ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS the greatest humanist of the Renaissance, theologian, was born on the night of the 27/28 of October, probably in 1466; but his statements about his age are conflicting, and in view of his own uncertainty (Ep. x. 29, 466) the year of his birth cannot be definitely fixed.
His father's name seems to have been Rogerius Gerardus. He himself was christened Herasmus ; but he assimilated the name to a fancied Greek original, which he Latinized into Desyderius. He styled himself Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (Adagia, and ed., Paris, 1906) and believed that he was born at Rotter dam, though a contemporary tradition assigned Gouda, his father's native place, as the place of his birth'.
His first schooling was at Gouda under Peter Winckel, who was afterwards vice-pastor of the church. In the dull round of "gram mar" he was surpassed by his early friend and companion, Wil liam Herman. From Gouda the two boys went to the school attached to St. Lebuin's church at Deventer, which was one of the first in northern Europe to feel the influence of the Renais sance. Erasmus was there from 1475 to 1484, and when he left, had learnt from Johannes Sinthius (Syntheim) and Alexander Hegius, who had come as headmaster in 1483, the love of letters which was the ruling passion of his life. At some period, perhaps in an interval of his time at Deventer, he was a chorister at Utrecht under the famous organist of the cathedral, Jacob Obrecht.
About 1484 Erasmus' father died, leaving him and an elder brother Peter, both born out of wedlock, to the care of guardians, their mother having died of plague shortly before. Erasmus was eager to go to a university, but the guardians sent the boys to another school at Hertogenbosch to be prepared for a monastic life; the discipline was severe, directed to the subjugation of the spirit, and inspired Erasmus with a hatred of the pedagogic method of the day. Peter entered the monastery of Sion, near Delft ; Erasmus after prolonged reluctance became an Augustinian canon in St. Gregory's at Steyn, a house of the same chapter near Gouda. There he seems to have been allowed to read the classics and the Fathers with his friends to his heart's content, and he formed a close friendship with Servatius Roger of Rotterdam. The monastery once entered, there was no drawing back; and Erasmus passed through the various stages which culminated in his ordination as priest on April 25, 1492.
The young humanist found a patron in Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai; and about 1494 permission was obtained for him to leave Steyn and become Latin secretary to the bishop. Erasmus found the life of a court unfavourable to study. His friend, James Batt, a schoolmaster of Bergen, secured for him an oppor tunity to go to Paris university. The bishop consented and promised a small pension; and in August 1495 Erasmus entered the "domus pauperum" of the college of Montaigu, then under the rule of Jan Standonck, a leader of the devotio modern, the Dutch movement for the purification of the monastic orders. Erasmus made the acquaintance of Robert Gaguin (1425-1502) and published a small volume of poems; and he became intimate with Johann Mauburnus (Mombaer). But the severe regime at Montaigu with its abstinence and discomfort was too hard for him. Every Lent he fell ill and had to return to Holland to recover. On his return to Paris in 1496, he lodged in the town, and took pupils. He was now occupied with some of the works which, later, made his fame ; to this period belong the first drafts of the Colloquies and the De Conscribendis Epistolis.
Erasmus was then, and for a long time to come, dependent on the benevolence of patrons for the leisure he needed to satisfy his ardent craving for learning. The faithful Batt had sought a pension for him from Anne of Borsselen, the Lady of Veere, whose son Batt was now teaching. But as nothing promised at once, Erasmus accepted an invitation from one of his Paris pupils, William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, to whom he was much attached, to visit England In October he went to Oxford, where he found John Colet lecturing on the Epistle to the Romans. In Colet he found a kindred mind, and to Colet's influ ence must be ascribed the decision he then took to make serious theological study the real work of his life. He was happy in Eng land, where he associated with Linacre Grocyn and More, as well as with Colet. Unfortunately a tiresome incident destroyed part 'Erasmus himself possibly made his parent's story more romantic than it really was. His allusions to it supplied Charles Reade with the starting point for the novel he wrote on the troubled background of the day, The Cloister and the Hearth.
of his happy impressions, for the small sum of money he had amassed in England was taken from him by the customs officer at Dover, as the law allowed no money to leave the country. Con sequently he arrived in Paris (Jan. 1500) as poor as he left it.
In Paris he supported himself by pupils' fees and the dedica tions of books : the Collectanea adagiorum, a collection of short sayings from classical authors, in June 15oo to Mountjoy, and some devotional and moral compositions to Batt's patroness and her son. When the plague drove him from Paris, he went to Orleans or Tournehem or St. Omer, as the way opened. From 1 502 to 1504 he was at Louvain, still declining to teach publicly ; among his friends being the future Pope Adrian VI. He had been working hard at Greek, at the Fathers (above all at Jerome), and at the Epistles of St. Paul, fulfilling the promise made to Colet in Oxford, to give himself to sacred learning. But the bent of his reading is shown by the manuscript with which he returned to Paris at the close of 15o4—Valla's Annotations on the New Testament, which Badius printed for him in 1505. In appeared at Antwerp his Enchiridion Militis Christiani. The book shows clearly the bent of his mind. It was a plea for a return to the source of Christianity in its primitive simplicity. He did not condemn, but he left aside as irrelevant the complicated mass of dogma and ceremonial of the church ; he would return to the Bible and the early Fathers for the interpretation of Christian duty and Christian doctrine.
IN ENGLAND AND ITALY In the autumn of 1505 Lord Mountjoy invited him again to England. He was introduced to William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester and others. At length the opportunity came to fulfil his dream of seeing Italy. Baptista Boerio, the king's physician, engaged him to accompany his two sons thither as supervisor of their studies. In September 1506 he set foot on that sacred soil, and took his D.D. at Turin. For a year he remained with his pupils at Bologna, and then, his engagement completed, negotiated with Aldus Manutius at Venice for a new edition of his Adagio upon a very different scale. The volume of 1500 had been jejune, written when he knew noth ing of Greek; Boo adages put together with scanty elucidations. In 1508 he had three thousand and more collected and gave the work a new title—Chiliades adagiorum.
To print the Adagia he had gone to Venice, where he lived with Andrea Torresano of Asola (Asulanus) and did the work of two men, writing and correcting proof at the same time. When it was finished, with an ample re-dedication to Mountjoy, a new pupil presented himself, Alexander Stewart, natural son of James IV. of Scotland—perhaps through a connection formed in early days at Paris. They went together to Siena and Rome and then on to Campania. When they returned to Rome, his pupil departed to Scotland ; Erasmus also found a summons from Lord Mountjoy to England. At first Erasmus hesitated. He had made many friends in Aldus's circle—Marcus Musurus, John Lascaris, Baptista Egnatius, Paul Bombasius, Scipio Carteromachus ; and his reception had been flattering, especially in Rome. In Rome he might have had the leisure which was so indispensable, but at price of the freedom to read, think, write what he liked. He de cided, therefore, to go, though with regrets.
In the autumn he reached London, and in Thomas More's house in Bucklersbury wrote the witty satire which Milton found "in every one's hands" at Cambridge in 1628. The Moriae encom ium remains the most read of the works of Erasmus, though he, himself, regarded it as of slight importance. In it kings and princes, bishops and popes alike are shown to be in bondage to Folly; and no class of men is spared. Its author was willing to be beholden to any one for leisure; but he would be no man's slave. For the next eighteen months he is lost to view; when he reappears in April 151I, he is leaving More's house and taking the Moria to be printed privily in Paris. Wherever they were spent, these must have been months of hard work. The long preparation and training, bought by privation and uncongenial toil, was over, and he was ready to apply himself to the scientific study of sacred letters. His English patrons were liberal. Fisher sent him in August 151I to teach in Cambridge ; Warham gave him a benefice, Aldington in Kent, and in violation of his own rule commuted it for a pension of £ 20 charged on the living; and the dedications of his books were fruitful. In Cambridge he completed his work on the New Testament, the Letters of Jerome, and Seneca ; and then in 1514 he removed to Basle to superintend the publication of his works. The last few months spent in England had seen the production, generally supposed to be his, of the Julius Exclusus, the satire on the lately-deceased warrior pope, Julius II.
The origin of Erasmus's connection with Johann Froben is not clear. In 1511 he was preparing to reprint his Adagia with Jodocus Badius, who was also to have Seneca and Jerome. But in 1513 Froben, who had just reprinted the Aldine Adagia, ac quired through a bookseller-agent Erasmus's amended copy which had been destined for Badius. Within a few months Erasmus went to Basle, bearing with him Seneca and the Letters of Jerome, the latter to be incorporated in the great edition which Johannes Amerbach and Froben had had in hand since 1510. In Germany he was widely welcomed and feted. Through the winter of 1514.– 1515 Erasmus worked with the strength of ten ; and after a brief visit to England in the spring, he had printed his New Testament containing the Greek text, with notes, and his own new Latin translation. It was dedicated to Pope Leo X., who accepted the dedication. Around him was a circle of students—the three sons of Froben's late partner, Johannes Amerbach, Beatus Rhenanus, Wilhelm Nesen, Ludwig Ber, Heinrich Glareanus, Nikolaus Ger bell, Johannes Oecolampadius—who were proud to serve him.
Though from this time forward Basle became the centre of occupation and interest for Erasmus, yet for the next few years he was mainly in the Netherlands. On the completion of the New Testament in 1516 he returned to his friends in England; but his appointment, then recent, as councillor to the young king Charles, brought him back to Brussels in the autumn. In 1514 he had refused a summons to return to his monastery at Steyn, and in the spring of 1517 he went for the last time to Eng land, to receive a dispensation from wearing his canonical dress, obtained originally from Julius II. and recently confirmed by Leo X., and in 1518 he spent three months in Basle to set the second edition of the New Testament in progress. He lived much at Louvain, where he took great interest in the foundation of Hierony mus Busleiden's Collegium Trilingue. He was now at the height of his fame. The general ardour for the restoration of the arts and of learning created an aristocratic public, of which Erasmus was supreme pontiff. Luther spoke to the people and the ignorant ; Erasmus had the ear of the educated class. His friends and ad mirers were distributed over all the countries of Europe, and his letters, those witty and humane letters which mirror the man's tolerant, liberal mind, were coveted by scholars and princes. He received many rich presents, and with these and the proceeds of his works, lived comfortably, though not luxuriously. The ex cessive delicacy of his constitution exacted some unusual indul gences. He could not bear the stoves of Germany, and required an open fireplace in the room in which he worked. He was afflicted with the stone, and obliged to be particular as to what he drank. Beer he could not touch. The white wines of Baden or the Rhine did not suit him ; he could only drink those of Burgundy or Franche-Comte. He could neither eat, nor bear the smell of, fish. "His heart," he said, "was Catholic, but his stomach was Lutheran." For his constant journeys he required two horses, one for himself and one for his attendant. And he had to maintain amanuenses and couriers. Nevertheless he refused offers of prefer ment from many countries, because he was determined, at all costs, to maintain his liberty.
In November 1521 he settled permanently at Basle, as general editor and literary adviser of Froben's press. As a subject of the emperor, and attached to his court by a pension, it would have been convenient to him to have fixed his residence in Louvain. But the atmosphere of the university, overrun with Dominicans and Franciscans, united for once in their enmity to the new classi cal learning, inclined Erasmus to Basle. During the years of Erasmus's co-operation the Froben press took the lead of all the presses in Europe, both in the standard value of the works pub lished and in typographical execution. The series of the Fathers alone issued from it contains Jerome (1516), Cyprian (152o), Pseudo-Arnobius (15 2 2) , Hilarius ( I 523), Irenaeus (Latin, 15 2 6) , Ambrose (1527), Augustine (1528), Chrysostom (Latin, 153o), Basil (Greek, 1532, the first Greek author printed in Germany), and Origen (Latin, 1536). In these editions, partly texts, partly translations, it is impossible to determine the respective shares of Erasmus and his many helpers. The prefaces and dedications are all written by him, and some of them, as that to the Hilarius, are of importance for the history of the times and of Erasmus.
In this "mill," as he calls it, Erasmus continued to grind in cessantly for eight years. Besides his work as editor, he was always writing himself some book or pamphlet called for by the event of the day, by some general fray in which he was compelled to mingle, or by some personal assault which it was necessary to repel. These years at Basle saw a revised edition of the Colloquies (1522), and he continued to add to the book until the Familiarum Colloquiorum Opus in its final state (1526) contained twenty more dialogues. He also wrote at this time homiletic works, and the Institutis Christian Matrimonii for Catherine of Aragon. He was besieged for dedications, and for letters. "I receive daily," he writes, "letters from remote parts, from kings, princes, pre lates and men of learning, and even from persons of whose exist ence I was ignorant." Meanwhile he steadily refused to take definite sides against Luther, though he repeatedly said he was not acquainted with him and his works, and that his business was with the revival of letters. In 1524 the steady pressure on him induced him at last to enter into controversy with Luther. He chose a point on which they must always differ. Erasmus, whose life was spent in vindicating the dignity and liberty of the human spirit, would have nothing to do with the Lutheran determinism, and wrote the De Libero Arbitrio (1524), which drove Luther in De Servo Arbitrio to formulate his own doctrine more clearly.
Shortly after Froben's death (1527) the disturbances at Basle and the triumph of the reformers made it necessary for Erasmus to leave Basle in 1529. He selected Freiburg in the Breisgau, where he was received with public marks of respect by the authori ties, who granted him the use of an unfinished palace intended for the late emperor Maximilian. Erasmus eventually bought a house of his own, and remained there six years. He returned to Basle in He lived now a very retired life, and saw only a small circle of intimate friends. A last attempt was made by the papal court to persuade him to declare against the Reformation. On the election of Paul III. in 1534, he had, as usual, sent the new pope a congratulatory letter. He received a complimentary answer, together with the nomination to the deanery of Deventer, the in come of which was reckoned at 60o ducats, and an intimation that steps would be taken to provide for him the income, viz., 3,000 ducats, which was necessary to qualify for the cardinal's hat. The offer was made in the hope of obtaining the help of Erasmus as a mediator in the council projected to restore union in the Church. But Erasmus declined. In the winter of 1535-1536 he was con fined entirely to his chamber, many days to his bed. He worked up to the end. His last letter is dated the 28th of June, 1536, and subscribed "Eras. Rot. aegra manu." He died on July 11, 1536, in his loth year.
By his will, made on the 12th of February 1536, he left his fortune, with the exception of some legacies, to Bonifazius Amer bach, partly for himself, partly in trust for the benefit of the aged and the infirm, or to be spent in portioning young girls, and in educating young men of promise. He left none of the usual legacies for masses or other clerical purposes, and was not attended by any priest or confessor in his last moments.
Erasmus's features are familiar to all, from Holbein's many portraits or their copies. Beatus Rhenanus describes him as short of stature, but graceful in build. His complexion was fair ; light blue eyes, and yellowish hair. Though his voice was weak, his enunciation was distinct ; the expression of his face cheerful ; his manner and conversation polished, affable, even charming. His highly nervous organization made his feelings acute, and his brain incessantly active. Erasmus had many moods and each mood imprinted itself in turn on his words. Hence, on a superficial view, Erasmus is set down as the most inconsistent of men. Further acquaintance makes us feel a unity of character under lying this susceptibility to impressions. His seeming inconsisten cies were the fruits of the many-sidedness of a highly impressible nature. In the words of J. Nisard, Erasmus was one of those "dont la gloire a ete de beaucoup comprendre et d'affirmer peu." This equal openness to every vibration of his environment is the key to the middle attitude which he adopted towards the religious conflict. He was accused by Catholics of collusion with the enemies of the faith. His powerful friends, the pope, Wolsey, Henry VIII., the emperor, called upon him to declare against Luther. Theological historians from that time forward have presented Erasmus in the odious light of a trimmer ; yet it was not mere timidity or weakness which kept Erasmus neutral, but the reasonableness of his nature. His intellect revolted against the narrowness of party, and his whole being repudiated its clamorous and vulgar excesses. He loathed clerical fanaticism. And when out of Luther's revolt there arose a new fanaticism, Erasmus re coiled from the violence of the new preachers. "Is it for this," he writes to Melanchthon (Ep. xix. 113, 703), "that we have shaken off bishops and popes, that we may come under the yoke of such madmen as Otto and Farel?" In the words of Drummond: "Erasmus was in his own age the apostle of common sense and of rational religion. He did not care for dogma, and accordingly the dogmas of Rome, which had the consent of the Christian world, were in his eyes preferable to the dogmas of Protestantism. • • • From the beginning to the end of his career he remained true to the purpose of his life, which was to fight the battle of sound learning and plain common sense against the powers of ignorance and superstition, and amid all the convulsions of that period he never once lost his mental balance." In the mind of Erasmus there was no metaphysical inclination; he was a man of letters, with a general tendency to rational views on every subject which came under his pen. He is at his weakest in defending free will against Luther, and indeed he can hardly be said to enter on the metaphysical question. He treats the dis pute entirely from the outside. It is impossible in reading Eras mus not to be reminded of the rationalists of the 18th century. Erasmus has been called the "Voltaire of the Renaissance." But there is a vast difference in the relations in which they respectively stood to the church and to Christianity. Voltaire, though he did not originate, yet adopted a moral and religious scheme which he sought to substitute for the church tradition. He waged war, not only against the clergy, but against the church and its sover eigns. Erasmus drew the line at the first of these. He was not an anticipation of the 18th century ; he was the man of his age, as Voltaire of his; though Erasmus did not intend it, he undoubt edly shook the ecclesiastical edifice in all its parts; and, as Mel chior Adam says of him, "pontifici Romano plus nocuit jocando quam Lutherus stomachando." But though he remained Catholic and mourned the disruption, he was yet a true rationalist in principle. The principle that reason is the one only guide of life, the supreme arbiter of all questions, politics and religion included, has its earliest and most complete exemplar in Erasmus. He does not dogmatically announce the rights of reason, but he practically exercises them. Apart from the charm of style, the great attraction of the writings of Erasmus is this unconscious freedom by which they are pervaded.
In the annals of classical learning Erasmus may be regarded as intermediary between the humanists of the Latin Renaissance and the learned men of the age of Greek scholarship, between Angelo Poliziano and Joseph Scaliger. Erasmus, though justly styled by Muretus (Varr. Lectt. 7, 15) "eruditus sane vir, ac multae lectionis," was not a "learned" man in the special sense of the word—not an "erudit." He was a "man of letters"—the first who had appeared in Europe since the fall of the Roman empire. In editing a Father, or a classic, he had in view the practical utility of the general reader, not the accuracy required by the gild of scholars. It must be remembered that the commercial interests of Froben's press led to the introduction of Erasmus's name on many a title page when he had little to do with the book, e.g., the Latin Joseplius of 1524 to which Erasmus only contributed one translation of 14 pages ; or the Aristotle of 1531, of which Simon Grynaeus was the real editor.
Of Erasmus's works the Greek Testament is the most memor able. Its influence upon opinion was profound and durable. As an edition of the Greek Testament it has no critical value. But it was the first, and it revealed the fact that the Vulgate, the Bible of the church, was not only a second-hand document, but in places an erroneous document. A shock was thus given to the credit of the clergy in the province of literature, equal to that which was given in the province of science by the astronomical discoveries of the 17th century. Even if Erasmus had had at his disposal the mss. subsidia for forming a text, he had not the critical skill re quired to use them. He had at hand a few late Basle mss., one of which he sent straight to press, correcting them in places by collations of others which had been sent to him by Colet in Eng land. In four reprints, 1519, 1522, Erasmus gradually weeded out many of the typographical errors of his first edition, but the text remained essentially such as he had first printed it. The Greek text indeed was only a part of his scheme. An impor tant feature of the volume was the new Latin version, the original being placed alongside as a guarantee of the translator's good faith. This translation, with the justificatory notes which ac companied it, became the starting-point of modern exegetical science. Erasmus did not solve the problem, but to him belongs the honour of having first propounded it.
Besides translating and editing the New Testament, Erasmus paraphrased the whole, except the Apocalypse, between 1517 and 1524. The paraphrases were received with great applause, even by those who had little appreciation for Erasmus. In England a translation of them made in 1548 was ordered to be placed in all parish churches beside the Bible. His correspondence is per haps the part of his works which has the most permanent value; it comprises about 3,000 letters, which form an important source for the history of that period. For the same purpose his Colloquia may be consulted. They are a series of dialogues, writ ten first for pupils in the early Paris days as formulae of polite address, but afterwards expanded into lively conversations, in which many of the topics of the day are discussed. Later in the century they were read in schools, and some of Shakespeare's lines are direct reminiscences of Erasmus.
His complete works have been printed twice; by the Froben firm under the direction of his literary executors (9 vols., Basle, 1S4o) ; and by Leclerc at Leiden (II vols., 17o3—o6) . The letters were edited by P. S. Allen (5 vols., 1906-12) . For his life the chief contemporary sources are a Compendium vitae written by himself in 1524, and a sketch prefixed by Beatus Rhenanus to the Basle edition of 154o. Of his writings he gives an account in his Catalogus lucubrationum, composed first in January 1523 and enlarged in September 1524; and also in a letter to Hector Boece of Aberdeen, written in 1539. An elaborate bibliography, entitled Bibliotheca Erasmiana was under taken by the officials of the Ghent University Library ; it is divided into three sections, for Erasmus's writings, the books he edited, and the literature about him. Listes sommaires were issued in 1893 ; and since 1897 the completed volumes have been appearing at intervals. There is an excellent sketch of Erasmus's life down to 1519 in F. Seebohm's Oxford Reformers (3rd ed., 1887) ; and of the many biographies those by S. Knight (1726), J. Jortin (2 vols., 1758-176o) and R. B. Drummond (2 vols., 1873) ; Preserved Smith, Erasmus, A Study of his Life, Ideals and Place in History (Loud. and New York, 1923) ; J. Huizinga, Erasmus (New York, 1924) may be mentioned. There are also three volumes (1901-17) of translations by F. M. Nichols from Erasmus's letters down to 1517, with an ample commentary which amounts almost to a biography. See also P. S. Allen, The Age of Erasmus (Oxford, 1914) ; and Preserved Smith, The Age of Erasmus (New York, 192o) . (M. PA. ; X.)