Erasmus: A Critical Biography

In this biography, Leon Halkin reconstructs Erasmus's life. He portrays a man who was denounced as a heretic in his own lifetime, but remains of interest and relevance today. A contemporary of Columbus, Luther and Rabelais, Erasmus was both a child of the Middle Ages and one of the founders of the modern world. Born in Rotterdam in 1466, he died in Basel in 1536 having travelled widely and lived in Paris, Louvain, London and Rome. In addition to "In Praise of Folly and the Colloquies", he wrote numerous other works and, through them, took part in the great intellectual debates of humanism, pacifism and religious reform, so central to Renaissance thinking. This book suggests that Erasmus was arguably the most outstanding intellectual figure of the 16th century. Though in common perspective a liberal Catholic, he was also a refined anti-clerical satirist, rightly said to have injured monasticism and scholasticism even more deeply than Luther. For good or ill, Erasmus was distinctly a "liberator" of Western religion, one who attacked not merely absolutism and superstition within the Church, but also tyrannical and war-mongering secular rulers.