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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, Menippean satire, and philosopher. Through his works, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.Sauer, J. (1909). Desiderius Erasmus . In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 10 August 2019 – via New Advent.
Erasmus was an important figure in classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and natural Latin style. As a Catholic priest developing Philology for working on texts, he prepared pioneering new Vulgate and Biblical 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, and many other popular and pedagogical works.
Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious . 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 what he understood as the traditional doctrine of synergism, which some prominent reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favour of the doctrine of monergism. His influential middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps.
The year of Erasmus's 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 fictionalised 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 priestCornelius Augustijn, Erasmus: His life, work and influence, University of Toronto, 1991 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.The 19th-century novel The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade, is an account of the lives of Erasmus's parents.
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 Black Death 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's 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 commoner of his day, in a series of private, 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.Peter Nissen: Geloven in de Lage landen; scharniermomenten in de geschiedenis van het Christendom. Davidsfonds/Leuven, 2004. 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,DeMolen, Richard L. (1976), p. 13 a compassionate widow.
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:DeMolen, Richard L. (1976).pp.10–11Painter Hieronymous Bosch lived nearby, on the marketplace, at this time. Erasmus's Epistle to Grunnius (see above) satirises 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.)"Poverty stricken, suffering from quartan fever, and pressurized by his guardians"
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 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 fictionalised 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" (), with a fellow canon, Servatius Rogerus,Diarmaid MacCulloch (2003). . p. 95. MacCulloch has a footnote "There has been much modern embarrassment and obfuscation on Erasmus and Rogerus, but see the sensible comment in J. Huizinga, Erasmus of Rotterdam (London, 1952), pp. 11–12, and from Geoffrey Nutuall, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 26 (1975), 403"
He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood either on 25 April 1492,Galli, Mark, and Olsen, TED (conference). 131 Christians Everyone Should Know. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2000, p. 343. 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,Erasmus suffered severe food intolerances, including to fish, beer and many wines, which formed much of the diet of Northern European monks, and caused his antipathy to fasts. "My heart is Catholic, but my stomach is Lutheran." ( Epistles) 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 canonryThe canonry burnt down in 1549 and the canons moved to Gouda. ended up with by far the largest collection of Erasmus's 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 regularDispensed of his vows of stability and obedience from his obligations "by the constitutions and ordinances, also by statutes and customs of the monastery of Stein in Holland", quoted in J. K. Sowards, The Two Lost Years of Erasmus: Summary, Review, and Speculation, Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 9 (1962), p. 174. Erasmus continued to report occasionally to the prior, who disputed the validity of the 1505 dispensation. the rest his life. In 1517, Pope Leo X granted legal dispensations for Erasmus's defects of natalityUndispensed illegitimacy had various effects under canon law: if a man's biological parents had never married, he could not be ordained a secular priest, unless he became a canon or regular monk, or to hold benefices; but any or all of these disabilities could be removed by a papal dispensation. This canon law, in effect since the Council of Poitiers (1078), was intended to prevent kings appointing their illegitimate children as abbots and bishops. In practice, dispensations were frequently given: Erasmus's student, the teenage Alexander Stewart was the illegitimate child of the Scottish king and, by papal dispensation, Archbishop of St Andrews. 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. Indeed, in 1535, incoming Pope Paul III appointed him Provost of the "Canons of Deventer" (i.e., the semi-monastic Brethren of the Common Life chapter, which had long resisted titles such as Provost, and/or perhaps the canons of the Grote or Lebuïnuskerk): this may also have been related to his intended return to the Low Countries. In 1525, Pope Clement VII granted, for health reasons, a dispensation to eat meat and dairy in Lent and on fast days.
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, most importantly in his life William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy. There is no record of him graduating.
In 1499 he was invited to England by Blount, who offered to accompany him on his trip to England. His six months 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 stayed for two months at the University of Oxford, at St Mary's College, the college for Augustinian canons, where he befriended the leading Greek scholars Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn and William Lily. Erasmus was particularly impressed by the Bible teaching of John Colet, who pursued a preaching style more akin to the church fathers than the Scholastics. Through the influence of the humanist John Colet, his interests turned towards patristic 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 patristic 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,
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.
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 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 conciliation (with the neighbours France and England),
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.Treu, Erwin (1959), p.8 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.
His discovery en route at Park Abbey 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
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,Murray, Stuart (2009). The library: an illustrated history. Chicago: ALA Editions and was an honorary member of the graecophone Aldine "New Academy" ().Treu, Erwin (1959), pp.8–9. 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.H.M. Allen (1937). Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterdami. Oxford University Press. Ep. 3032: 219–22; 2682: 8–13. 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 three times and seeking the acquaintance of some notable librarians and cardinals, but having a less active association with Italian scholars; one notable minor friendship was with Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici who later became Pope Leo X and a leading supporter of Erasmus's Biblical program. Pope Leo X in Ch 2,
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.Massing, Fatal Discord (2018), p. 159 On his trip over the Alps via Splügen Pass, and down the Rhine toward England, Erasmus began to compose The Praise of Folly.Massing, Fatal Discord (2018), p. 160
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, who had been lodging in Thomas More's large and welcoming household but did not get on with the new wife) 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.It is reported that the commission of theologians Henry VIII assembled to identify the errors of Luther was made up of three of Erasmus's former students: Henry Bullock, Humphrey Walkden and John Watson. Erasmus's rooms were located in the "" 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.Huizinga, Dutch edition, pp. 52–53.
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"Beer does not suit me either, and the wine is horrible." (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.
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 (1516) with Erasmus's encouragement, Erasmus editing and perhaps even contributing fragments. His old Cambridge friend Richard Sampson was vicar general running the nearby diocese of Tournai, recently under English control and governed by his former pupil William Blount.
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 Bubonic 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).
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 friend Richard Pace gave the main sermon to the kings. His friends and former students and old correspondents were the incoming political elite, and he had risen with them.By 1524, his disciples included, in his words, "the (Holy Roman) Emperor, the Kings of England, France, and Denmark, Prince Ferdinand of Germany, the Cardinal of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and more princes, more bishops, more learned and honourable men than I can name, not only in England, Flanders, France, and Germany, but even in Poland and Hungary..." quoted in
He stayed in various locations including Anderlecht (near Brussels) in the summer of 1521.
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).Bloch Eileen M. (April 1965). "Erasmus and the Froben Press". Library Quarterly 35: 109–120. 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's editions. The printing of many his books was supervised by his Alsatian friend, the Greek scholar Beatus Rhenanus.
In 1521 he settled in Basel. Quoting G. Bartrum, German Renaissance Prints 1490–1550, BM exh. cat. 1995, no. 238. He was weary of the controversies and hostility at Louvain, and feared being dragged further into the Lutheran controversy.
In collaboration with Froben and his team, the scope and ambition of Erasmus's Annotations, Erasmus's 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's compatriot, former teacher (c. 1502) and friend from the 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.
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)."When the Lutheran tragedy () opened, and all the world applauded, I advised my friends to stand aloof. I thought it would end in bloodshed", Letter to Alberto Pío, 1525, in e.g.,
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's 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.
Erasmus, in company with other Basel Catholic priests including Bishop , left Basel on 13 April 1529Prominent reformers like Oecolampadius urged him to stay. However, Campion, Erasmus and Switzerland, op. cit., p. 26, says that Œcolampadius wanted to drive Erasmus from the city. 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."2211 / To Thomas More, Freiburg, 5 September 1529,
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";
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-boardersEmerton (1889), op cit p442 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 on the Ethiopian church, and stimulated Erasmus's increasing awareness of foreign missions.
There are no extant letters between More and Erasmus from the start of More's period as Lord Chancellor until his resignation (1529–1532), 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's most popular and most hijacked works.The last was released at the time of Henry VIII and Anne Bolyn's wedding; Erasmus appended a statement that indicated he opposed the marriage. Erasmus outlived Anne and her brother by two months.
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 William 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 Thomas 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 Richard Pace;) 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."I am so weary of this region...I feel that there is a conspiracy to kill me...Many hope for war." Letter to Erasmus Schets (1534)
In 1535, Erasmus's friends Thomas More, Bishop John Fisher and the Bridgettines monk Richard Reynolds were executed as pro-Rome traitors by Henry VIII, who Erasmus (with More) had first met as a boy and had corresponded with each other numerous times over the years. 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. He called them the 'new martyrs' of Christendom slain by 'another Herod.'
After Erasmus's time, numerous of Erasmus's 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's friend and collaborator Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall eventually died in prison under Elizabeth I for finally refusing the Oath of Supremacy. Erasmus's 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.
On 12 July 1536, he died from an attack of dysentery. "The most famous scholar of his day died in peaceful prosperity and in the company of celebrated and responsible friends." His last words, as recorded by his friend and biographer Beatus Rhenanus, were apparently "Lord, put an end to it" (, the same last words as Melanchthon) then "Dear God" ().Huizinga, Dutch edition, p. 202.
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;This assertion is contradicted by Gonzalo Ponce de Leon speaking in 1595 at the Roman Congregation of the Index on the (mostly successful) de-prohibition of Erasmus's works said that he died "as a Catholic having received the sacraments." 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"He left a small fortune, in trusts for the benefit of the aged and infirm, the education of young men of promise, and as marriage portions for deserving young women – nothing, however, for Masses for the repose of his soul." 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.
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.
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, Amerindians, Jews, and even women and heretics) "provides a foil against which the failures of Christian culture can be exposed and criticized."
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's 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:
A historian has called him "The 16th Century's Pioneer of Peace Education and a Culture of Peace".
Erasmus's emphasis on peacemaking reflects a typical pre-occupation of medieval lay spirituality as historian John Bossy (as summarised 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."
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". Appeasement should be considered. 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, an excuse or cause of oppression.
Erasmus was highly critical of the warlike way of important European princes of his era, including some princes of the church.Erasmus was not out of step with opinion within the church: Archbishop Bernardo Zanne of Split speaking at the Fifth Council of the Lateran (1512) denounced princes as the most guilty of ambition, luxury and a desire for domination. Bernard proposed that reformation must primarily involve ending war and schism. 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 to extract money from his subjects.
One of his approaches was to send and publish congratulatory and lionising 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."
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."Remer, Gary, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press 1996), p. 95
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:
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."Froude, James Anthony,
Life and letters of Erasmus: lectures delivered at Oxford 1893–4 (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1894), p. 359 The Church, he said, has the duty to protect believers and convert or heal heretics; he invoked Jesus' parable of the wheat and tares.
Erasmus's pacificism included a particular dislike for sedition, which caused warfare:
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 Natalis Beda) that Augustine had been against the execution of even violent : Johannes Trapman states that Erasmus's endorsement of suppression of the Anabaptists springs from their refusal to heed magistrates and the criminal violence of the Münster rebellion, not because of their heretical views on baptism. Despite these concessions to state power, Erasmus suggested that religious persecution could still be challenged as inexpedient (ineffective).
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 Islamophobia 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. Reviewed: Renaissance Quarterly
Erasmus's 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's comments appear to go beyond theological anti-Judaism into slurs or approving to an extent certain anti-semitic policies, though there is some controversy.
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's 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.
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. Erasmus seems to have suspected that the scholastic formulation of transubstantiation stretched language past its breaking point, however he noted that even if transubstantiation were not true, as some Protestants has started to claim, it should not be a cause of preventing people with traditional views from worshipping ( latria) God in the Host, as the divinity of God is everywhere present.
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.
According to historian C. Scott Dixon, Erasmus not only criticised church failings but questioned many of his Church's basic teachings;"Erasmus had been criticizing the Catholic church for years before the reformers emerged, and not just pointing up its failings but questioning many of its basic teachings. He was the author of a series of publications, including a Greek edition of the New Testament (1516), which laid the foundations for a model of Christianity that called for a pared-down, internalized style of religiosity focused on Scripture rather than the elaborate, and incessant, outward rituals of the medieval church. Erasmus was not a forerunner in the sense that he conceived or defended ideas that later made up the substance of the Reformation thought. ... It is enough that some of his ideas merged with the later Reformation message." 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's 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"."Rigorously scientific biblical study must sustain an effort to renew the interior life, and the interior life must itself be at once the agent and the beneficiary of a renewal of the whole of Christian society." This went beyond the devotio moderna, which "was a spirituality of teachers"m
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.
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 among the unlettered; his critiques reached a small but elite audience.
Erasmus was also notable for exposing several important historical documents of theological and political importance as forgeries or misattributions: including pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the Gravi de pugna attributed to St Augustine, the Ad Herennium attributed to Cicero, and (by reprinting Lorenzo Valla's work) the Donation of Constantine.
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.
He was scandalised by superstitions (such as that if a person were buried in a Franciscan habit, they would go directly 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 closing 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. A Religious Pilgrimage,
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 colonise 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 practised 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."Letter to Charles Utenhove (1523) 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.
Erasmus was one of many scandalised 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."
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., on the sale of indulgences) "are urgently needed."Galli, Mark, and Olsen, TED (conference). 131 Christians Everyone Should Know. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2000, p. 344. 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."Letter to Louis Marlianus, 25 March 1520 However, the publication of Luther's On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October 1520), which largely repudiated Church teaching on sacraments, and his subsequent bellicosity drained Erasmus's 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's own,"In the first years of the Reformation many thought that Luther was only carrying out the program of Erasmus, and this was the opinion of those strict Catholics who from the outset of the great conflict included Erasmus in their attacks on Luther." 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:
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,Future cardinal Aleander, his former friend and roommate at the Aldine Press, wrote "The poison of Erasmus has a much more dangerous effect than that of Luther". which he regarded as peacemaking accommodation:
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.Massing, 2022 ( publisher's abstract) 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 (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:
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:
Here Erasmus complains of the doctrines and morals of the Reformers, applying the same critique he had made about public Scholastic disputations:
Erasmus wrote books against aspects of the teaching, impacts or threats of several other Reformers:
However, Erasmus maintained friendly relations with other Protestants, notably the irenic Melanchthon and Albrecht Dürer.
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".Reynolds, Terrence M. (1977). "Was Erasmus Responsible for Luther? A Study of the Relationship of the Two Reformers and Their Clash Over the Question of the Will". Concordia Theological Journal. p. 2. . Reynolds references Arthur Robert Pennington (1875), The Life and Character of Erasmus, p. 219. Erasmus-reader Peter Canisius commented: "Certainly there was no lack of eggs for Luther to hatch."Another commentator: "Erasmus laid the egg that Luther broke."
Erasmus was sympathetic to a kind of epistemological (Ciceronian not Cartesian doubt) Pyrrhonism:
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's decrial of other non-gentle "perverse affections" as having Stoical roots.
Following Rufinus' translation of Origen's commentary on Romans, Erasmus wrote in terms of a tri-partite nature of man, with the soul (animus) as the seat of free will: choosing the spirit (spiritus) over the warring flesh/carnality (carnis) creates right order.
Erasmus also put it that the mind (anima) should act a ruler over the body (corpus) and the spirit, which he used to provide political analogies: correct rule (by the prince=mind) produces peace in the body and the body politic.
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.
Erasmus held that academics must avoid philosophical factionalism as an offence against Christian concord, to "make the whole world Christian".
Nevertheless, church historian has commented on a certain closeness of Erasmus's thought to Thomas Aquinas', despite Erasmus's scepticism 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.
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."Why don't we all reflect: this must be a marvelous and new philosophy since, in order to reveal it to mortals, he who was God became man".
In fact, he said, Christ was "the very father of philosophy" (Anti-Barbieri).Similar to John Wycliffe's statement "the greatest philosopher is none other than Christ."
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:
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:
In the view of literary historian Chester Chapin, Erasmus's tendency of thought was "towards cautious dulcification of the traditional Catholic view".
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,"We see Erasmus' hermeneutic as governed by the idea of language as mediation ... The dynamics of mediation, central as it is in Erasmus' hermeneutic, informed all aspects of his world view." 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 "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's 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.
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's has been called rhetorical theology (theologia rhetorica).
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's early Enchiridion"Erasmus is so thoroughly, radically Christ-centered in his understanding of both Christian faith and practice that if we overlook or downplay this key aspect of his character and vision, we not only do him a grave disservice but we almost completely misunderstand him." 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's 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.
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."
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 scandalised 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 unbaptised and grace, and the place of classical philosophy:
The Catalogue of the Works of Erasmus (2023)
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, categorised 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 catalogue 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.
These went through multiple revisions and editions, and progressively involved many leading scholars and introduced several readings which were taken up by Protestant and Catholic reformers. Other publishers, such as Erasmus's earlier collaborator Aldine Press in Venice, immediately brought out their own editions, sometimes with their own corrections, and sometimes without the Annotations, or the Latin, or the Greek. Up to 300,000 copies of the various editions appear to have been printed in Erasmus's lifetime.
This body of work formed the basis for the majority of Textus Receptus Protestant translations of the New Testament in the 16th–19th centuries, including those of Martin Luther, William Tyndale and the King James Version.
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.
However, at times he has been viciously criticised, his works suppressed, his expertise corralled, his writings misinterpreted, his thought demonised, and his legacy marginalised. 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.
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 travelling 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.
From 1505, and certainly after 1517, he dressed as a scholar-priest.Treu, Erwin (1959). pp.20–21 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's portraits show him wearing a knitted scholar's bonnet.
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.
The diamond ring Erasmus wears in the famous Holbein portrait was a gift from his long-time friend and corespondent, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, as a "memorial of our friendship" (" amicitiae nostrae noμνημόσυνον").
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. There were anachronistic claims that his motto was a favourable nod to Luther's "Here I stand" which Erasmus denied.
Interest in developments of visual arts or artists is notably absent in Erasmus's writing, despite moving in circles where he shared friends and patron with famous artists: for example, in Venice Erasmus's friend Giulio Camillo worked with Titian. Erasmus was personal friends of Hans Holbein and Albrecht Dürer.
Vows, ordination and canonry experience
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 communityCanons regular of St Augustine, Chapter of Sion (or Syon), Emmaus house, Stein (or Steyn). 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).
(1987). 9789060043929, De Graaf. ISBN 9789060043929
In Huizinga's view: "Out of the letters to Servatius there rises the picture of an Erasmus whom we shall never find again—a young man of more than feminine sensitiveness; of a languishing need for sentimental friendship. ...This exuberant friendship accords quite well with the times and the person. ... Sentimental friendships were as much in vogue in secular circles during the fifteenth century as towards the end of the eighteenth century. Each court had its pairs of friends, who dressed alike, and shared room, bed, and heart. Nor was this cult of fervent friendship restricted to the sphere of aristocratic life. It was among the specific characteristics of the devotio moderna." and wrote a series of love lettersForrest Tyler Stevens, "Erasmus's 'Tigress': The Language of Friendship, Pleasure, and the Renaissance Letter". Queering the Renaissance, Duke University Press, 1994 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." Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 1, p. 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974)Erasmus editor Harry Vredeveld argues that the letters are "surely expressions of true friendship", citing what Erasmus wrote in his Letter to Grunnius about an earlier teenage infatuation with a "Cantellius": "It is not uncommon at that age to conceive passionate attachments fervidos for some of your companions". However, he allows "That these same letters, which run the gamut of love's emotions, are undoubtedly also literary exercises—rhetorical progymnasmata—is by no means a contradiction of this." 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,But also a capacity to feel betrayal sharply, as with his brother Peter, "Cantellius", Aleander, and Dorp. such as with More, Colet, and Ammonio.The biographer J.J. Mangan commented of his time living with Andrea Ammonio in England "to some extent Erasmus thereby realized the dream of his youth, which was to live together with some choice literary spirit with whom he might share his thoughts and aspiration". Quoted in J. K. Sowards, The Two Lost Years of Erasmus: Summary, Review, and Speculation'', Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 9 (1962), p. 174. 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.
Disengagement
In 1493, his prior arranged for him to leave the Stein house and move to Brabant, to 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. Extract of page 159 Following this, he went to Paris to study theology. His status as priest, latinist and student, and his habit of being far away, afforded a measure of disengagement from the Stein canonry.
(1974). 9781442668331, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442668331
1501
Travels
Erasmus travelled 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,Subsequent students included Ignatius of Loyola, Noël Béda, Jean Calvin, and John Knox. under the direction of the ascetic Jan Standonck, of whose rigors he complained. (2025). 9798352124185, Christian Publishing House. EAN 9798352124185 The university was then the chief seat of Scholasticism 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.
First visit to England (1499–1500)
Erasmus stayed in England at least three times.Some of these visits were interrupted by trips back to Europe. In between he had periods studying in Paris, Orléans, Leuven and other cities.
(2025). 9782503602257, Brepols. ISBN 9782503602257 and whose intellect had been developed by his powerful patron Cardinal John Morton (d. 1500) who had famously attempted reforms of English monasteries.
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's thoughts against excessive valorisation of monasticism, ceremonialism and fasting in a kind of conversion experience, and introduced him to Origen.
(2018). 9782503580777 ISBN 9782503580777 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)
For Erasmus's 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.
Italy
In 1506 he was able to accompany and tutor the sons of the personal physician of the English King through Italy to Bologna.
(2024). 9781003553908, Routledge. ISBN 9781003553908 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.
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. His wife Jane died, aged 21, in 1511, and More quickly Alice More.
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.
Basel (1521–1529)
From 1514, Erasmus regularly travelled 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 (Erasmus's godson) who together published over 200 works with Erasmus, working with expert scholar-correctors who went on to illustrious careers.
(1989). 9781442680944 ISBN 9781442680944 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 household with 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.Introductory Note in (2010). 9781442660076, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442660076
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 1 April 1529.
(2020). 9781487532833 ISBN 9781487532833
(2020). 9781487532833 ISBN 9781487532833 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."
Fates of friends
In the 1530s, life became more dangerous for Spanish Erasmians when Erasmus's protector, the Inquisitor General Alonso Manrique de Lara fell out of favour with the royal court and lost power within his own organisation to friar-theologians. In 1532 Erasmus's 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.
Death in Basel
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 (Oecolampadius 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.
Thought and views
Biographers, such as Johan Huizinga, frequently draw connections between many of Erasmus's convictions and his early biography: esteem for the married state and appropriate marriages, support for priestly marriage, concern for improving marriage prospects for women, 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, the wisdom of avoiding danger, 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 judgements, and unsettling in its irony with "a deep and abiding commitment to human flourishing".Terrence J. Martin, Truth and Irony, quoted in "In all spheres, his outlook was essentially pastoral." (2003). 9781442674554, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442674554
(1969). 9781139055505 ISBN 9781139055505
Manner of expression
Irony
Erasmus often wrote in a highly ironical idiom, especially in his letters,His mode of expression made him "slippery like a snake", according to Luther,) which makes them prone to different interpretations when taken literally rather than ironically.
(2017). 9781139017169 ISBN 9781139017169 and Harry S. May as being approving of such hatred; the alternative view would be that it was sardonic and challenging.
Copiousness
Erasmus's literary theory of "copiousness" endorses a large stockpile of rich adages, Analogy, tropes and symbolic figures, which leads to compressed communication of complex ideas (between those educated in the stockpile) but some of which, to modern sensibilities, may promote as well as play-off stereotypes.
(2024). 9783111315348 ISBN 9783111315348
(2023). 9789004539686 ISBN 9789004539686
Pacifism
Peace, peaceableness, and peacemaking, in all spheres from the domestic to the religious to the political, were central distinctives of Erasmus's writing on Christian living and his mystical theology: "the sum and summary of our religion is peace and unanimity"Summa nostrae religionis pax est et unanimitas. Erasmus continued: "This can hardly remain the case unless we define as few matters as possible and leave each individual's judgement free on many questions." Note that the use of summa is perhaps also a backhanded reference to the scholasticism summa, which he upbraided for their moral and spiritual uselessness. At the Nativity of Jesus "the angels sang not the glories of war, nor a song of triumph, but a hymn of peace":
War
Historians have written that "references to conflict run like a red thread through the writings of Erasmus". Erasmus had a simple view of the renaissance state, where ultimately warfare was determined by single individuals: sovereign rulers (i.e. pope, emperor, king, duke, etc.) with malformed ambitions; so directing sovereigns towards inter-Christendom pacifism was thus a key practical prescription for peace, which in turn required a new curriculum for educating princes that did not encourage vainglorious milititarism.
(2025). 9783030798598, Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783030798598
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 Bible or absolutely mandated by Magisterium. Concord demanded unity and assent: Erasmus was anti-sectarian"I have made my support of the church sufficiently clear ... The only thing in which I take pride is that I have never committed myself to any sect." Erasmus, Letter to Georgius Agricola (1534) as well as non-sectarian. To follow the law of love, our intellects must be humble and friendly when making any assertions: he called contention "earthly, beastly, demonic" and a good-enough reason to reject a teacher or their followers. In Melanchthon's view, Erasmus taught charity, not faith. The centrality of Christian concord to Erasmus's theology contrasted with the insistence of Martin Luther and, for example, later English Puritans, that (Protestant) truth naturally would create discord and opposition.
Heresy and sedition
Erasmus had been privately 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.
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.
Turks
In his last decade, he involved himself in the public policy debate on war with the Ottoman Empire, which was then invading , 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."... the goal of De bello Turcico was to warn Christians and the Church of moral deterioration and to exhort them to change their ways. ... Erasmus' objection to crusades was by no means an overall opposition to fighting the Turks. Rather, Erasmus harshly condemned embezzlement and corrupt fundraising, and the Church's involvement in such nefarious activities, and regarded them as inseparable from waging a crusade." pp. 97,98 Erasmus reworked Luther's rhetoric that the invading Turks represent God's judgement 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
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.
(1979). 9781442681019 ISBN 9781442681019
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. (2025). 9783030249281 ISBN 9783030249281
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, which proposed a "republic completely lacking sovereignty"). 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.
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),According to historian Thomas Tentler, few Christians from his century gave as much emphasis as Erasmus to a pious attitude to death: the terrors of death are "closely connected to guilt from sin and fear of punishment" the antidote to which is first "trust in Christ and His ability to forgive sins", avoiding (Lutheran) boastful pride, then a loving, undespairing life lived with appropriate penitence. The priests' focus in the Last Rites should be comfort and hope. and the pastoral Holy Orders (see Ecclesiastes). Historians have noted that Erasmus commended the benefits of immersive, docile scripture-reading in sacramental terms.
Sacraments
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 , headed by Œcolampadius of Basel, were claiming Erasmus held views similar to their own 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.
(2022). 9780228015857 ISBN 9780228015857 Erasmus wrote several notable pastoral books and pamphlets on sacraments, always looking through rather than at the rituals or forms:
Catholic reform
Institutional reforms
The Protestant Reformation began in the year following the publication of his Textus receptus edition of the New Testament in Latin and Greek (1516). The issues between the reforming and reactionary tendencies of the Catholic Church, from which Protestantism later emerged, had become so clear that many intellectuals and churchmen could not escape the summons to join the debate.
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.
Musical reform
Erasmus noted the rich sound of England's basses, he criticised the excessively-virtuosic treble verses and he did not believe the complex English Votive Style to be spiritually edifying as a result.
Protestant reform
The early reformers built their theology on Erasmus's 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's view, they went too far, downplayed Sacred Tradition such as Patristic interpretations, and irresponsibly fomented bloodshed.
Increasing disagreement with Luther
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's focus on morality rather than grace) but strategically agreed not to be negative about the other in public.
Dispute on free will
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 strategised 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.
"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).
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's eyes, "was precisely what Erasmus disliked about Luther" and "Protestant polemicists".
Philosophy
Erasmus has a problematic standing in the history of philosophy: whether he should be called a philosopher at all,For Craig R. Thompson, Erasmus cannot be called philosopher in the technical sense, since he disdained formal logic and metaphysics and cared only for moral philosophy. Similarly, John Monfasani reminds us that Erasmus never claimed to be a philosopher, was not trained as a philosopher, and wrote no explicit works of philosophy, although he repeatedly engaged in controversies that crossed the boundary from philosophy to theology. His relation to philosophy bears further scrutiny. (as, indeed, some question whether he should be considered a theologian either). Erasmus deemed himself to be a rhetorician (rhetoric being the art of argumentation to find what was most probably true on questions where logic could not provide certainty)"Humanists regarded it (rhetoric) as a practical way to investigate questions on which dialectical argumentation based on logic had proved unable to produce certitude. Rhetoric was the procedure to be used in pursuit of conclusions that could not be proved beyond doubt but were the most probable choice among the alternatives explored." or grammarian rather than a philosopher. (2023). 9789004539686 ISBN 9789004539686 He was particularly influenced by satirist and rhetorician Lucian."According to Erasmus, Lucian's laughter is the most appropriate instrument to guide pupils towards moral seriousness because it is the denial of every peremptory and dogmatic point of view and, therefore, the image of a joyful pietas ("true religion ought to be the most cheerful thing in the world"; De recta pronuntiatione, CWE 26, 385). By teaching the relativity of communicative situations and the variability of temperaments, the laughter resulting from the art of rhetoric comes to resemble the most sincere content of Christian morality, based on tolerance and loving persuasion." Erasmus's 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),
Stoicism (adiaphora), (2025). 9781487500610, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781487500610 Epicurean (ataraxia,"Despite a lack of formal philosophical training and an antipathy to medieval scholasticism, Erasmus possessed not only a certain familiarity with Thomas Aquinas, but also close knowledge of Plato and Aristotle. Erasmus' interest in some Platonic motifs is well known. But the most consistent philosophical theme in Erasmus' writings from his earliest to his latest was that of the Epicurean goal of peace of mind, ataraxia. Erasmus, in fact, combined Christianity with a nuanced Epicurean morality. This Epicureanism, when combined in turn with a commitment to the consensus Ecclesiae as well as with an allergy to dogmatic formulations and an appreciation of the Greek Fathers, ultimately rendered Erasmus alien to Martin Luther and Protestantism though they agreed on much." Abstract of pleasure as virtue), realist/non-voluntarist,
and Isocrates (rhetoric, political education, syncretism). However, his Christianized version of Epicureanism is regarded as his own.
Anti-scholasticism
He usually eschewed metaphysical, epistemological and logical philosophy as found in Aristotle:In the Adagia, Erasmus quotes Aristotle 304 times, "making extensive use of the moral, philosophical, political, and rhetorical writings as well as those on natural philosophy, while completely shunning the logical works that formed the basis for scholastic philosophy". Cited by (2023). 9789004539686 ISBN 9789004539686 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?" (1990). 9780802068064, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802068064
(2025). 9780802092229, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802092229 Indeed, Erasmus thought that Scholastic philosophy actually distracted participants from their proper focus on immediate morality,Rice puts it "Philosophy is felt to be a veil of pretense over an unethical reality ... pious disquisitions cannot excuse immorality." "For I am ready to swear that Epimenides came to life again in Scotus." Erasmus to Thomas Grey Nichols, ep. 59; Allen, ep 64 unless used moderately, and by "excluding the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the beauty of revelation.""I find that in comparison with the Fathers of the Church our present-day theologians are a pathetic group. Most of them lack the elegance, the charm of language, and the style of the Fathers. Content with Aristotle, they treat the mysteries of revelation in the tangled fashion of the logician. Excluding the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the beauty of revelation." Enchiridion, Erasmus, cited by "They are windbags blown up with Aristotle, sausages stuffed with a mass of theoretical definitions, conclusions, and propositions."Erasmus, The Sileni of Alcibiades (1517)
(2025). 9780802038760, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802038760
Philosophia Christi
(Not to be confused with his Italian contemporary Chrysostom Javelli's Philosophia Christiana.)
Theology
Three key distinctive features of the spirituality Erasmus proposed are accommodation, inverbation, and scopus christi.
Accommodation
Historian Manfred Hoffmann has described accommodation as "the single most important concept in Erasmus's hermeneutic".
(1999). 9781139053631 ISBN 9781139053631
Inverbation
For Erasmus, further to accommodating humans in his Incarnation, Christ accommodated humans by a kind of inverbation through text: 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.
Scopus christi
Scopus is the unifying reference point, the navigation goal, or the organising 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").
Mystical theology
Another important concept to Erasmus was "the Folly of the Cross" (which The Praise of Folly explored):As with many of his individual works, reading The Praise of Folly in isolation from his other works may give an idea of Erasmus's priorities different to that given by broader reading, even though he sometimes claimed to be re-presenting essentially the same thoughts in different genres. 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:
Works
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.Galli, Mark, and Olsen, TED (conference). 131 Christians Everyone Should Know. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2000, 343. "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.
(2023). 9789004539686 ISBN 9789004539686 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."
New Testament editions
In the second half of his life, Erasmus worked on New Testament studies in a project that eventually saw his intended detailed Annotations on the New Testament (modeled on a work by Lorenzo Valla) expand into a new Latin translation, an accompanying Greek text, material justifying his approach, and lengthy Paraphrases of almost the entire New Testament.
Notable writings
Erasmus wrote for educated audiences both
Legacy and evaluations
Erasmus was given the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists", and has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists".Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of Christianity. New York City: Harper & Brothers, 1953, p. 661. He has also been called "the most illustrious rhetorician and educationalist of the Renaissance".
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.
(2015). 9781442668331 ISBN 9781442668331
Clothing
Until Erasmus received his 1505 and 1517 Papal dispensations to wear clerical garb, Erasmus wore versions of the local habit of his order, the Canon regular, 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 ( ) or long black cloak.Shoes, Boots, Leggings, and Cloaks: The Augustinian Canons and Dress in Later Medieval England [11]
Signet ring and personal motto
Erasmus chose the Roman god of borders and boundaries Terminus as a personal symbol and had a signet ring with a herm he thought depicted Terminus carved into a carnelian. The herm was presented to him in Rome by his student Alexander Stewart and in reality depicted the Greek god Dionysus. The ring was also depicted in a portrait of his by the Flemish painter Quentin Matsys.
Visual representations
Erasmus frequently gifted portraits and medals with his image to friends and patrons.
In literature and media
More: Thus you see,
My loving learned friends, how far respect
Waits often on the ceremonious train
Of base illiterate wealth, whilst men of schools,
Shrouded in poverty, are counted fools.
Pardon, thou reverent German, I have mixed
So slight a jest to the fair entertainment
Of thy most worthy self;
...
Erasmus: Study should be the saddest time of life.
The rest a sport exempt from thought of strife.
Name used
Exhumation
In 1928, the site of Erasmus's grave was dug up, and a body identified in the bones and examined. In 1974, remains were dug up in a slightly different location, accompanied by an Erasmus medal. Both remains have been claimed to be Erasmus'. However, it is possible neither is. The first bones were taller than expected and syphilitic; the second fitted the reported size and age but were accidentally smashed during photography.
Notes
Further reading
Biographies
(1995). 9780802071774, Univ. of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802071774
(2025). 9781857926958, Focus. ISBN 9781857926958
(2025). 9780413753304, Methuen. ISBN 9780413753304
(2025). 9780826491558, Continuum. ISBN 9780826491558
Topics
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External links
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Media
Categories: 1460s Births, 1536 Deaths, 15th-century Roman Catholic Theologians, 16th-century Christian Biblical Scholars, 16th-century Dutch Philosophers, 16th-century Dutch Roman Catholic Priests, 16th-century Roman Catholic Theologians, 16th-century Writers In Latin, Academic Staff Of The Old University Of Leuven, Alumni Of Queens' College, Cambridge, Augustinian Canons, Burials At Basel Münster, Catholic Philosophers, Christian Humanists, Counter-reformation, Critics Of The Catholic Church, Deaths From Dysentery, Dutch Educators, Dutch Essayists, Dutch Expatriates In England, Dutch Expatriates In France, Dutch Renaissance Humanists, Dutch Rhetoricians, Dutch Satirists, Former Members Of Catholic Religious Institutes, Greek–latin Translators, Historians Of The Catholic Church, Lady Margaret's Professors Of Divinity, Letter Writers In Latin, Natural Law Ethicists, Old University Of Leuven Alumni, Paremiologists, People From Gouda, South Holland, Philosophers From The Habsburg Netherlands, Proto-protestants, Proverb Scholars, Roman Catholic Biblical Scholars, Roman Catholic Priests From The Habsburg Netherlands, Translators Of The Bible Into Latin, University Of Paris Alumni, University Of Turin Alumni, Writers From Rotterdam
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