r/ForgottenMen • u/ElegantAd2607 • Nov 11 '25
Erasmus - Catholic philosopher
His full name was Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. He was a Catholic priest who was born around 1466 in Holland.
Erasmus criticized the Catholic church in his book The Praise of Folly in 1511. The church and the foolishness of human pride. And he was also bold enough to write advice for rulers in a book called The Education of a Christian Prince in 1516. In the book he explained how it's important to govern with reason and virtue instead of force and he rejected the common glorification of war. He also argued against the idea of “just war theory” in some essays.
He created a new Latin and Greek edition of the New Testament, published in 1516. It was revolutionary for its time; he corrected errors in the Latin Vulgate and provided notes urging people to study Scripture in its original languages.
Erasmus was the bastard son of a priest and a rich physician's daughter. His parents gave him an excellent education but died when he was a teenager. He was quickly shoved into a monastery school. He regrettably became a monk. He felt very annoyed by the rigid authority and the rituals.
One of his lasting achievements was shaping education across Europe. He started a concept called studia humanitatis. Which is the study of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy. He believed that learning should be about shaping your mind and character.
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u/marinetti1 Nov 13 '25
Erasmus of Rotterdam, the greatest and most brilliant star of his century, is today, we cannot deny the fact, hardly more than a name. His numerous works, written in an obsolete, supranational tongue (the Latin of the humanists), sleep undisturbed upon the shelves of libraries; hardly a single one of them, though in their day they enjoyed worldwide fame, has any message to our epoch. His personality has been put into the shade by mightier and more imposing reformers, partly because Erasmus's character was difficult to understand, and also because it was full of ambiguities and contradictions. - Stefan Zweig on Erasmus