In Latin Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Does the account traditional (but discussed) want that Didier Erasme of Rotterdam is the natural son of Gerard de Praët, itinerant priest (?), and of Marguerite, girl of a doctor of Zevenbergen. The child is called then Geert Geertsz (son of Gerard). Later, it adopts the graeco-latin name of Didier Erasme (of desiderius, wished, and Erasmus, liked). It begins its studies with Gouda, at the school of Peter Winckel, then it continues them in Deventer, in the famous school of the Brothers of the Common life. To the death of his mother (1483) and her father (1484), he is entrusted to three tutors, who intend it for the monastic life and send it to Wood-the-Duke, in a poor and obsolete school.

In 1487, Erasme pronounces its wishes and enters to the cloister of Steyn. It spends its time reading the traditional ones and collects the matter of its treaty Of contemptu mundi, satire of the life of the monks. It is ordered priest on on April 25th, 1492. The bishop of Cambric, Henri de Bergen, offers the post of secretary to him.

After the publication, in Paris, of the 800 proverbs of the Proverbs, comments of Latin proverbs, in 1500, he becomes the host, in Saint-Omer, of the prior of Saint-Bertin, in whom he meets Jean Vitrier, energetic theologist who influences in a decisive way his Christian designs as well as the set of themes of his Handbook of the Christian soldier (1504). Erasme discovers in Leuwen a manuscript of Lorenzo Valla, who suggests corrections to be brought to the Vulgate by a document collating with the Greek text. Consequently, it is truly haunted by the desire to reconcile the “good letters” and theology from the point of view of Valla. Displacements follow one another: in London, in Paris, in Turin, where the university confers to him the bonnet of Doctor of Divinity, in Venice and Rome, where it spends long hours in the libraries, but it is prone to crises of melancholy and meditates on the direction of the life and death: Carmen of senectute.

An intense mental activity

Its mental activity is intense. It completes the edition of the Proverbs, “arsenal of Minerve”, widened of 4 151 proverbs and sentences. It translates Plutarque, Plato, Pindare and is initiated with Hebrew. While crossing the Alps, it composes, “with horse”, the Praise of the madness (1509), which it dedicates to Thomas More.  

Having conceived early a deep repulsion with regard to theology scholastic, Erasme wants to supplement humanism and Christianity by reconciling the religious studies and the study of the traditional letters. It approves the first standpoint Lutherans, but it also wishes to safeguard the unit of the Christian world, and decides soon against Luther by defending, against him, the free will and the tolerance. This position of conciliator is worth a European radiation to him, but also the attacks of all the spirits in favor, reformed like catholics. It leaves the Netherlands definitively and settles in Basle, where it publishes under 1524 its Test on the free will, which Luther answers by servo arbitrio (“Of the serf referee”). Humanistic counterpart by Hyperaspistes (1527). Corresponding with all Europe, it composes in 1534 a Treaty on the harmony of the Church and ensures the pope of its whole devotion to the cause of the unit of the Church.