner of a principled Christian layperson. Enchiridion militis Christiani (1503; The Manual of the Christian Knight , 1533) became the best known of his works in this genre. His study of Lorenzo Valla’s exegesis of the New Testament, a work he edited and published in 1506, quickened his determination to master the original Greek. After another sojourn in England with his Humanist friends there, he accepted a tutoring appointment that took him to Italy.

His work took him on a tour that included Turin, at whose university he received a doctorate in divinity in 1506, and Florence, Bologna, and Venice, where he met the distinguished printer Aldus Manutius, with whom he worked to produce a handsome revision of Proverbs or Adages. In Rome, he witnessed the growing corruption of the papal court, after which Mountjoy persuaded him to return to England. It has been argued that had the influential Erasmus remained in Rome during the next crucial decade, he might have furthered the cause of reform, prevented the excommunication of Martin Luther, with whom he corresponded, and thus changed the course of religious history.

After reaching London, while awaiting the arrival of his books, he lived in Thomas More’s house and wrote there a book, which he certainly did not consider among his most important but which, more than any other, has immortalized him: Moriae encomium (1511; The Praise of Folly , 1549). By a species of pun congenial to him and to his host, the title also signifies “the praise of More,” though without any suggestion that More was foolish. While the book is, like Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff (1494; The Ship of Fools, 1509), a satire on human folly, Erasmus’s characterization of Folly is a rich and original conception depicting not only gradations of conventional foolishness but also ultimately figuring the Christian fool, whose folly is in reality wisdom.

Later, he became the first to teach Greek at Cambridge. During his two and a half years on the faculty of the English university, he wrote De duplici copia verborum ac rerum (1512; On the Twofold Abundance of Words and Things, 1978, better known as De copia , which would hold its place as a standard textbook on literary style for two centuries. Nevertheless, Erasmus was not happy at Cambridge, blaming the cold, damp climate for undermining his always frail health and finding Cambridge intellectually mediocre and provincial. His more enlightened Humanist English friends resided, for the most part, in London.

He was even less pleased with the prospect of returning to monastic life at Steyn, to which he was recalled in 1514, more than two decades after gaining permission to leave: Erasmus relayed his firm intention to return; it required, however, dispensation from Pope Leo X{$I[P]Leo X[Leo 10]}, which took him three years to acquire, to free himself from all possibility of further obligation to his order. While this appeal was pending, he completed his own Latin version of the New Testament, based on Greek manuscripts and more accurate in many (though not all) details than the standard Latin Vulgate. His translation reflected his conviction that Christ’s teachings are easily understandable and not meant to be encrusted by the commentary of theologians. Strategically, he dedicated his work to Leo and also recommended that the Bible be translated into the vernacular tongues so that it might be accessible to all readers.

Among his other works in this busy period were a nine-volume edition of the works of Saint Jerome and a manual, Institutio principis Christiani (1516; The Education of a Christian Prince , 1936). Sharply contrasting with Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il principe (wr. 1513, pb. 1532; The Prince, 1640), Erasmus’s advice to the prince included pleas for restraint in taxation and in the waging of war. Unlike Machiavelli,

Erasmus regarded politics as a branch of ethics in the classical manner. Unenthusiastic about the tyranny of princes, Erasmus could see no other acceptable alternative to anarchy. In this work and in two other treatises of this period, Erasmus’s thought tended toward pacifism, a shocking philosophy in an age that looked on the willingness to wage war as a certification of one’s conviction.

During a stay at Antwerp in 1516-1517, Erasmus was painted by Quentin Massys, the first of three famous artists for whom he sat. In this portrait, Erasmus, then middle-aged, is at his writing desk, intently serious. Portraits by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein, the Younger , a few years later interpret the Dutch scholar quite differently, but all three artists agree that Erasmus had a very long, somewhat aquiline nose, a wide mouth with thin lips, and a strong chin. Both Dürer and Holbein (in a late portrait of about 1532) endow the writer with a faint, enigmatic smile, which many viewers have seen as mocking human weakness as does his character Folly. All these portraits show Erasmus wearing a flat cap.

From 1517 to 1521, Erasmus lived at Louvain. He published one of his most enduring works, Colloquia familiaria (1518; The Colloquies of Erasmus , 1671), and also continued his task of editing the early fathers of the Church, spending all day and much of the night at his writing desk and turning out a stupendous volume of work for publication and hundreds probably thousands of gracefully written letters to correspondents all over Europe. Having made a number of severe criticisms of the Church, Erasmus received overtures from his fellow Augustinian Martin Luther, but while refusing for years to denounce Luther, many of whose famous Ninety-five Theses he anticipated, he did not support him either. In the interests of Christian unity, more important to Erasmus than most of the theological points on which Luther challenged the Church, he attempted to mediate the quarrel, but observing the intransigence of both Church and reformers, he refused an invitation to the Diet of Worms, where, in 1521, Luther’s doctrines were condemned. Solicited by both sides but widely viewed as cowardly for his unwillingness to back either unequivocally, Erasmus made many enemies. Although he had little reason to fear the Protestant majority in Basel, where he lived during most of the 1520’s, he refused to endorse even tacitly the city’s denial of religious liberty to Catholic citizens and left for Freiburg in 1529.

Erasmus unsuccessfully urged the warring Christians to compromise and focus on the Turkish threat in the Balkans and continued to prepare editions of early Christian thinkers. In 1535, his own health failing, he learned of King Henry VIII’s execution of his good friends More and Bishop John Fisher. In the final months of his life, he returned to Basel. In 1540, a wooden statue of Erasmus was erected in Rotterdam, the city he claimed as his birthplace, and Johann Froben published an edition of his collected works in Basel. The statue did not survive the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands and many of his books were burned, but the centuries that followed have proved Erasmus ineradicable.

Significance

Before the heyday of the Protestant reformers, Desiderius Erasmus articulated his dismay at the excesses of an increasingly worldly and corrupt Church and urged a return to Christian essentials. His numerous editions of early Christian theologians and his Latin version of the New Testament signaled his contempt for the decadent but still-prevailing Scholasticism, while his manuals of practical piety reflected his conviction that what he called the philosophy of Christ was a simple and achievable attainment.

Erasmus’s tolerance and pacifism, which owed something to his physical timidity but more to his capacity for rational analysis and insight into the futility of religious confrontation, turned both the Catholics and Protestants against him. In an ecumenically minded world, however, what appeared to his contemporaries as cowardice or indecisiveness looks more like wisdom.

As the greatest of the northern Humanists, he communicated not only the learning of the ancients but also their spirit of inquiry and independence to educated people of his time. He saw harmony in the best of classical and Christian thought. He also understood the potentialities of mass-produced books a new development in his lifetime and thus devoted his life to incessant writing. A bibliographical analysis by an Erasmian scholar in 1927 produced an estimate that two million copies of Erasmus’s books had been printed, one million of them textbooks. Erasmus never understood, however, why more people did not submit to the logic of his arguments. Paradoxically, his books enjoyed more popularity in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when his personal reputation was ebbing; today a torrent of scholarly works interpret his character much more favorably, but he is much less read. Only The Praise of Folly is still widely admired for its wit, subtlety, and the universality of its analysis of human folly. Readers who find their way to The Colloquies of Erasmus, however, discover that no writer since Plato has used dialogue so well to express his thought in a persuasive and readable form.

Taken as a whole, Erasmus’s writings cast more light on the great European movements of his time the Renaissance and the Reformation than does the work of any other eyewitness. This wandering Augustinian monk was an intellectual seismograph who registered the brightest hopes and most profound disappointments of Western civilization in the stormy period of his life.

Erasmus’s Major Works

1500

• Adagia (Proverbs or Adages, 1622)

1503

• Enchiridion militis Christiani (The Manual of the Christian Knight, 1533)

1511

• Morioe encomium (The Praise of Folly, 1549)

1512

• De rationae studii (A Method of Study, 1978)

1512

• De duplici copia verborum ac rerum (On the Twofold Abundance of Words and Things, 1978; better known as De copia)

1516

• Institutio principis Christiani (The Education of a Christian Prince, 1936)

1516

• Novum instrumentum (Latin translation of the New Testament with an edited Greek edition)

1517

• Querela pacis (The Complaint of Peace, 1559)

1518

• Colloquia familiaria (The Colloquies of Erasmus, 1671)

1520

• Antibarbarum (The Book Against the Barbarians, 1930)

1524

• De libero arbitrio (On the Freedom of the Will, 1961)

1528

• Dialogus, cui Titulus Ciceronianus sive, de optimo dicendi genere (The Ciceronian, 1900)

1529

• Opus epistolarum (partial translation The Epistles, 1901)

Bibliography

Bainton, Roland H. Erasmus of Christendom. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969. Probably the closest thing to a standard biography, Bainton’s study has relatively little to say about Erasmus’s more imaginative works but is particularly good on those less well known. Scholarly, thoroughly documented, yet never ponderous, this book ably interprets Erasmus’s complex relationships with Luther and other reformers.

Bejczy, István. Erasmus and the Middle Ages: The Historical Consciousness of a Christian Humanist. Boston: Brill, 2001. Like Herwaardeen’s book, this study emphasizes the importance of medieval theology for Erasmus and examines his historical research and philosophy of history. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Bentley-Taylor, David. My Dear Erasmus: The Forgotten Reformer. Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2002. Study emphasizing Erasmus’s almost legendary reputation among his contemporaries, as evidenced by the deference afforded his knowledge and opinions by myriad European intellectuals and by his voluminous correspondence with those intellectuals. Includes maps and indexes.

Faludy, George. Erasmus of Rotterdam. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970. An excellent general reader’s biography. Faludy explains the historical and intellectual contexts of Erasmus’s work clearly and tactfully. He uses few footnotes but displays a thorough grasp of Erasmian scholarship.

Herwaardeen, Jan van. Between Saint James and Erasmus: Studies in Late-Medieval Religious Life: Devotions and Pilgrimages in the Netherlands. Translated by Wendie Shaffer and Donald Gardner. Boston: Brill, 2003. Study of the influence of the medieval cult of Saint James on Erasmus’s thought and beliefs. Explores Erasmus’s understanding of the tension between outwardly religious acts and inner beliefs. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and indexes.

Huizinga, Johan. Erasmus and the Age of Reformation. Translated by F. Hopman. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. Originally published as Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1924, Huizinga’s biography has worn well. Not only was this Dutch scholar a recognized expert on Erasmus’s era, but also he grasped the psychology of his subject as have few other biographers.

Mangan, John Joseph. Life, Character, and Influence of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1927. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1971. Though dated in some of its interpretations, this lengthy biography prints many translations of Erasmus’s writings, especially letters. Its last chapter contains extensive information on Erasmus’s later influence as measured by editions and translations of his many works.

Phillips, Margaret Mann. Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance. Rev. and illustrated ed. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1981. A somewhat elementary introduction to Erasmus and his age. Contains two recommended chapters: “Portrait” and “The World Through Erasmus’s Eye.” Useful for beginning students of the Renaissance.

Smith, Preserved. Erasmus: A Study of His Life, Ideals, and Place in History. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1962. This reprint of a study published in 1923 views Erasmus as champion of “undogmatic Christianity” and thus emphasizes his subjects’ relations with, and differences from, the Protestant reformers. Less useful on the Humanist aspect. A patient, scholarly biography with an extensive bibliography of nineteenth and earlier twentieth century studies, chiefly by European scholars.

Zweig, Stefan. Erasmus of Rotterdam. Translated by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul. Reprint. New York: Viking Press, 1956. A lively popular life by a master of general readers’ biographies. Although not always accurate in details or judicious interpretations, Zweig’s biography may well stimulate the beginning student of Erasmus to delve into more detailed and critical accounts of his life and achievements.