Early modern Europe · 1466 or 1469–1536
Desiderius Erasmus
Dutch humanist scholar, editor of the Greek New Testament
He wanted a simple, inward “philosophy of Christ” recovered from the original sources, and mocked clerical greed and the schoolmen’s hair-splitting. He defended free will against Luther but refused to join either side of the Reformation.
Life and thought
Erasmus was born in Rotterdam in 1466 or 1469, the illegitimate son of a priest. Schooled at Deventer, he entered the Augustinian canons at Steyn and was ordained, but left the cloister to study in Paris and spent his life as a travelling scholar in England, Italy, Leuven and Basel, living on patrons and on his work with printers such as Johann Froben. By 1520 he was the best-known writer in Europe.
Erasmus wanted to bring Christianity back to its sources. In 1516 he published the first Greek New Testament to reach the market, with a new Latin translation, so readers could see what the text actually said. His “philosophy of Christ” was inner piety and decent conduct rather than ceremonies, relics or scholastic hair-splitting, all of which he mocked in The Praise of Folly. When the Reformation came, he defended human free will against Luther (1524), who replied with The Bondage of the Will (1525); yet he would not condemn reform wholesale, and both camps came to distrust him.
Works
Shaped by
106–43 BCECiceroRoman orator and statesman who brought Greek philosophy into LatinMeanwhile, in other traditions
1472–1529Wang YangmingMing official, general and master of the School of Mind1501–1570Yi Hwang (Toegye)Leading Neo-Confucian scholar of Joseon KoreaOn the record
Erasmus was born c. 1466.
His birth year is genuinely disputed. Erasmus usually reckoned his age as if born in 1466, but the ages he recalled at key events point to 1469, which the Stanford Encyclopedia adopts (28 October 1469). Both years remain in scholarly use.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Desiderius Erasmus” · Wikipedia, “Erasmus” (on the 1466/1469 question)