Erasmus, Desiderius (14671536)

Erasmus, Desiderius, a famous scholar and man of letters, born at Rotterdam; illegitimate son of one Gerhard; conceived a disgust for monkish life during six years' residence in a monastery at Steyn; wandered through Europe and amassed stores of learning at various universities; visited Oxford in 1489, and formed a lifelong friendship with Sir Thomas More; was for some years professor of Divinity and Greek at Cambridge; edited the first Greek Testament; settled finally at Basel, whence he exercised a remarkable influence over European thought by the wit and tone of his writings, notably the “Praise of Folly,” the “Colloquia” and “Adagia”; he has been regarded as the precursor of the Reformation; is said to have laid the egg which Luther hatched; aided the Reformation by his scholarship, though he kept aloof as a scholar from the popular movement of Luther (14671536).

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)

Equites, The * Erastianism
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Episcopacy
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Erasmus, Desiderius
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