II.

Life

Erasmus was born on October 27, in about 1466, in Rotterdam, the illegitimate son of a priest, Roger Gerard, and a doctor's daughter. He went to strict monastic schools in Deventer and 's-Hertogenbosch and, after his father's death, became an Augustinian canon at Steyn. He was ordained a priest in 1492 and, while employed by the Bishop of Cambrai, studied Scholastic philosophy and Greek at the University of Paris. Finding religious life uncongenial, he sought secular employment, and later received papal dispensation to live and dress as a secular scholar.

Beginning in 1499, Erasmus moved restlessly from city to city working as a tutor and lecturer and constantly writing and searching out ancient manuscripts. He maintained a voluminous correspondence—more than 1,500 of his letters remain—with some of the most important personages of his time. During four trips to England, Erasmus became friends with such scholars of the new humanistic learning as John Colet, founder of St Paul's School in London; Thomas Linacre, founder of the Royal College of Physicians; Thomas More, author and lord chancellor of England; and William Grocyn, lecturer in Greek at Oxford. He himself taught Greek at Cambridge. Through these associations Erasmus helped establish Humanism in England, especially the application of classical studies to Christian learning. While in Italy he took a doctorate at the University of Turin and became a friend to the Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius. In the Swiss city of Basel, he was a friend of and editor for the publisher Johann Froben. Erasmus died in Basel on July 12, 1536.