Desiderius Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, commonly known in English as Erasmus of Rotterdam or simply Erasmus, lived from 28 October circa 1466 to 12 July 1536 and was a Dutch humanist, theologian and philosopher, through his writings and translations one of the most influential scholars of the Northern Renaissance and a major figure of Western culture. An important figure in Renaissance classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and correct but natural Latin style, as a Catholic priest developing humanist techniques for working on texts he prepared pioneering new Latin and Greek scholarly editions of the New Testament and of the Church Fathers, with annotations and commentary immediately and vitally influential in both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Reformation; he also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, The Complaint of Peace, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children and Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, among many other academic, popular and pedagogical works. Living against the backdrop of the growing European religious reformations and relocating regularly, he influenced a large circle of friends, scholars and correspondents including kings and popes, and developed a biblical humanistic theology advocating the religious and civil necessity of both peaceable concord and pastoral tolerance on matters of indifference; he remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life, committed to reforming the church from within despite dangerous pushback from some university theologians, and promoted what he understood as the traditional doctrine of synergism, which prominent reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favor of monergism, so that his influential middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps.