Erasmus, Desiderius

an eminent scholar, B. at Rotter dam, 1467. He was the illegitimate son of a Gerard by the daughter of a physician; but his father and mother dying when he was only 14 years old, he was left to the care of guardians, who determined on bringing him up to a religious life that they might enjoy his patrimony; for which purpose they removed him from one convent to another, till at last, in 1486, he took the habit among the canons-regular at Stein, near Torgau. The monastic life being disagreeable to him, he accepted an invitation from the archbishop of Cambray to reside with him. During his abode with this prelate he was ordained priest; but in 1496 he went to Paris, and supported himself by giving private lectures. In 1497 he visited England, and met with a liberal reception from the most eminent scholars. On his return he spent 12 years in France, Italy, and the Netherlands; and during that time he published several works of great merit. In 1506 he took his doctor's degree at Turin, and went to Bologna, where he continued some time; thence he removed to Venice, where he resided with the famous Aldus Manutius. From Venice he went to Padua and Rome, where many offers were made him to settle; but having received an invitation from Henry VIII., he went to England again in 1510; wrote his Praise of Folly , while residing with Sir Thomas More; and was appointed Margaret profe or of divinity, and Greek lecturer, at Cambridge. In 1514 he once more returned to the Continent, and lived chiefly at Basel, where he vigorously continued his literary labors, and prepared his edition of the New Testament, with a Latin translation, his Ciceroni an us; and his celebrated Colloquies , which latter gave such offence to the monks, that they used to say, "Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched." With Luther, however, whom he had provoked by his treatise on Free-Will, he was in open hostility. In 1528 appeared his learned work, De Recta Latini Græcique Sermon is Pronunciatione; and his last publication, which was printed the year before his death, entitled Eccle siastes, or the Manner of Preaching. He D. at Basel, in 1536. Erasmus was a man of great learning, a great wit, and an able critic; but his spirit, though liberal, was not ready to adopt the extreme tenets of the Re formers. E. was equally unfriendly to the monastic habits and to the subtilties of the schclastic divinity, and exercised his wit on both of these; but he had no love for theological quarrels, and no wish to draw upon himself unpopularity or persecution. He welcomed the Reformation as a movement of free thought, but deprecated its exce es; he aided it rather as a scholar and critic than as a thinker or reasoner. He exposed the inconsistencies of the scholastic theology, but he produced no new creed and argued in favor of no heretical doctrine. His defence of the right of reason against authority was weak and evasive. But his services in the cause of science were great and lasting, and his writings are still esteemed for the importance of the subjects treated of, and their cla ical style.