ERASMUS, Desiderius, Dutch scholar: b. Rotterdam, probably 28 Oct. 1467; d. Basel, Switzerland, 12 July 1536. He was the illegiti mate son of one Gerhard of Gouda. The name by which he is known is merely the Latin and Greek rendering of Gerhard, Desiderius, the Latin, and Erasmus, or, more correctly, Eras mius, the Greek equivalent. He was a singing boy in the cathedral of Utrecht till his ninth year, then entered the school at Deventer, where he displayed such brilliant powers that it was predict 'that he would be the most learned man o his time. At the age of 17 he assumed the monastic habit near Gouda, but the bishop of Cambrai delivered him from this constraint by taking him as a Latin secretary. In 1492 he was ordained, and went to Paris to perfect himself in theology and polite literature, and there became the instructor of several rich Englishmen, from one of whom — Lord Mont joy—he received a pension for life. He ac companied them to England in 1497, where he was graciously received by the king. He re turned soon after to Paris, and then traveled into Italy to increase his stock of knowledge. He now asked a dispensation from the vows of his order, which the Pope granted him. He 'visited Venice, Padua and Rome; taught at Louvain 1502-04; but brilliant as were the offers here made him, he preferred the in vitation of his friends in England. When he visited the lord-chancellor, Sir Thomas More (1506), without making himself known to him, the chancellor was so delighted with his con versation that he exclaimed, °You are either Erasmus or the devil.* He made his third visit to England in 1509. He was offered a benefice, but was unwilling to fetter himself by an office of this kind. He was for a short time pro fessor of divinity and Greek at Oxford. He afterward traveled through Germany and the Netherlands, and went to Basel, where he had his works printed by Froben and acted as gen eral adviser of Froben's presses, which he raised to he the most important in Europe.
To profound and extensive learning Erasmus joined a refined taste and a delicate wit. Naturally fond of tranquillity and independence, he preferred the pleasure of literary ease and retirement to the pomp of high life. All through life he suffered from a bad stomach; he could not eat nor bear the smell of fish; as he humorously put it, "his heart was Catho lic, but his stomach was Lutheran? For a man of a detached and inquiring mind like his, partisanship was impossible; but he wished to see the power of the clergy broken as the main obstacle to the spread of liberal ideas. But he recoiled from the fanaticism which accompa nied the Reformation, and had no sympathy with the evangelicism to which it gave birth. Indeed theological disputation had no attrac tions for him, although it has been said of him that he laid the egg which Luther hatched. Luther spoke for the low-born; Erasmus for the more cultured class. He implies that the revelation of religion has added nothing to life that makes it worth living. The incisive way in which he handled the religious abuses of his time prepared men's minds for Luther's work, and he was also free and outspoken in his criticism of the treatment meted out by kings to their subjects. The great service he rendered was in fighting the battle of sound learning and plain common sense against ob-? scurantism, and in emphasizing the sover eign place of reason as the ultimate guide in 1./ all questions, religious and political not ex cepted. Besides his editions of various classics, the first edition of the Greek Testament from MSS. (with Latin translation), and his other philological and theological writings, may be only mentioned his well-known book in praise of folly, 'Encomium Morim,) and his 'Collo quies) (1519). His letters are very valuable in reference to the history of that period. (See