ERASMUS, it-0.7.'1111)s. DESIDERWS (e.1466 15361. One of the greatest scholars of the Re naissance and Reformation period. lie was born at Itotterdani, October 28th, probably in the year 1466. The materials for the history of his life are scanty and doubtful, being taken almost en tirely from his own writings. In spite of the obvious purpose of most of these materials to ex plain or to conceal matters of personal experi ence, they have been generally accepted by biog raphers as historical, and thus a kind of Eras titian legend has taken form, only partially cleared up by the labors of recent critical schol arship.
The fame of Erasmus rests upon Ifis work as the chief interpreter to the peoples of northernn. Europe of the great intellectual movement of the fifteenth century. The circumstances of his un eventful life are of interest only as they illus trate this great service. Ile was, on his own statement, an illegitimate child, but was tender ly cared for by his parents until their death, when he was about fourteen years old. They gave him the hest attainable education at the famous school of Deventer, and left him a little property—sufficient, he says, if it had been hus banded, to pay his way at a university. His guardians, however, took the more natural and safe course of placing him first at a school of the Brothers of the Common Life at Bois-le-Due, where he spent, 'or rather wasted,' about three years, and then in the monastery of Canons Regular at Steyn, near Gouda. Here he spent ten years. He took priest's orders; but left the monastery, never to return, in 1492 or 1493. For a short time he was at Paris. Then he began his career as an independent scholar, living by his pen and the favors it brought him, and continued this life till his death. With fre quent intervals of wandering, he resided at Paris, Louvain, in England, at Basel, and Freiburg im Breisgau; for three years be was in Italy (1500 09). His chief attachments were in England and Basel. He was on terms of a certain inti macy with John Colet, founder of Saint Paul's School; Thomas Linaere. founder of the London College of Physicians: \Vilna») Grocyn. teacher of Greek at Oxford; and Thomas More, the great Chancellor. For a time he held a readership in Greek at Cambridge. His serious purpose
to devote himself to the revival of 'Theology, the Queen of Sciences,' dates from his first acquaint ance with these men in the last years of the cen tury. Archbishop W'arham, of Canterbury, gave him a substantial and permanent income. In Basel he was the intimate of a circle of reform ing scholars who gathered about the famous pub lisher John Froben. In Italy he was for a time a member of the 'familia' of the Venetian pub lisher Aldus Manutius. His correspondence, in cluding more than 1500 letters, shows him in re lations with over 500 persons, many of them of the highest station.
Down to the year 1517, when the Lutheran re volt began. the work of Erasmus was largely in criticism of the existing Roman Catholic Church system and of the scholastic method in philos ophy by which it was defended. In his Enebi ridion Militia Christiani (The Manual or Dag ger of the Christian Soldier, 1523) he lays down in didactic form the uselessness of forms in religion, as compared to the spirit of sin cere apostolic piety. In his Adagio (150S). a collection of passages from classic authors, he adds to purely philologieal interpretation a run ning commentary of moral reflection which gave to this work an immediate and permanent sue C1.55. I 11 the Colloquia (1524), a series of dia logues on :1 of topics, there runs all through the same vein of serious comment on the vices and follies of priests, monks, philosophers, miracle and relic mongers, and all the other for mal shams of the time. Even in the Encomium Al °rim (the Pra i se of Folly ; 1509), perhaps the most biting, as it was doubtless the most popular, of his satirical writings, a fair examina detects throughout a serious undertone of protest. Still more important was Erasmus's great contribution to critical scholarship in his edition of the Greek New Testament, with a Latin translation in 151G. Though not the tirst to conceive the plan of such an undertaking, Erasmus was first in the field, and might well reply to criticism of certain defects, that while others were carping he had done the work, and was quite content if only his service might point the way to other scholars.