Desiderius Erasmus – författare

Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466-1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual's potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus's best-known work. Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly, dressed as a jester, who celebrates youth, pleasure, drunkenness and sexual desire, and goes on to lambast human pretensions, foibles and frailties, to mock theologians and monks and to praise the 'folly' of simple Christian piety. Erasmus's wit, wordplay and wisdom made the book an instant success, but it also attracted what may have been sales-boosting criticism. The Letter to Maarten van Dorp, which is a defence of his ideas and methods, is also included.

First published in Paris in 1511, The Praise of Folly hasenjoyed enormous and highly controversial success from the author’s lifetime down to our own day.It hasno rival, except perhaps Thomas More’s Utopia, as the most intense and lively presentation of the literary, social, and theological aims and methods of Northern Humanism. Clarence H. Miller’s highly praised translation of The Praise of Folly, based on the definitive Latin text, echoes Erasmus’ own lively style while retaining the nuances of the original text. In his introduction, Miller places the work in the context of Erasmus as humanist and theologian. In a new afterword, William H. Gass playfully considers the meaning, or meanings, of folly and offers fresh insights into one of the great books of Western literature.Praise for the earlier edition:“An eminently reliable and fully annotated edition based on the Latin text.”—Library Journal“Exciting and brilliant, this is likely to be the definitive translation of The Praise of Folly intoEnglish.”—Richard J. Schoeck

Besides the celebrated Praise of Folly, Robert M. Adams has included the political "Complaint of Peace," the brutal antipapal satire "Julius Excluded from Heaven," two versions of Erasmus’s important preface to the Latin translation of the New Testament, and a selection both serious and comic of his Colloquies and his letters.  Adams has made these selections to emphasize the humane, rather than the doctrinaire, side of the first and arguably greatest humanist.Critical commentary is provided in essays by H. R. Trevor-Roper, R. S. Allen, J. Huizinga, Mikhail Bakhtin, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and Robert M. Adams.Also included are a Chronology of Erasmus’s life and a Selected Bibliography.

The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus is an enduring classic that satirically critiques the societal and religious norms of its time. Translated by John Wilson in 1668, this seminal work uses wit and humor to examine the folly prevalent in various human behaviors and institutions, making it a timeless piece that continues to resonate. With a foreword by Kenneth E. Boulding, this edition delves into the essence of folly through a monologue by the allegorical character, Folly herself. She extols the virtues of foolishness in a world riddled with pretentious wisdom and self-importance. Erasmus, with his sharp intellect and playful prose, not only entertains but also provokes deep reflection on the paradoxes of human nature and the pursuit of wisdom, making The Praise of Folly a profound yet accessible read for anyone interested in literature, philosophy, and social commentary.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was a Dutch humanist, scholar, and social critic, and one of the most important figures of the Renaissance. The Praise of Folly is perhaps his best-known work. Originally written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, this satiric celebration of pleasure, youth, and intoxication irreverently pokes fun at the pieties of theologians and the foibles that make us all human, while ultimately reaffirming the value of Christian ideals. No other book displays quite so completely the transition from the medieval to the modern world, and Erasmus's wit, wisdom, and critical spirit have lost none of their timeliness today. This Princeton Classics edition of The Praise of Folly features a new foreword by Anthony Grafton that provides an essential introduction to this iridescent and enduring masterpiece.

Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and everyday life. He therefore composed paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text, vastly expanded to embrace the reforming `philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond all expectations, and were quickly translated into French, German, English, and other languages.This is the fourth volume of Paraphrases to be published in the New Testament Scholarship Series in the CWE. The volume includes the Paraphrases on the Pastoral Epistles and the Catholic, or General, Epistles, as well as the Paraphrase on Hebrews. These books, in the biblical text, address the central issues of the Christian life within the context of family, church, and community. The Paraphrases sharpen the accent of the biblical message, speaking in an idiom appropriate to the sixteenth century but also surprisingly relevant to our own age: they condemn, for example, every form of tyrannizing in the home and self-aggrandisement in the church; perhaps above all, the Paraphrases expose the social injustice (inevitable, Erasmus would have us believe) of those who have acquired great personal wealth.Erasmus also reformulates, and sometimes develops, some of the great theological themes already defined in earlier volumes of this series. Is sin congenital, or do we sin simply in `imitation' of Adam? How do the Hebrew Scriptures attest to the presence of divine grace in the world before the birth of Christ? What is faith if not a vision of eternal realities so sure that we can clearly recognize the things of this passing world as the shadows they are?These Paraphrases address the modern reader with the relevance of the moral issues they define and the perennial importance of the theological questions they raise. Erasmus clarified and interpreted biblical text with immense rhetorical skill.Volume 44 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and everyday life. He therefore composed Paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text, vastly expanded to embrace the reforming `philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond all expectations, and were quickly translated into French, English, and other languages. The Paraphrase on Acts is the fifth volume of Paraphrases to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the Collected Works of Erasmus.The highly dramatic narrative of Acts offered Erasmus as paraphrast a treasury of golden opportunities. Its personae are kings, governors, high priests, communities of grace, and the ubiquitous and volatile mob. Here are the models to be emulated and to be avoided in both a reformed Europe and a reformed church. In the Paraphrase on Acts the splendour of popes is measured against the simplicity of St Peter, the pride of European kings warned against by the downfall of Herod .The Paraphrase on Acts commands attention also by its manifest efforts to rationalize biblical history. Erasmus persistently shows that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is nevertheless complemented by very human motivations. Moreover, the impressionistic framework of time and space in the biblical account is replaced in the Paraphrase on Acts by a careful definition of events by date and location - offering fascinating insights into the science of geography in Erasmus' day.The reader will recognize many of Erasmus' favourite theological themes, for example the sharp antithesis between faith and ceremonial works. But it is perhaps Erasmus' portrait of the Holy Spirit that will leave the deepest impression - a portrait in which images of fire turn imperceptibly but decisively into ontological realities and moral imperatives.Volume 50 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

The correspondence of Erasmus has never been completely translated into English, although it has long been acknowledged to be one of the most illuminating sources for the history of northern humanism and the first two decades of the Protestant Reformation. In his letters, to and from scholars and religions leaders, printers and patrons, princes and prelates in every country of western Europe, the interests and issues of that critical era found free expression. They are connected by the thread of Erasmus' personal experience, his joys and sorrows, triumphs and tribulations, and his uninhibited conversation with his friends.Erasmus himself regarded his letters as a form of literature, and they were valued in his time, as they are now, as much for their style as for their content. In The Study of Good Letters (Clarendon 1963), H.W. Garrod wrote: 'As a document of the history of the times the Letters have primary importance. Yet they ar to be valued, ultimately, not as they enable us to place Erasmus in history, but as they help us to disengage him from it, to redeem him out of history into literature, placing him where, in truth, he longed to be. Not the Folly nor the Colloquies but the Letters, are his best piece of literature. What he did in scholarship, whether biblical, patristic, or classical has been superseded - though not the fine temper of it. That fine free temper shines also in the Letters, being indeed one of the elements of literature… In the immortality of their readableness Erasmus lives securely, immune from the discredits of circumstances.'The volume of the correspondence is enormous, and its cumulative effect fully justifies the claims that have been made for its importance. Erasmus was from his youth on an indefatigable correspondent, although he was careless about preserving his own letters or those written to him until he became famous and found printers eager to publish them. As a consequence, 85 per cent of the surviving letters were written after he reached the age of forty-five. Even when he had no thought of publication, however, he strove ceaselessly to make his letters models of elegant classical latinity, while adjusting the style of each letter to fit its purpose, content, and recipient. Even the earliest letters of volume 1 bear evidence of this concern. This volume includes a number of youthful rhetorical attempts, letters describing his early vicissitudes as he struggled to maintain himself as a scholar, letters to friends and letters about enemies, letters to patrons and prospective patrons, and the beginnings of the more serious intellectual correspondence of his later years in an exchange of letters with John Colet on the subject of Christ's agony.Volume 1 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Erasmus' Adagia has been called 'one of the world's biggest bedside books,' and certainly the more than 4000 proverbs and maxims gathered and commented on by Erasmus, sometimes in a few lines and sometimes in full-scale essays, have great appeal for both scholar and educated layman. The aim of the Adages was to recapture, in this handy portmanteau form, the outlook and way of life of the classical world through its customs, legends, and social institutions, and to put within reach of a modern public the accumulated wisdom of the past. Each adage is traced in the works of as many authors as Erasmus had to hand; always an authority is given (usually several) and often a close reference providing chapter and verse.The commentaries in the Adages give a forthright and often eloquent expression of Erasmus' opinions on the world of his day, dovetailing with his satirical works on the one hand and his popular evangelical writings on the other. Many, if not most, of the proverbs cited by Erasmus are still in our common stock of speech today.The Collected Works of Erasmus is providing the first complete translation of Erasmus' Adagia. This volume contains the initial 300 adages with notes that identify the classical sources and indicate how Erasmus' reading and thinking developed over the quarter-century spanned by the eight revisions of the original work.Volume 31 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

At the beginning of this volume, Erasmus leaves Louvain to live in Basel. Weary from the many controversies reflected in the letters of the previous volumes, he is also anxious to see the annotations to his third edition of the New Testament through Johann Froben’s press. Above all he fears that pressure from the imperial court in the Netherlands will force him to take a public stand against Luther.Erasmus completes a large number of works in the span of this volume, including the Paraphrases on Matthew and John, two new expanded editions of the Colloquies, an edition of De conscribendis epistolis, two apologiae against his Spanish detractors, and editions of Arnobius Junior and Hilary of Poitiers. But the predominant theme of the volume remains ‘the sorry business of Luther.’The harder Erasmus persists in trying to adhere to a reasonable course between Catholic and reforming zealots, the more he finds himself ‘a heretic to both sides.’  His Catholic critics appear the more dangerous. Among them are the papal nuncio Girolamo Aleandro, who is bent on discrediting him at both the imperial and papal courts as a supporter of Luther; the Spaniard Diego López Zúñiga, who compiles a catalogue of Blasphemies and Impieties of Erasmus of Rotterdam; and the Carmelite Nicholaas Baechem, who denounces Erasmus both in public sermons and at private ‘drinking-parties.’Erasmus’ refusal to counsel severity against the Lutherans is motivated chiefly by concern for peace and the common good of Christendom, and not by any tender regard for Luther and the other reformers. Still, many of the letters in this volume testify to his growing aversion to the reformers, and we see him moving perceptibly in the direction of his eventual public breach with them.A special feature of this volume is the first fully annotated translation of Erasmus’ Catalogues Iucubrationum (Ep 1341 A), an extremely important document for the study of Erasmus’ life and works and of the controversies they aroused.Volume 9 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

In 1520, the reading public witnessed the eruption of a simmering conflict between Erasmus, the foremost advocate of the new biblical humanism, and Edward Lee, a younger scholar at the University of Louvain and spokesman for the traditionalists in matters of biblical interpretation and church discipline. When Erasmus (perhaps unconsciously) subsumed criticisms Lee had sent to him of his 1516 Annotations on the New Testament into the second edition (1519) without properly crediting their source, Lee resorted to publication of his collection of criticisms. Erasmus responded immediately with the Apologia which is neither arrogant nor biting nor angry nor aggressive, and which responds to the two invectives of Edward Lee, describing his version of the history of the dispute with Lee, and less than two months later produced Responses to Lee's criticisms. This new volume in the Collected Works of Erasmus series contains the first-ever English translations of the Apology and the Responses. These two pieces display Erasmus the humanist in the thick of academic turmoil, deploying all the rhetorical weapons at his command. The volume is an entertaining and informative look into Erasmus as a scholar and as a man.Volume 72 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

The year that began in August 1515 was the annus mirabilis of Erasmus' career, the year, notably of the epistles of St Jerome and the first edition of his New Testament. In the months following, covered in this volume of the CWE, from August 1516 to June 1517, the active exchange of letters that began with volume 3 continued, giving a vivid impression of the impact of Erasmus' great achievement upon his contemporaries. In his own words, "The New Testament has made me friends everywhere."To Erasmus, the most important event of these months was intensely private, the dispensation granted by Leo X allowing him to escape permanently from the restraints of his religious community, to earn his living with the freedom of a secular priest. In elucidating the complex circumstances surrounding this crucial development in Erasmus' career, Dr McConica advances a new view of the obscure circumstances surrounding Erasmus' illegitimacy. We are also given Erasmus' thinly veiled account of his boyhood in the "Letter to Grunnius," and, in an Appendix, the closely related account in the Compendium vitae, a vital if controversial document for our knowledge of his early life.In the background are the life and enterprise of the Low Countries. Pursuit of personal promotion, the politics of the Burgundian Court, and the emergence of the young Prince Charles–soon to be Charles V–in the European scene, provide further tuition for the great humanist in the use and abuse of princely power. In this volume Erasmus moves between the Burgundian court at Brussels and the domestic quiet of Pieter Gillis' household at Antwerp, where he was prearing further work for the Froben press at Basel. He is drawn to Louvain but avoids it, fearing a scrutiny of his works by the hostile theologians of the University. The England of Tunstall and More is always at hand, and the letters of volume 4 incidentally provide the most important chronicle for the publication of More's Utopia, over which Erasmus kept a watchful eye.This volume records important developments in Erasmus' many–faceted philosophy, especially in politics and education. There is the sharpest condemnation of princely power beneath the veil of rhetorical courtesy, with classical statements of Erasmus' programme for men of education and Christan principle, the rulers upon whom he rested his hope for the reform of Christiandom. Educated Europe now waited upon Erasmus' words, and, as a French humanist writes, "Words never fail him; and such words!"Volume 4 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series

Erasmus produced his five editions of the New Testament in Greek and Latin and his Paraphrases on the Gospels and Epistles almost contemporaneously with the tumultuous events that accompanied the beginnings of the Reformation in Europe. At the same time, his scholarship was a signal illustration of the Christian Humanism of northern Europe. His remarkable scholarship is translated and annotated in the Collected Works of Erasmus, volumes 42-60, published by the University of Toronto Press. This volume, CWE 41, seeks to set in perspective in a major introductory essay the full range of that scholarship. It traces the origin of Erasmus' work and its development over the course of the last two decades of his life, placing the work on the New Testament in the context of his life and the political and religious events of his age, revealing the endeavour as a process, and thus giving the reader illuminating points of reference for the many cryptic allusions in his annotations and paraphrases. The book includes an annotated translation of three of Erasmus' major writings on Scripture and its interpretation -- the Paraclesis, the Ratio verae theologiae ('System of True Theology'), and the Apologia (defense of his work). It includes as well some of his further attempts to clarify his endeavour -- relevant letters and a vitriolic response to his 'crabby critics' (Contra morosos). The volume offers a unique insight into the production of Erasmus' scholarship in book form, illustrating abundantly the special features that made his editions of the New Testament and his Paraphrases both esthetically pleasing and effectively marketable products.

As part of his effort to make the Bible an effective instrument of reform in society, church, and everyday life, Erasmus composed the Paraphrases. In these series of texts, the Holy Scripture provides the core of a work that is vastly expanded to embrace the reforming "philosophy of Christ" in all of its forms. This volume contains two sets of Paraphrases, one on the Corinthian letters (circa. 1519), and the other on the group of letters from the Ephesians to the Thessalonians (circa. 1520).The first set presents an epistolary narrative which not only enlivens the events described but revisits them from a sixteenth-century perspective. Together, they form a sharpened portrait of the primitive Corinthian church and an intriguing critique of the church as it was in Erasmus's time. The second set, Ephesians to Thessalonians, offers an interpretation of Pauline theology with humanistic overtones that are distinctively Erasmian. In these Paraphrases, we see the craft of the philologist at work in the articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the humanist depicting Christ with an unmistakably human sensibility, and the artist discussing familiar theological virtues of faith and love in a new way.Apart from providing the first complete English translations of these Paraphrases since 1549, this volume gives excellent insight into the fundamentals of Erasmian theology and includes annotations which highlight the historical and linguistic implications of Erasmus's original texts.Volume 43 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Spanning the period of 1523 to 1534, the compositions in Volume 78 of the Collected Works of Erasmus detail Erasmus' theological disagreements with the Swiss and Upper German 'evangelicals' and the German Lutherans, including Luther himself. While volumes 76 and 77 of the series focus on the controversy with Luther over the "freedom of the will," the wider lens of this volume also captures the conflicts between Erasmus and contemporaries such as Hutten, Eppendorf, Oecolampadius, Capito, and Bucer.These writings reveal the dialogue between Erasmus and those evangelicals who had appropriated and adapted his views on the Eucharist and set forth his defense of the toleration of heretics and a point-by-point rebuttal of Luther's ultimate accusations, which had rejected Erasmus as a Christian. Throughout, the original words of Erasmus are presented in contemporary English translation by eminent scholars of sixteenth-century studies, who also discuss the historical and theological contexts of the controversies.Volume 78 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Among Erasmus of Rotterdam’s many influential treatises on theology during the early Reformation, Exomologesis (1524; revised 1530) and Ecclesiastes (1535) stand out as two of his most significant.Exomologesis, or The Manner of Confessing, in which Erasmus articulated his views on the true manner of Christian confession, was sufficiently controversial that he published an expanded version with concessions and clarifications six years later. Ecclesiastes, or The Method of Preaching, was an extensive exposition on how to employ scripture, the writings of Church Fathers, and classic rhetoric to reinvigorate the practice of preaching. This innovative work ushered in a new genre of homiletic treatises that supplanted medieval preaching manuals and paved the way for what has been called "the age of eloquence."The Collected Works of Erasmus presents these two important works, complete with extensive introductions and annotations, in an elegant and precise two-volume modern translation for the first time.Volumes 67 and 68 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series – Two-volume set.

Consisting of Erasmus' commentary on psalms 38, 83, and 14, this is the third and final volume of the Expositions of the Psalms in the Collected Works of Erasmus. Dating from the last years of Erasmus' life, they represent his mature thoughts on the great crisis facing western Christendom.During the early 1530s, Erasmus explored disputed issues in the Church and attempted to reconcile the warring parties of the Reformation. His characteristic emphasis on the inner experience of faith, rather than outer conformity to a doctrinal checklist, allowed him to be receptive to the insights of reform while refusing to compromise on the essentials of received tradition. By stressing the subjective experience at the heart of religious practice, he sought to reduce the tension of institutional conflict. The exposition of Psalm 38 is here translated into English for the first time, and that of Psalm 14 for the first time since 1537; together with Psalm 83, the three expositions in this collection offer the student of Erasmus an important access to his legacy.Volume 65 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Third and expanded edition with a new biography of Erasmus.

In the tradition of "fool literature" produced by the ferment of new ideas that directly preceded the Protestant Reformation, Dutch priest, humanist, and scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) composed "The Praise of Folly" in 1509. Under Folly's mask, Erasmus boldly attacked the abuses of church and state, and pilloried the faults of those he saw around him: idle superstition, pedantry, religious hypocrisy, and human foolishness. In this elegant translation from the Latin by John Wilson, the reader can savour a great work of satire, which, in the classical tradition, chastises human beings for their follies and excesses, not with a rod but with a smile.