"Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) This illegitimate son of a Dutch priest lived in search of knowledge, in pursuit of piety, in love with books, and oppressed by the fear of poverty. Along the way, his writings and scholarship started a theological earthquake that didn't stop until western European Christendom was split.
Born in Rotterdam, orphaned by the plague, Erasmus was sent from the chapter school of St.
Lebuin's—which taught classical learning and the humanities—to a school conducted by the monastic Brethren of the Common Life. He absorbed an emphasis on a personal relationship with God but hated the severe rules of monastic life and the intolerant theologians.
And as soon as he was ordained a priest in 1492, he did, becoming secretary to the bishop of Cambrai, who sent him to Paris to study theology.
Colet, who would later become the dean of St. Paul's, encouraged the Dutch scholar to become a "primitive theologian" who studied Scripture like the church Fathers, not like the argumentative scholastics.
Thereafter Erasmus devoted himself to the Greek language, in which the New Testament was written.
The result was his most significant work: an edition of the New Testament in original Greek, published in 1516. Accompanying it were study notes as well as his own Latin translation—correcting some 600 errors in Jerome's Vulgate.
Erasmus's enemies accused him of inspiring the schismatic Luther. And indeed, Erasmus found much he liked in the German's writings, describing him to Leo X as "a mighty trumpet of gospel truth." At the same time, he privately told his printer to stop printing Luther's writings because he didn't want his own efforts tangled with the Reformer's.
Erasmus pleaded moderation to both sides. But when pressed, he sided with the pope. "I am not so made as to fly in the face of the Vicar of Christ," he assured Leo.
Indeed, Luther attacked him as a Moses who would die in the wilderness "without entering the promised land." And the Roman Catholic church forbade his writings. "Had I not seen it, nay, felt it myself," he wrote, "I should never have believed anyone who said theologians could become so insane." CT
......of making many books there is no end;
and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Ecclesiastes 12:12
Born in Rotterdam, orphaned by the plague, Erasmus was sent from the chapter school of St.
And as soon as he was ordained a priest in 1492, he did, becoming secretary to the bishop of Cambrai, who sent him to Paris to study theology.
Colet, who would later become the dean of St. Paul's, encouraged the Dutch scholar to become a "primitive theologian" who studied Scripture like the church Fathers, not like the argumentative scholastics.
Thereafter Erasmus devoted himself to the Greek language, in which the New Testament was written.
The result was his most significant work: an edition of the New Testament in original Greek, published in 1516. Accompanying it were study notes as well as his own Latin translation—correcting some 600 errors in Jerome's Vulgate.
Erasmus's enemies accused him of inspiring the schismatic Luther. And indeed, Erasmus found much he liked in the German's writings, describing him to Leo X as "a mighty trumpet of gospel truth." At the same time, he privately told his printer to stop printing Luther's writings because he didn't want his own efforts tangled with the Reformer's.
Erasmus pleaded moderation to both sides. But when pressed, he sided with the pope. "I am not so made as to fly in the face of the Vicar of Christ," he assured Leo.
Indeed, Luther attacked him as a Moses who would die in the wilderness "without entering the promised land." And the Roman Catholic church forbade his writings. "Had I not seen it, nay, felt it myself," he wrote, "I should never have believed anyone who said theologians could become so insane." CT
......of making many books there is no end;
and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Ecclesiastes 12:12
