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Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was the most important literary figure of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. The first truly international author of the Renaissance, his influence upon his immediate contemporaries and following generations can hardly be overestimated. He was the arbiter of letters of his day, the first name in classical scholarship, the finest biblical scholar, the best satirist, and first, or nearly first in a score of other fields of intellectual endeavor. He was also a remarkable personality, perhaps the only important man in Europe who was able to keep his head through the incredible ferment of ideas and beliefs that permeated the age; he never yielded to extremes. He was the great stabilizer of his day. This present work, written by one of America's foremost historians, is the standard English-language work on Erasmus. Extremely readable and fluent, it is also very thorough and very profound in its insights. It makes use of every known source of information on Erasmus to accomplish its threefold purpose: to present the known facts of Erasmus's life, to exhibit his literary genius, and to examine his intricate relations with the important figures of the Reformation and the Renaissance. It makes clear his almost unbelievable virtuosity in letters, analyzes his subtle personality, and explains how this unassuming, quiet, modest man really controlled the ideological destiny of Europe for decades. For many years the study of Erasmus has been somewhat neglected, since we were still too close to the controversies and biases that had come down to us from his time. Now, however, it is being recognized more and more surely that he was a remarkable example in both achievements and orientation, and that our present culture owes much more to him than we had admitted. No student of philosophy, literature, European history, history of religions, theology, or of cultural history can afford to be without this book.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) was the most important literary figure of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. The first truly international author of the Renaissance, his influence upon his immediate contemporaries and following generations can hardly be overestimated. He was the arbiter of letters of his day, the first name in classical scholarship, the finest biblical scholar, the best satirist, and first, or nearly first in a score of other fields of intellectual endeavor. He was also a remarkable personality, perhaps the only important man in Europe who was able to keep his head through the incredible ferment of ideas and beliefs that permeated the age; he never yielded to extremes. He was the great stabilizer of his day. This present work, written by one of America’s foremost historians, is the standard English-language work on Erasmus. Extremely readable and fluent, it is also very thorough and very profound in its insights. It makes use of every known source of information on Erasmus to accomplish its threefold purpose: to present the known facts of Erasmus’s life, to exhibit his literary genius, and to examine his intricate relations with the important figures of the Reformation and the Renaissance. It makes clear his almost unbelievable virtuosity in letters, analyzes his subtle personality, and explains how this unassuming, quiet, modest man really controlled the ideological destiny of Europe for decades. For many years the study of Erasmus has been somewhat neglected, since we were still too close to the controversies and biases that had come down to us from his time. Now, however, it is being recognized more and more surely that he was a remarkable example in both achievements and orientation, and that our present culture owes much more to him than we had admitted. No student of philosophy, literature, European history, history of religions, theology, or of cultural history can afford to be without this book.

The first English-language popular biography of widely influential northern Renaissance scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam in twenty years. Erasmus of Rotterdam came from an obscure background but, through remarkable perseverance, skill, and independent vision, became a powerful and controversial intellectual figure in Europe in the early sixteenth century. He was known for his vigorous opposition to war, intolerance, and hypocrisy, and at the same time for irony and subtlety that could confuse his friends as well as his opponents. His ideas about language, society, scholarship, and religion influenced the rise of the Reformation and had a huge impact on the humanities, and that influence continues today. This book shows how an independent textual scholar was able, by the power of the printing press and his wits, to attain both fame and notoriety. Drawing on the immense wealth of recent scholarship devoted to Erasmus, Erasmus of Rotterdam is the first English-language popular biography of this crucial thinker in twenty years.

In his own day a center of controversy, in the four hundred years since his death known too often solely as an apostle of mockery and irreverence, Erasmus can be seen today in a new light—as a humanist whose concen is at once contemporary and Christian. The Essential Erasmus is the first single volume in English to show the full spectrum of this Renaissance man's thought, which is no less profound because it is expressed with the grace, wit, and ironic detachment only a great writer can achieve. Contains the full text of In Praise of Folly