Main and side issues according to Erasmus
According to Erasmus, if we went back to the core, there was no need for Reformation. On modernity, Renaissance, the quagmire of theologians, Luther’s wrath, and an innkeeper who became king.
Toleration and the Reformation
With the Reformation we are approaching a historical tipping point in thinking about toleration. Our contemporary thinking about religious toleration has mainly been shaped as a result of the Reformation. And the ideas about religious toleration gradually led to the application of those principles to freedom of conscience, and political (and economic) toleration. The Reformation was therefore a very important event in Western history. It is tempting to dwell on this for a long time. But in itself the event could be explained fairly clearly.
The Church of Rome was reaching its own limits. I have already explained in this series that the church had two faces: the peaceful community of pious charity on the one hand, and the organisation that instinctively sided with power and money and suppressed division with a heavy hand. Simply put, the latter side had gained the upper hand in the late Middle Ages. The increasingly better educated citizenry no longer tolerated ecclesiastical corruption, and the leadership of the church was no longer able to turn the tide. The bomb was about to drop, that was inevitable. The church fought tooth and nail against dissenters, but there was no saving it. After a century full of war, the church had to come to terms with it around the middle of the 17th century. The Christian unity that had been forced under the wings of the Roman emperors was at an end.
Paradoxically, it was not the Reformation itself that led to greater religious toleration. The reformers, with Luther and Calvin in the lead, were not that tolerant at all. And the battle between the Church of Rome and the new Protestant movements became so heated that opinions polarised enormously. Those who were not in favour were against. Even very nuanced people eventually got carried away by that polarisation. It was the reaction to the schism and polarisation that eventually led to a debate about religious toleration. On the eve of the Reformation, Catholics like Erasmus, and Protestants like Sebastian Franck, called for moderation. And especially conciliators who had to think about a situation of a fait accompli: how to manage a society that is religiously divided?
We will discuss the topic of toleration and Reformation in three episodes:
This episode is mainly about the run-up to the Reformation, and the perspective from the Church of Rome. That perspective is embodied by the influential priest Erasmus, who mainly advocated moderation and hoped for a reform of the church from within.
The next episode will be about the Protestant side: the priests and theologians who decided to turn their backs on the church hierarchy, led by Luther and Calvin.
The final episode will deal with the aftermath. Once the split was a fact, could Protestants and Catholics still see eye-to-eye?
Modernity and Renaissance
Historians use the term regularly, they speak of the Early Modern age, but they are also a bit embarrassed about the concept of modernity. The concept of modernity encompasses a cluster of developments that began to become clearly visible around the year 1500, particularly in England, France and Germany and surrounding regions, and in some respects also in Italy and Spain. Among historians, there have been objections to the concept: it can be interpreted teleologically (the logical error that development inevitably had to proceed this way, with the current situation as the grand finale), it is Eurocentric and it misrepresents developments that started much earlier. That's all true. But that does not alter the fact that modernity is easily identifiable as a cluster of developments, a cluster that became clearly visible around the year 1500, with consequences that continue to leave their mark on current global culture to this day.
The Renaissance was the era par excellence in which individualisation began to flourish. Man became more and more an independently thinking individual. Spirituality remained untouched for the time being, but people gradually began to realise that they could make individual choices, also in matters concerning faith. In art too, the individual artist as a human being came more to the fore: there was room for the artist's subjectivity. It is not without reason that in 13th century Italy (where the Renaissance began), artists started signing their works. With the invention of the printing press it became much easier to spread new ideas widely in Europe without the intervention of the church.
The Holy Roman Empire was in disarray; more nation states emerged. Machiavelli emphasised in his Il Principe (1532) how monarchs had to rely on themselves. They had to regard the interests of their state as the highest good, even if they conflicted with moral considerations. Cities sprang up, and the increasingly prosperous bourgeoisie was economically able to adopt a more assertive position towards the monarch and the church.
The church watched it with dismay: in every respect the believers were becoming more assertive. The inviolability of church authority decreased. Moral corruption in the church was no longer so easily swept under the carpet. We have discussed in detail the two faces of the Church of Rome. Ever since the Christians took power in Rome, the church had systematically opted for power and money. An effort was made to doctrinally reconcile its moral corruption with the tolerant instructions of Jesus and Paul. And when that was impossible, the church looked the other way, as in the treatment of pagan slaves. That the Church of Rome itself had become a corrupt band of robbers was no longer lost on anyone in the 15th and 16th centuries.
But with increasing urbanisation and prosperity, a broad counter-movement emerged. One of the first in the countermovement who succeeded in mobilising a broad network, with the help of the newly invented printing press, was the erudite priest Erasmus Roterodamus1 (1469-1536). Erasmus — like his contemporaries — was well aware of the moral corruption of the church; in his Praise of Folly (1511) he dared to make fun of it. Although he shared many of Luther's objections to the church, he ultimately did not agree with Luther's decision to withdraw from church authority. For Erasmus it was unthinkable that the church of Jesus would fall apart. Salvation was only available at the church of Jesus, Peter and Paul. There had been consensus about this since the founding of the Christian Church, and Erasmus was therefore clearly in the tradition of the Church Fathers and mediaeval thinkers.
At the same time, he also recognised that the church had gone too far in its efforts to preserve unity. Erasmus considered much of what the church regarded as heresy and therefore suppressed with violence as nonsense that distracted from the core. He found the church's response to differing views tyrannical.
The formation of Erasmus
Erasmus was born as the illegitimate son of a priest. If that came out, his social career would be screwed, so he was secretive about his birth and origins. He was probably born in 1469, in Rotterdam. His father initially made a living as a copyist of manuscripts; later he became a village pastor. Although the family was not well off, he received a good education. He was eight years old when he was sent to the Latin school in Deventer. That was a fortunate choice, which would have a major influence on his thinking, for the rest of his life.
The city council of Deventer, a prosperous Hanseatic city, had decided to take higher education out of the hands of the church. The trading bourgeoisie and the public administration wanted a more progressive education. The city had appointed Alexander Hegius as rector, who had been trained in Italian humanism through his mentor Rodolphus Agricola. Novel at that time, students came into contact with classical Roman (pagan) authors and learned exemplary classical Latin (and a little Greek).
When Erasmus was 14 years old, his father died. His mother had already died before. Under pressure from the family, Erasmus' progressive education was cut short, and he eventually ended up in a monastery near Gouda. Intellectualism was now over; devotion had to be instilled. Prayers had to be said, and holy manuscripts copied, in silence, solitarily in the monastery cell. Erasmus spent his few free hours on classical literature, especially devouring the satires and comedies of Terentius and Martialis.
In the dull monastery they also saw that the playful and brilliant Erasmus was wasting away. Erasmus wanted to study in Italy, but to Paris he was sent, the university where Tomasso d'Aquino had left his unwieldy mark for two centuries already. Erasmus was drilled into theological scholasticism there, and he hated it. He thought his professors were narrow-minded and he saw scholasticism as outdated bullshit. Everything in his college was mouldy, including the food. In Paris he published a few poems, and for some extra income he tutored in Latin. One of his students, Sir William Blount, 4th Lord Mountjoy, would continue to support Erasmus financially for the rest of his life. And that was desperately needed, because until roughly the age of 50, when Erasmus was already a famous author, he had to keep begging the bigwigs for financial favours. Copyright hardly existed at that time.
Erudite author
After four years of study and a baccalaureate degree, Erasmus called it quits. A doctorate degree had been the intended goal, but he was damned if he would spend more years grovelling before the dull and arrogant professors in Paris. In his monastery he could not show his face until he had obtained a doctorate degree. At the invitation of Lord Mountjoy he ended up in England, with the prospect of a study trip to Italy. Italy would not happen for many years, but through Mountjoy, who also was well connected at the royal court, Erasmus made friends for life, including Thomas More, a bon vivant and classically trained diplomat who would later become Lord Chancellor under King Henry VIII. He also became friends with a number of English bishops. The Archbishop of Canterbury would support him financially throughout his life. In England he mastered irony and the play between seriousness and humour.
Erasmus achieved his first success with the publication of his Adagia, an anthology of quotes and sayings from classical Latin and Greek literature, with erudite commentary. He would continue to add to the edition throughout his life until it reached the size of a coffee table book that should not be missing in the study of any status-conscious European.
But Erasmus was not only a humanist, he was also a theologian. He knew that the Vulgate, the Latin Bible that was everywhere, was riddled with translation errors and later additions. He wanted to restore the Bible to its original state. Not an easy feat, because there was no original prototext. Moreover, the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, which he did not speak. The New Testament was originally written in Greek, but the Greek texts were not preserved in their originals; translations and copies were scattered throughout Europe. In order to tackle the project properly, he also had to become more proficient in Greek, but there were no teachers who had a perfect command of Ancient Greek. So he taught himself. He also needed to know the ins and outs about Hieronymus of Strido, the church father who had translated the Vulgate. His translation of the New Testament was a major achievement; the text would form the basis for later Protestant translations such as the Luther Bible, the Dutch Statenbijbel and the King James Bible. His method of text-critical examination of texts considered untouchable and sacred was far ahead of its time. And Erasmus came to shocking findings. For instance, there was no support to be found in the original texts for crucial Christian dogmas such as the divine trinity and original sin. With these findings, Erasmus came dangerously close to heresy. But, he defended himself, it is perfectly conceivable that they are still true, even if Paulos and the evangelists did not record them.
In praise of folly
As a guest of More, Erasmus wrote the work that would make him immortal between 1509 and 1511: Moriae encomium, In praise of folly. His underlying frustration with the authorities of his time was evident, but was cleverly packaged as a satire, following the example of Greek authors such as Loukianos. It was not Erasmus who spoke, but Mrs Folly.
The book kicks off with a nihilistic argument. We are all fools, we just live our lives, we just do whatever. Luck belongs to the fools.
Then superstition is made fun of. Anyone who burns candles or directs prayers to an image of a saint is not very wise, is he? What about people who recite psalm verses day in and day out, or buy indulgences, in the hope of salvation? Those who live well will never die badly, that is the core of God's message, but people are all too willing to be distracted and deceived by superstition.
The author then mercilessly mocks the theologians from behind the mask of Mrs Folly:
It may perhaps be most safe to pass them by, and not to touch upon so harsh a string as this subject would afford. The undertaking may be very hazardous; for they are a sort of men generally very hot and passionate; and should I provoke them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full cry, and force me with shame to recant, which if I stubbornly refuse to do, they will presently brand me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunication, which is their spiritual weapon to wound such as lift up a hand against them.(...)
They are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries; they will tell you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence in the creation of the universe; they will explain the precise manner of original sin being derived from our first parents; they will satisfy you in what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a time, our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin's womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay, these are accounted trivial, easy questions; they have yet far greater difficulties behind, which notwithstanding they solve with as much expedition as the former; as namely, whether supernatural generation requires any instant of time for its acting? Whether Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically distinct relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother? Whether this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the Trinity hated the second? Whether God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, could as well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, a pumpkin, or a stone? And were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared as a pumpkin, how he should then have preached his gospel? Or how should he have been nailed to the cross? Whether St. Peter had celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on the cross, the consecrated bread would have been transubstantiated into the same body that remained on the tree? Whether in Christ's corporal presence in the sacramental wafer, his humanity be not abstracted from his Godhead? Whether after the resurrection we shall carnally eat and drink as we do in this life? Apparently they want to take precautions now against hunger and thirst in the future. (...)
They maintain that it is a less aggravating fault to kill a hundred men, than for a poor cobbler to set a stitch on the sabbath-day; or, that it is more justifiable to do the greatest injury imaginable to others, than to tell the least lie ourselves. And these subtleties are alchymised to a more refined sublimate by the abstracting brains of their several schoolmen; the Realists, the Nominalists, the Thomists, the Albertists, the Occamists, the Scotists.
— Erasmus Roterodamus, Moriae encomium (1511)
In this style, all the hotshots got something to chew on: philosophers, lawyers, monks, priests, princes, courtiers, bishops and even the popes. The Praise became an unprecedented commercial success; reprint after reprint followed. It became the world's first bestseller. The literate European middle class loved it. But the scholastic theologians and inquisitors in the conservative strongholds of Louvain, Cologne and Paris could not laugh about it. Erasmus's writings were carefully sifted in search of transgressive statements. The accusation of heresy was never far away.
In 1521, Luther was banned and his books were burned. The well-read Medici Pope Leo X had been favourable to Erasmus, but he was succeeded by popes who were considerably less lenient. The 1520s were dominated by reformation and polarisation. You were either for or against Luther. Those who did not want to take sides immediately found themselves placed in the opponent's camp. Erasmus' books were banned in France and Spain, and his Parisian translator was even burned at the stake in 1529. And in the Counter-Reformation, the Pope included Erasmus in 1559, after his death, on the Index as a forbidden author, which he would remain until 1966.
Erasmus and Luther
Erasmus laid the egg that Luther would hatch, one so often reads. Erasmus himself was also told this. He responded scornfully: then Luther would certainly have sat on a cuckoo's egg. Erasmus' and Luther's criticism of the church partly overlapped. They agreed about indulgences and superstition in the church. But in the eyes of Erasmus, Luther was just as much of a hair-splitter as his worst opponents. Erasmus was deeply irritated by Luther's theological position. Luther, a former Catholic professor of exegesis, knew it all exactly. But he did not work scientifically, Erasmus thought: he reasoned towards his position, instead of allowing his position to be determined by research. Like the scholastics, Luther demanded blind obedience from his sheep. In 1529, Erasmus himself had to leave hearth and home in Basel because the Lutherans had taken over the city. He could not tolerate the intolerant rule of the Protestants. Publicly, Erasmus did not want to stand for or against Luther. There was resentment on both sides. As early as 1516, Luther had noted to himself in the margin of Erasmus' Bible translation: "Du bist nicht from": you are not pious! Especially when it became clear that Erasmus would not defect to Luther's camp, his reproaches became sharp. “That insulter of all religion, that mocker of Christianity, with his false pious mug,” is how Luther described him. Erasmus mainly accused Luther of having the blood of his followers on his hands with his polarisation. “I wouldn't want to die for things my mind can't reach,” he wrote. He accused Luther of giving the Inquisition weapons to suppress all free-thinking insights.
In 1524, Erasmus could no longer restrain himself. He chose a theological topic on which he strongly disagreed with Luther: free will. At its core, it revolves around the question that still keeps theologians awake at night: if God is pure goodness, and also omnipotent, where does all the evil and misery in the world come from? The most obvious answer is: it depends on the people. They just don't want to be any good. Agreed, but that does raise a few other questions. Namely, first of all: God created man himself, right? According to Genesis, in his own image, yes? Then why don't people behave like God? And why does God just allow people to make a mess? The common Christian answer to this is: sure, but God has free will and so do humans. Man must be able to freely choose between good and evil. The settlement will follow later.
Luther did not think much of free will. Man was a sinful being from birth, Luther believed, following Augustinus. This is called original sin. God has predetermined who will be saved. Those who are not destined for salvation, are screwed anyway. If you are predestined, the only way to ruin it is to live a sinful life. And God is so cunning not to inform anyone in advance who is predestined. There is free will, but it does not make much difference to the question of whether you will be saved. To be on the safe side, it's better to live an exemplary life, but it's still a gamble. Among theologians, this view is known as predestination, a doctrine held by most Protestants, including both Luther and Calvin.
Erasmus could not imagine that God consciously wanted to burden people with evil. If humans did not have free will, God himself would be responsible for evil, and he considered that inherently impossible. And why would people even want to make an effort to live free of sin? Luther would have preferred that people see that the situation is completely hopeless, and that they should just hope that God will ultimately have mercy on them. One should absolutely try to be a good person, but according to Luther it was better not to count on a reward from God for one’s good behaviour.
The modernity of Erasmus
If one motto was central to Erasmus' thinking, it was: back to the core. His humanist schoolmasters had taught him to learn from the classical (pagan) Roman and Greek authors who had been ignored for so long. They had taught him not to take things at face value, to question things critically.
I had not mentioned them yet, but between his forced retirement from Latin school and his entry into the monastery, Erasmus received a few years of training from the Brethren of the Common Life, a very religious, devout church movement, almost a cult. It must have been an ordeal for an intelligent, high-spirited teenager. He had to keep silent, do penance, and pray a lot. He was taught frugality and aversion to worldly things. Wealth was the devil's workshop. Erasmus will not have learned much from the brothers, but perhaps an orientation towards the austere, unadorned life of Jesus. Back to the core: the life and teachings of Jesus. Live well and you will die well.
The university years in Paris must have been maddening. Anyone who is curious what it was like, should take a moment to dive into Thomasso d'Aquino's hallucinatory major work Summa theologiae (1265). Imagine that your lectures consist of reciting such texts. It requires a sharp mind and a cool will to distinguish the main from the side issues in that avalanche of distractions and conclusions.
Back to the core. Superstition, veneration of saints and meaningless rituals did not matter. Scientifically, Erasmus' analysis of the New Testament was of great value. The text had to be analysed without prejudice: which parts were authentic? He proceeded in a way that seems remarkably contemporary, and he was often right. He used the critical method, examining the Bible as a human, language and culture-related artefact. First came the facts, then the conclusion, even if it was uncomfortable, such as regarding the Holy Trinity and original sin.
Erasmus also dealt with the truth in a distinctive way. A mediaeval argument, which many scholastics held, was that there is only one truth. If one is right, the other must be wrong. Erasmus noted that one person's right does not necessarily mean another's wrong. The truth is difficult to know; nothing is entirely true. You have to think for yourself, he learned from the evangelists, that is the only way. Remain critical, do not accept anything as truth. Even if you run the risk of making a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, himself included. He complained that in Rome he was called Errasmus. And not only can good people have bad ideas; even bad people, pagans for example, can have good ideas. You can help each other to get closer to the truth together. That was also his main objection to the Inquisition. Their mission was to help people get on the right path. But you can't do that with torture and pyres. Even if you continue to disagree, you don't have to immediately condemn each other. Take a sip, have a laugh, and remain good friends.
Furthermore, his cosmopolitanism is not unique to Erasmus, but is characteristic. With a good command of Latin, one could go anywhere. He wrote thousands of letters to everyone, high and low, throughout Europe. This made him one of the pioneers of the Republic of Letters, which I will pay more attention to in a later article. He travelled throughout Europe and was read everywhere. He thrived better without a homeland, he wrote, so that he could feel at home anywhere. The whole world is my homeland, he quoted a Greek oracle.
Erasmus and the heretics
The odour of heresy surrounded the third-century Christian scholar Origines. He had made quite daring statements about the divine nature or otherwise of Jesus, and was therefore not in very good standing with the Church of Rome. For Erasmus that was no reason not to admire him. One page of Origen contained more wisdom than ten pages of Augustinus, he once wrote. Erasmus was never very impressed by accusations of heresy.
Erasmus considered much of what the church regarded as heresy and therefore suppressed with violence as nonsense that distracted from the essence. He found the church's response to differing views tyrannical.
You will not be condemned if you do not know whether the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son is a single principle or a double principle. But you will not escape your destruction if you do not ensure that you have the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the meantime. These are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, longsuffering, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, temperance, self-control and chastity. (…)
The main point of our religion is peace and concord. This can hardly continue to exist unless we fix as few matters as possible and allow everyone to make their own judgment on many issues.
— Erasmus Roterodamus, Letter to Jean de Carondelet (1523)
Although he advocated freedom of conscience within the church, that did not mean that he did not set boundaries. Heresy was real. If you attacked the core of the Christian faith, you committed heresy. Even the orthodox clergy, high in the church hierarchy, could commit heresy. Not if, as a priest, you started calling the woman you live with your wife. But if, as a prelate, you lead a life that is diametrically opposed to Jesus' instructions of love and charity, heresy is real. Anyone who undermined Jesus' instructions, or consciously sought discord within the church, was a heretic in the eyes of Erasmus. Heresy was a real concept for him, but was limited to a number of extreme ideas. For instance, he regarded denial of the immortality of the soul as heresy, or the view that women are communal property.
How was heresy to be punished? For this, Erasmus invariably referred to Jesus' parable of wheat and weeds. Jesus said:
A farmer scattered good seed in a field. But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and scattered weed seeds in the field and then left. When the plants came up and began to mature, the farmer's servants could see the weeds. The servants came and asked, “Sir, didn't you scatter good seed in your field? Where did these weeds come from?” “An enemy did this,” he replied. His servants then asked, “Do you want us to go out and pull up the weeds?”
“No!” he answered. “You might also pull up the wheat. Leave the weeds alone until harvest time. Then I'll tell my workers to gather the weeds and tie them up and burn them. But I'll order them to store the wheat in my barn.”
— Jesus of Nazareth, quoted in Matthew 13:24-30
It is the classic Christian text that admonishes believers to leave the judging to God. The worst punishment that the church was allowed to hand out was excommunication, and according to Erasmus, then you had to have sinned very badly.
But, as I noted in the article on Augustinus and heresy, it was not the church that punished heresy: it was the state that punished heresy. This custom was still put into practice in the 15th century. The church, the Inquisition in particular, was both prosecutor and judge, the state just did the executioner's work.
Erasmus has not (as far as I know) explicitly spoken out against that construction. But it didn't fit his logic. The role of the church was not that of accuser, but that of conversion and healing. The government is about public order. In the event of serious disruptions to public order, the state must intervene, if necessary with a heavy hand.
Heretics in Munster
For example, he was fierce about the rebellion of Jan van Leyden in Munster. That was a curious history, in the chaotic 1530s. Jan Beukelszoon ran a pub in Leiden. In 1533 he joined the Anabaptists, a Protestant sect that had particular difficulty with the Catholic sacraments. They considered infant baptism invalid: you could only be baptised after a well-considered decision, so the baptism had to be repeated. The Anabaptists dreamed of a new Jerusalem, a thousand-year kingdom. There was work to be done. Being a loudmouth and a bully, Jan was soon in charge.
After attempts in several other cities, Munster was chosen as the centre of the New Jerusalem. The citizens were given a choice: join or leave. The believers had visions. Life in the city must have been hallucinatory. The faithful poured into the streets at every turn, praying loudly. Polygamy was allowed; Jan had no fewer than sixteen wives. He also had himself anointed king.
Eventually, the secular authorities intervened. After a long and difficult siege (the city had strong walls) the kingdom of Munster was put to an end. Jan van Leyden and his entourage met a gruesome end. With the full approval of Erasmus. Heresy was incidental here; order had to be restored, if necessary with brute force.
Let it be true that it is not lawful to kill heretics, but with regard to blasphemous and seditious heretics it is lawful and necessary for the protection of the public interest.
— Erasmus Roterodamus, Epistola contra quosdam qui se falso iactant evangelicos (1529)
Finally at home
We can be brief about the course of Erasmus' twilight years. After a restless life, constantly shuttling between England, Flanders, Paris and Basel, in search of manuscripts, income, publishers and fame, he settled in Basel in his early fifties, under the care of his publisher Froben, and later at the other side of the Rhine, in Freiburg im Breisgau. His works were reprinted after reprint; finally he could afford his own house, and he even had his own walking garden at his disposal, with a writer's cottage. Some new works appeared, he wrote numerous letters, and he enthusiastically devoted himself to an edition of Augustine's collected works. Erasmus had a relatively carefree time as a celebrity there for ten years, until he was struck by pain at the age of 64. Two years later he died in Basel, aged 66. In bed, not at the stake.
For further reading
Much of this article is indebted to Sandra Langereis' wonderful recent biography. Its German translation is forthcoming; hopefully the English translation will follow shortly.
Erasmus' correspondence, nearly 3,000 letters, is available online in full, translated into Dutch and freely accessible.
Erasmus Roterodamus, Moriae encomium (1511). An (older) English translation of Praise of folly is also online free of charge.
Luc Panhuysen, Jantje van Leiden (2003)
Johannes Trapman, Erasmus and heresy, Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance (2013)
Sandra Langereis, Erasmus dwarsdenker. Een biografie (2021)
This was the tenth newsletter in a long series: Toleration and Christianity. An overview of all articles in this series can be found in the overview article Toleration in the history of Christianity.
The next episode will be about the Protestant rebellion, Luther and Calvin. To remain focused, the series on Morality and Toleration will have to wait a little longer.
Kallikrateia, 7 October, 2023
About Erasmus' name: he was born without a surname. That was nothing special at the time. Normally he would have added his father's name, Erasmus Gerardszoon for example, but that was sensitive because his father was a priest (who was expected to live a celibate life and could therefore not marry Erasmus' mother). When Erasmus started publishing, he had already left the Netherlands. His author's name would have been Erasmus van Rotterdam. But Erasmus had been speaking Latin since he was eight years old, and wrote and published exclusively in Latin. So it was Erasmus Roterodamus. Halfway through his career he made up the additional name Desiderius, which is why he is mainly known as Desiderius Erasmus. But later in his career he dropped that vain embellishment again. Because I generally use names that the persons themselves used, in their own language, I stick to his Latin author’s name: Erasmus Roterodamus.