Erasmus, Desiderius c.1466-1536
Dutch humanist and scholar, one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance

Erasmus was born in Rotterdam, and educated by the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer. He joined an Augustinian monastery at Steyn near Gouda in 1487, and was ordained a priest in 1492; but he was already reacting against scholasticism and was drawn to the Humanists. He studied and taught in Paris, and later in most of the cultural centres in Europe, including Oxford (1499) and Cambridge (1509-14), where he was Professor of Divinity and of Greek. He travelled widely, writing, teaching and meeting Europe's foremost intellectuals (including, in England, John Colet and Thomas More).

He published many popular, sometimes didactic works, including Adagia (Adages, 1500, 1508), Enchiridion Militis Christiani (Handbook of a Christian Soldier, 1503), and the famous Encomium Moriae (In Praise of Folly, 1509). He also published scholarly editions of classical authors and the Church Fathers, and edited the Greek New Testament (1516). He became strongly critical of the pedantries and abuses of the Catholic Church, and his Colloquia familiaria of 1518 helped prepare the way for Martin Luther and the Reformation; but he also came to oppose the dogmatic theology of the Reformers and specifically attacked Luther in De Libero Arbitrio (1523). Despite these controversies he enjoyed great fame and respect in his last years, which he spent in Basle.

Bibliography: J M Sowards, Desiderius Erasmus (1975); R H Bainton, Erasmus (1969).