DESIDERIUS ERASMUS ROTERODAMUS, DUTCH HUMANISM

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Dutch humanist and philosopher, who was born on a day like today in 1466.

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (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.

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.

On July 12, 1536, he died at an attack of dysentery.

More information: SciHi

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Desiderius Erasmus