Desiderius Erasmus

Life and legacy

Erasmus was born in Rotterdam in 1466, the illegitimate son of a priest. Orphaned as a teenager, he entered an Augustinian monastery, where he received a thorough grounding in Latin literature. He was ordained a priest in 1492 but quickly found monastic life uncongenial to his restless intellectual temperament. He secured permission to leave the monastery and devoted himself to the life of an independent scholar, traveling widely across Europe.

Erasmus's breakthrough work was "The Praise of Folly" (Moriae Encomium, 1509), a satirical essay written during a visit to his friend Thomas More in England. Cast as an oration by the goddess Folly, it skewered the vanity, corruption, and intellectual pretensions of monks, theologians, popes, and kings with devastating wit. The book was an immediate sensation, going through dozens of editions and establishing Erasmus as Europe's foremost man of letters.

Erasmus's most consequential scholarly achievement was his 1516 edition of the Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum), the first printed edition of the New Testament in the original Greek, accompanied by a new Latin translation and extensive annotations. This work exposed errors in the Vulgate, the standard Latin Bible used by the Catholic Church for over a millennium, and provided Martin Luther and other reformers with the textual ammunition to challenge Church authority. Erasmus's motto, "Ad fontes" - "back to the sources" - became the rallying cry of humanist scholarship.

When Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation in 1517, Erasmus found himself caught between warring camps. He sympathized with many of Luther's criticisms of the Church but recoiled from Luther's dogmatism and the violence that accompanied the Reformation. Their public debate over free will - Erasmus defending it in "De Libero Arbitrio" (1524), Luther denying it in "De Servo Arbitrio" (1525) - became one of the great intellectual confrontations of the sixteenth century. Erasmus was attacked by both sides: Catholics accused him of having "laid the egg that Luther hatched," while Protestants condemned his refusal to break decisively with Rome.

Erasmus died in Basel on July 12, 1536, without the last rites of the Catholic Church, a fitting end for a man who spent his life between worlds. His legacy endures in the humanist ideal of tolerant, reasoned inquiry, in the critical philological methods he championed, and in the very concept of the public intellectual as a figure independent of institutional power.

Key accomplishments

• Wrote "The Praise of Folly" (1509), a masterpiece of satirical literature
• Published the first printed Greek New Testament (1516), transforming biblical scholarship
• Championed the humanist motto "Ad fontes" (back to the sources)
• Edited and published numerous classical texts, reviving ancient learning
• Became the first truly international literary celebrity of the print era

Timeline

The dated lines from the record above, in order, with Desiderius Erasmus's age worked out from the birth year (1466).

1. 1466Born October 28, 1466, Rotterdam, Burgundian Netherlands
2. 1509Wrote "The Praise of Folly" (1509), a masterpiece of satirical literature (around age 43)
3. 1516Published the first printed Greek New Testament (1516), transforming biblical scholarship (around age 50)
4. 1536Died July 12, 1536, Basel, Old Swiss Confederacy

Quotes

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Erasmus, "Adagia" (1500)

When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.

Attributed to Erasmus, widely cited

Related figures

Where Desiderius Erasmus sits in the atlas

• Era: The Renaissance (~1350-1600), one of 16 figures filed there
• Born 1466, the 51st of 125 figures in the full list by birth year.
• Cities: London, Paris, Rome
• Collection: Renaissance Minds

Contemporaries

13 other figures in the atlas were alive at some point during Desiderius Erasmus's lifetime (1466-1536). These are the longest overlaps.

• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543): both alive for 63 years, 1473 to 1536
• Michelangelo (1475-1564): both alive for 61 years, 1475 to 1536
• Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527): both alive for 58 years, 1469 to 1527
• Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519): both alive for 53 years, 1466 to 1519
• Martin Luther (1483-1546): both alive for 53 years, 1483 to 1536
• Henry VIII (1491-1547): both alive for 45 years, 1491 to 1536
• Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510): both alive for 44 years, 1466 to 1510
• Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521): both alive for 41 years, 1480 to 1521

Others connected with the same cities

Figures not already listed on this page, nearest in time first.

More from The Renaissance

Figures from the same era born closest in time to Desiderius Erasmus.

• Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), Navigator of the New World
• Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), The Magnificent
• Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Father of the Modern Novel