Erasmus, Desiderius (c. 1469-1536)

Desiderius Erasmus, from an engraving by Hieronimus Cook (1510-1570) of a woodcut by the German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). As the Latin panel behind Erasmus shows, he was born in Rotterdam, Holland, and died in Basel, Switzerland. Dürer created this formal portrait in 1526 (before Erasmus's death), and it was Cook who added the life dates and other inscriptions.

Dutch scholar and leading humanist of the Renaissance era, who taught and studied all over Europe and was a prolific writer. His pioneer translation of the Greek New Testament (with parallel Latin text, 1516) exposed the Vulgate as a second-hand document. Although opposed to dogmatism and abuse of church power, he remained impartial during Martin Luther's conflict with the pope.

Erasmus was born in Rotterdam, and as a youth he was a monk in an Augustinian monastery near Gouda. After becoming a priest, he went to study in Paris in 1495. He paid the first of a number of visits to England in 1499, where he met the physician Thomas Linacre, the politician Thomas More, and the Bible interpreter John Colet, and for a time was professor of divinity and Greek at Cambridge University. He also edited the writings of St Jerome and the early Christian authorities, and published Encomium Moriae/The Praise of Folly (1511, a satire on church and society that quickly became an international best-seller) and Colloquia (1519, dialogues on contemporary subjects). In 1521 he went to Basel, Switzerland, where he edited the writings of the early Christian leaders.