Erasmian

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus ( ; ; 28 October c. 1466 – 12 July 1536), commonly known in English as Erasmus of Rotterdam or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic priest and theologian, educationalist, satirist, and philosopher. Through his works, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.

Erasmus was an important figure in classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and natural Latin style. As a Catholic priest developing humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared pioneering new Latin and Greek scholarly editions of the New Testament and of the Church Fathers, with annotations and commentary that were immediately and vitally influential in both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Reformation. He also wrote '' On Free Will'', ''The Praise of Folly'', '' The Complaint of Peace'', ''Handbook of a Christian Knight'', ''On Civility in Children'', '' Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style'' and many other popular and pedagogical works.

Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious reformations. He developed a biblical humanistic theology in which he advocated the religious and civil necessity both of peaceable concord and of pastoral tolerance on '' matters of indifference''. He remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the church from within. He promoted what he understood as the traditional doctrine of synergism, which some prominent reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favour of the doctrine of monergism. His influential middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps.

Life and career

Erasmus's almost 70 years may be divided into quarters.

* First was his medieval Dutch childhood, ending with his being orphaned and impoverished;
* Second, his struggling years as a canon (a kind of semi-monk), a clerk, a priest, a failing and sickly university student, a would-be poet, and a tutor;
* Third, his flourishing but peripatetic High Renaissance years of increasing focus and literary productivity following his 1499 contact with a reformist English circle notably John Colet and Thomas More, then with radical French Franciscan Jean Vitrier (or Voirier), and later with the Greek-speaking Aldine New Academy in Venice; and
* Fourth, his financially more secure Reformation years near the Black Forest: as a prime influencer of European thought through his New Testament and increasing public opposition to aspects of Lutheranism, first in Basel and then as a Catholic religious refugee in Freiburg.

Early life

Desiderius Erasmus is reported to have been born in Rotterdam on 27 or 28 October ("the vigil of Simon and Jude") in the late 1460s.
He was named''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' was a scholarly name meaning "from Rotterdam", though the Latin toponymic adjective would be . after Erasmus of Formiae, whom Erasmus' father Gerard (Gerardus Helye) personally favoured. Although associated closely with Rotterdam, he lived there for only four years, never to return afterwards.

The year of Erasmus' birth is unclear: in later life he calculated his age as if born in 1466, but frequently his remembered age at major events actually implies 1469. (This article currently gives 1466 as the birth year. To handle this disagreement, ages are given first based on 1469, then in parentheses based on 1466: e.g., "20 (or 23)".) Furthermore, many details of his early life must be gleaned from a fictionalised third-person account he wrote in 1516 (published in 1529) in a letter to a fictitious Papal secretary, Lambertus Grunnius ("Mr. Grunt").

His parents could not be legally married: his father, Gerard, was a Catholic priestCornelius Augustijn, ''Erasmus: His life, work and influence'', University of Toronto, 1991 who may have spent up to six years in the 1450s or 60s in Italy as a scribe and scholar. His mother was Margaretha Rogerius (Latinized form of Dutch surname Rutgers), the daughter of a doctor from Zevenbergen. She may have been Gerard's housekeeper.
Although he was born out of wedlock, Erasmus was cared for by his parents, with a loving household and the best education, until their early deaths from the bubonic plague in 1483. His only sibling Peter might have been born in 1463, and some writers suggest Margaret was a widow and Peter was the half-brother of Erasmus; Erasmus on the other hand called him his brother. There were legal and social restrictions on the careers and opportunities open to the children of unwed parents.

Erasmus' own story, in the possibly forged 1524 ' was along the lines that his parents were engaged, with the formal marriage blocked by his relatives (presumably a young widow or unmarried mother with a child was not an advantageous match); his father went to Italy to study Latin and Greek, and the relatives misled Gerard that Margaretha had died, on which news grieving Gerard romantically took Holy Orders, only to find on his return that Margaretha was alive; many scholars dispute this account.

In 1471 his father became the vice-curate of the small town of Woerden (where young Erasmus may have attended the local vernacular school to learn to read and write) and in 1476 was promoted to vice-curate of Gouda.

Erasmus was given the highest education available to a young commoner of his day, in a series of private, monastic or semi-monastic schools. In 1476, at the age of 6 (or 9), his family moved to Gouda and he started at the school of Pieter Winckel, who later became his guardian (and, perhaps, squandered Erasmus and Peter's inheritance.) Historians who date his birth in 1466 have Erasmus in Utrecht at the choir school at this period.

In 1478, at the age of 9 (or 12), he and his older brother Peter were sent to one of the best Latin schools in the Netherlands, located at Deventer and owned by the chapter clergy of the Lebuïnuskerk (St. Lebuin's Church). A notable previous student was Thomas à Kempis. Towards the end of his stay there the curriculum was renewed by the new principal of the school, Alexander Hegius, a correspondent of pioneering rhetorician Rudolphus Agricola. For the first time in Europe north of the Alps, Greek was taught at a lower level than a university and this is where he began learning it. His education there ended when plague struck the city about 1483, and his mother, who had moved to provide a home for her sons, died from the infection; then his father. Following the death of his parents, as well as 20 fellow students at his school, he moved back to his ' (Rotterdam?) where he was supported by Berthe de Heyden,DeMolen, Richard L. (1976),p.13 a compassionate widow.

In 1484, around the age 14 (or 17), he and his brother went to a cheaper grammar school or seminary at 's-Hertogenbosch run by the Brethren of the Common Life:Painter Hieronymous Bosch lived nearby, on the marketplace, at this time. Erasmus' ''Epistle to Grunnius'' (see above) satirises them as the "Collationary Brethren" who select and sort boys for monkhood. He was exposed there to the Devotio moderna movement and the Brethren's famous book '' The Imitation of Christ'' but resented the harsh rules and strict methods of the religious brothers and educators. The two brothers made an agreement that they would resist the clergy but attend the university; Erasmus longed to study in Italy, the birthplace of Latin, and have a degree from an Italian university. Instead, Peter left for the Augustinian canonry in Stein, which left Erasmus feeling betrayed. Around this time he wrote forlornly to his friend Elizabeth de Heyden "Shipwrecked am I, and lost, 'mid waters chill'." He suffered Quartan fever for over a year. Eventually Erasmus moved to the same abbey as a postulant in or before 1487, around the age of 16 (or 19.)"Poverty stricken, suffering from quartan fever, and pressurized by his guardians"

Vows, ordination and canonry experience

Poverty had forced the sickly, bookish, teenaged orphan Erasmus into the consecrated life, entering the novitiate in 1487 at the canonry at rural Stein, very near Gouda, South Holland: the ''Chapter of Sion'' communityCanons regular of St Augustine, Chapter of Sion (or Syon), ''Emmaus'' house, Stein (or Steyn). largely borrowed its rule from the larger monkish Congregation of Windesheim who had historical associations with the Brethren of the Common Life, but also with the notable pastoral, mystical and anti-speculative post-scholastic theologians Jean Gerson and Gabriel Biel: positions associated also with Erasmus. In 1488–1490, the surrounding region was plundered badly by armies fighting the Squire Francis War of succession and then suffered a famine. Erasmus professed his vows as a Canon regular of St. Augustine there in late 1488 at age 19 (or 22).

Historian Fr. Aiden Gasquet later wrote: "One thing, however, would seem to be quite clear; he could never have had any vocation for the religious life. His whole subsequent history shows this unmistakably." But according to one Catholic biographer, Erasmus had a spiritual awakening at the monastery.

Certain abuses in religious orders were among the chief objects of his later calls to reform the Western Church from within, particularly coerced or tricked recruitment of immature boys (the fictionalised account in the ''Letter to Grunnius'' calls them "victims of Dominic and Francis and Benedict"): Erasmus felt he had belonged to this class, joining "voluntarily but not freely" and so considered himself, if not morally bound by his vows, certainly legally, socially and honour- bound to keep them, yet to look for his true vocation.

While at Stein, 18-(or 21-)year-old Erasmus fell in unrequited love, forming what he called a "passionate attachment" (), with a fellow canon, Servatius Rogerus,Diarmaid MacCulloch (2003). '' Reformation: A History''. p. 95. MacCulloch has a footnote "There has been much modern embarrassment and obfuscation on Erasmus and Rogerus, but see the sensible comment in J. Huizinga, ''Erasmus of Rotterdam'' (London, 1952), pp. 11–12, and from Geoffrey Nutuall, ''Journal of Ecclesiastical History'' 26 (1975), 403"


In Huizinga's view: "Out of the letters to Servatius there rises the picture of an Erasmus whom we shall never find again—a young man of more than feminine sensitiveness; of a languishing need for sentimental friendship. ..his exuberant friendship accords quite well with the times and the person. ..Sentimental friendships were as much in vogue in secular circles during the fifteenth century as towards the end of the eighteenth century. Each court had its pairs of friends, who dressed alike, and shared room, bed, and heart. Nor was this cult of fervent friendship restricted to the sphere of aristocratic life. It was among the specific characteristics of the ''devotio moderna''." and wrote a series of love letters in which he called Rogerus "half my soul", writing that "it was not for the sake of reward or out of a desire for any favour that I have wooed you both unhappily and relentlessly. What is it then? Why, that you love him who loves you."Erasmus editor Harry Vredeveld argues that the letters are "surely expressions of true friendship", citing what Erasmus wrote in his ''Letter to Grunnius'' about an earlier teenage infatuation with a "Cantellius": "It is not uncommon at hatage to conceive passionate attachments 'fervidos amores''for some of your companions". However, he allows "That these same letters, which run the gamut of love's emotions, are undoubtedly also literary exercises—rhetorical —is by no means a contradiction of this." This correspondence contrasts with the generally detached and much more restrained attitude he usually showed in his later life, though he had a capacity to form and maintain deep male friendships,But also a capacity to feel betrayal sharply, as with his brother Peter, "Cantellius", Aleander, and Dorp. such as with More, Colet, and Ammonio.The biographer J.J. Mangan commented of his time living with Andrea Ammonio in England "to some extent Erasmus thereby realized the dream of his youth, which was to live together with some choice literary spirit with whom he might share his thoughts and aspiration". Quoted in J. K. Sowards, ''The Two Lost Years of Erasmus: Summary, Review, and Speculation'', Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 9 (1962), p. 174. No mentions or sexual accusations were ever made of Erasmus during his lifetime. His works notably praise moderate sexual desire in marriage between men and women.

He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood either on 25 April 1492, Galli, Mark, and Olsen, TED (conference). ''131 Christians Everyone Should Know''. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2000, p. 343. or 25 April 1495, at age 25 (or 28). Either way, he did not actively work as a choir priest for very long, though his many works on confession and penance suggests experience of dispensing them.

Disengagement

In 1493, his prior arranged for him to leave the Stein house and move to Brabant, to take up the post of Latin Secretary to the ambitious Bishop of Cambrai, Henry of Bergen, on account of his great skill in Latin and his reputation as a man of letters. Following this, he went to Paris to study theology. His status as priest, latinist and student, and his habit of being far away, afforded a measure of disengagement from the Stein canonry.

From 1500, he avoided returning to the canonry at Stein even insisting the diet and hours would kill him,Erasmus suffered severe food intolerances, including to fish, beer and many wines, which formed much of the diet of Northern European monks, and caused his antipathy to fasts. "My heart is Catholic, but my stomach is Lutheran." (''Epistles'') though he did stay with other Augustinian communities and at monasteries of other orders in his travels. Rogerus, who became prior at Stein in 1504, and Erasmus corresponded over the years, with Rogerus demanding Erasmus return after his studies were complete. Nevertheless, the library of the canonryThe canonry burnt down in 1549 and the canons moved to Gouda. ended up with by far the largest collection of Erasmus' publications in the Gouda region.

In 1505, Pope Julius II granted a dispensation from the vow of poverty to the extent of allowing Erasmus to hold certain benefices, and from the control and habit of his order, though he remained a priest and, formally, an Augustinian canon regularDispensed of his vows o
stability and obedience
from his obligations "by the constitutions and ordinances, also by statutes and customs of the monastery of Stein in Holland", quoted in J. K. Sowards, ''The Two Lost Years of Erasmus: Summary, Review, and Speculation'', Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 9 (1962), p. 174. Erasmus continued to report occasionally to the prior, who disputed the validity of the 1505 dispensation. the rest his life. In 1517, Pope Leo X granted legal dispensations for Erasmus' ''defects of natality''Undispensed illegitimacy had various effects under canon law: if a man's biological parents had never married, he could not be ordained a secular priest, unless he became a canon or regular monk, or to hold benefices; but any or all of these disabilities could be removed by a papal dispensation. This canon law, in effect since the Council of Poitiers (1078), was intended to prevent kings appointing their illegitimate children as abbots and bishops. In practice, dispensations were frequently given: Erasmus' student, the teenage Alexander Stewart was the illegitimate child of the Scottish king and, by papal dispensation, Archbishop of St Andrews. and confirmed the previous dispensation, allowing the 48-(or 51-)year-old his independence but still, as a canon, capable of holding office as a prior or abbot. Indeed, in 1535, incoming Pope Paul III appointed him Provost of the "Canons of Deventer" (i.e., the semi-monastic Brethren of the Common Life chapter, which had long resisted titles such as Provost, and/or perhaps the canons of the Grote or Lebuïnuskerk): this may also have been related to his intended return to the Low Countries. In 1525, Pope Clement VII granted, for health reasons, a dispensation to eat meat and dairy in Lent and on fast days.
1501

Travels

Erasmus travelled widely and regularly, for reasons of poverty, "escape" from his Stein canonry (to Cambrai), education (to Paris, Turin), escape from the sweating sickness plague (to Orléans

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