Thread by @culturaltutor

You've probably heard of this guy called Erasmus before — but who was he? Well, this quote sums him up:

"I believe in listening to both sides with openness. I love liberty. I will not and cannot serve any faction."

Here is the story of history's greatest educator...

The first thing to know about Erasmus is that he was born in 1469 and died in 1536; his life coincided with one of the most turbulent and influential periods in history: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the printing press...

And Erasmus was involved in it all.

Erasmus was born in Gouda, the Netherlands, and by the age of 14 both his parents had died. He was taken out of school by his guardians and sent to an Augustinian monastery.

In 1492 he was ordained as a Catholic priest, though books interested him much more than preaching.

See, Erasmus didn't much like life in the monastery.

He was mild-tempered by nature, not prone to extremes either of pleasure or self-restraint. The monastery's rules were too strict, the food wasn't nourishing, and the hours they kept weren't conducive to study.

But what concerned Erasmus most was that his colleagues were *outwardly* religious (they said the right things and wore the right clothes) without being *inwardly* pious.

He believed in real virtue, not the mere show of it, and criticised such hypocrisy wherever he saw it.

He was both a devout Christian and passionate Classicist, and believed the two could be reconciled. One of his early works, Against the Barbarians, criticised those at the monastery who refused to read the great Roman and Greek writers.

For Erasmus there was always a middle way.

But Erasmus' moderation didn't make him afraid of controversy.

He was uncompromising in his values, whether about education, religious superstition, false piety, peace, and the right of priests to marry or women to be educated.

He always spoke his mind, and always eloquently.

And Erasmus was resolute in opposing what he saw as the corruption of the Catholic Church.

The practice of indulgences - paying money to the church to absolve yourself of sins - was for Erasmus an unjustifiable wrong, an insult to real virtue, and something that had to change.

He was also a ruthless satirist.

In Praise of Folly is most famous, but Erasmus wrote many satires, including a witty and rather brutal skewering of Pope Julius II for his luxury, wealth, and warmongering — it describes how the Pope is denied entry to Heaven by St Peter.

This moral resolution carried over to his staunch opposition to all war and violence. For although he lambasted the church, he argued against conflict as a solution.

Indeed, his favourite saying came from the Greek poet Pindar: "War is sweet to those who have not known it."

Erasmus was the ultimate scholar. From the beginning of his life to the end he was always working on something and surrounded by books.

As he once wrote to a friend: "When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes."

He made a new (& controversial) translation of the New Testament, translated Greek & Roman writers, and wrote countless essays, textbooks, and guides for children, students, and adults.

Education was his lodestar — "To be a teacher is an office second in importance to a King."

Around the same time Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, Erasmus wrote his own guide for rulers.

And the difference could hardly be more striking. Where Machiavelli spoke of power games and ruling through fear, Erasmus wrote of justice, piety, and peace.

He travelled across Europe in search of patronage, publishers, and friends.

England, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy; Bologna, Venice, Rome, Freiburg, Basel, Louven, Brussels, London, Oxford, Paris...

No wonder he has been called the first true European.

His correspondents included Popes Julius II, Leo X, and Adrian VI, Kings Henry VII and VIII of England, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Thomas More, Martin Luther, Albrecht Dürer, and just about every famous European of the early 1500s.

Everybody sought his advice and wisdom.

Why? Well, sometimes a person is in the right place at the right time — Erasmus' career coincided with the rise of the printing press.

To give one example of how widely read he was, a book called On Children’s Conduct had eighty editions in fourteen languages by the year 1600.

And so his ideas were powerful - everybody read Erasmus.

The Protestant Reformation might not have happened without his public and popular critique of the Catholic Church.

And yet his message was always of reasoned reform, never of revolution and rebellion.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Philipp Melanchthon, Andreas Karlstadt - the leaders of the Reformation were all influenced by Erasmus' ideas and even corresponded with him.

But where he favoured peaceful reform, they welcomed a split with the Catholic Church.

Beyond all that Erasmus was also one of history's greatest friends.

There was hardly anybody he met with whom he did not stay in contact, nor attempt to help out wherever he could, whether kings and popes or teachers and monks.

More than 3,000 of his letters have survived.

It seems only fitting that Erasmus was portrayed by the greatest artists of the age.

In Hans Holbein the Younger's portrait we see Erasmus the satirist, a witty and implacable man of letters, wise and perceptive, unimpressed by superficiality and hypocrisy.

In Albrecht Dürer's portrait we see a different side: here is the studious and erudite scholar, the restless educator and writer, working (as he always did) while standing up.

This was the man who once said: "the main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth."

Though a devout Christian, Biblical expert, and Classicist, he was not a philosopher.

Erasmus thought abstract argument was divisive; the real work lay in finding common values and using literacy to elevate humankind and help us reach our intellectual and spiritual potential.

But Erasmus outlived his generation. By the end of his life Europe was plunged into civil and religious strife: war, executions, book burnings...

His belief that "it is no great feat to burn a man, but it is a great achievement to persuade him" had fallen on deaf ears.

It was widely believed that Erasmus was the only one who could unite Europe, for he alone was close to both sides.

They all tried to claim him, but he remained a proudly independent intermediary; when he died in 1436 Erasmus had become a lone voice for unity.

And that, briefly, is Erasmus, "a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger," in his own words.

Popes & kings & revolutionaries sought his advice and a whole continent read his work — a man devoted to education, reason, moderation, friendship, piety, and laughter.