Érasme - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Biography

Érasme , or “Gerritszoon”, i.e. “Gerard wire”, would have been born with the date from the October 28th 1469, with Rotterdam. He died in 1536 in Basle.

Childhood

Érasme was an illegitimate child (born out-marriage, at the time one speaks about “defectus natalis”). His/her father was priest with Gouda or monk copyist. His/her mother, Margaretha Rogerius, born with Antwerp (Rutgers) and girl of a surgeon of Mons, were his cleaning lady. She probably spent the months of pregnancy to Rotterdam to hide her “shame”. However, according to other sources, inter alia a note historian To disavow it Snooy (1478 - 1537), Érasme would have been born in Gouda. One year before this birth his/her father and his mother had already had another child, Pierre.

After four years in Rotterdam, Érasme left for Gouda. One reads on an image engraved on wood, “Goudæ conceptus, Roterodami natus” (conceived in Gouda, born in Rotterdam). It is in any case in Holland, probably with Deventer that Érasme follows studies in a school famous for its distinguished pupils, and directed at the time by Alexander Hegius von Heek. This last had a great influence on qualities of humanistic of Érasme by its work methods and education.

Years of training

Its illegitimate birth did not prevent his/her parents from dealing with him carefully until their death, which occurred relatively early, and the same year, in 1483. They gave him the best education which an young man of this time could receive, in monastic or semi-monastic schools. At the twenty-four years age, it was allowed with the priesthood and pronounced its monastic vows, but it does not seem that it carried on an activity of priest, and all its life the Monachisme was the main target of its attacks when he was caught some with the evils of the Church.

It continued its studies with the Collège of Montaigu of the Université of Paris, which was then the principal center of the studies Scolastique S, but was subject to already the influence of the Italian Rebirth. As student, Érasme chooses to carry out an independent life, without feeling dependant by a nationality, bonds academic, religious coteries or no matter what it was which could block its freedom of thought or its literary freedom of expression. The Latin language, which was then of a universal use in Europe, enabled him to feel everywhere at his place. He carried on especially his activity in Paris, in Leuwen, in England and with Basle. Its stay in England enabled him to tie durable friendships with the principal Masters of the English thought at that time agitated reign of Henri VII: John Collet, Thomas More, Thomas Lynacre and William Grocyn; it remained with the Queens' College of Cambridge, where it is even possible that it was student.

Working life

Recognized today like one of largest the humanistic of the Rebirth, Érasme has all its life defended a evangelic design of the Catholic religion. He many times criticized the attitude of the Clergé and the Pape, whose behaviors seemed to him in opposition with the Gospel S.

Author of many writings, mainly of the dialogs whose famous Praise of the madness , Érasme lengthily travelled to Europe, in particular in England and Italy to grow rich and develop his humanistic design of Christendom. Although its ideas and its criticisms against the pope were close to those of Luther, it forever desired to adopt nor to encourage the Réforme, not wishing to create Schisme inside the Church, faithful by there to its ideal of peace and harmony.

Whereas it prepares the doctorate of Théologie of the Sorbonne of 1495 with 1499, it earns its living while working like tutor. It composes for its students Latinists of the models of letters and works with the development of a Rhétorique epistolary, initially in agreement with that of humanistic Italian, but called to experience an extraordinary development which leads ultimately to the rise in the letter to the row of prose of Article Influencé by the contemporary debates between holding of the Formalisme medieval and in favor of the Néoclassicisme, and in reaction to the publication of the correspondence of Ange Politien (1498), Érasme undertakes to illustrate its own design of the kind. Its handbooks of epistolography, plagiarized many times as from 1499-1500, fall under the evolutionary mobility of a synthesis of the traditions traditional and medieval that the Of conscribendis epistolis (1522) was going to realize later. The attention given to epistolary in its Cicéronien (1528), satirical dialog on the vétilleuse imitation of Cicéron, also testifies to the importance that revêt the kind with the Renaissance.

Untiring Épistolier, Érasme writes letters with all that the Europe account of princes, large ecclesiastics, famous scholars or disciples beginners. He affirms to devote half of his days to his correspondence. One will count today more than 600 correspondents in all Europe. From 1516 with its death, it publishes more than one dozen of different collections where are associated its own letters and those of its correspondents. On the whole, it is nearly twelve hundred letters that it gives to see with the public, shovel-mixes and without regard for the chronology, ambitionnant to illustrate through them the expressive resources of the kind while projecting an advantageous image of itself and its standpoint within the République of the letters.

Large admiror of the Elegantiæ of Lorenzo Valla, it composes in his turn a collection of expressions and Latin proverbs drawn in the old authors, the Adages . Each expression is commented on and this exercise, which enables him to illustrate the relationship between the Latin and Greek Littérature, is pretext for the author to propose his analyzes on the man, the religion or the subjects of topicality. The first edition of the collection (1503) is regularly revised by the author (the more so as of the pirate editions are done quickly day) and the final collection comprises more than four thousand articles.

He is also the author of a handbook of Savoir-vivre to the use of the children , also known under the name of puerile Civility ( Of civilitate morum puerilium , 1530), intended for the prince Henri of Burgundy. This work, which was used as reference during several generations, gives a good testimony of the state of manners in Europe of XVe century.

Érasme died in the night from July 11th to 12th 1536, in Basle where it had returned to supervise the publication of the Ecclésiaste . It was buried in the cathedral become Protestant, although there had remained officially catholic; January 19th, 1543, its books were flarings publicly in Milan at the same time as those of Luther. It was the end of the humanistic reform of the Catholic church.

Translation of New Testament

Man particularly educated and who, of alive sound, were already recognized in whole Europe like one of the large thinkers of his time, Érasme were not satisfied to speak and write Latin, he knew also the Greek and is besides at the origin of our traditional tradition. Its knowledge of the Greek the convainquit that certain parts of the Bible which one finds in the Latin Vulgate had not been correctly translated. He thus decided to make print Greek New Testament, in spite of the objections of his friends as Van Dorp for which was to mine the building of the Church, already then in so bad condition. To carry out this Greek New Testament Érasme had Greek manuscripts six. It made a new Latin translation of it to show the differences with the Vulgate. Thereafter the Elzevier, a family of printers of Leyde, used the Greek text of Érasme while writing below the title Textus receptus . By this publication Érasme posed the bases of the reform of Luther, which was reproached to him by the Catholic church. This reproach to have laid egg of the heresy, he answered that it was not its intention and that it was not him the person in charge of the parcelling out of the Church.

Great dates of its life

1469: Rotterdam, birth of Desiderius Erasmus, wire illegitimate of a priest and a girl of doctor.

1488: He pronounces his wishes at the regular Chanoine S of holy Augustin in Steyn.

1492: It is ordered priest.

1493: Secretary of the bishop of Cambric, it leaves the convent and follows it in its displacements.

1495 - 1499: Stays in Paris where he learns the Greek and meets the many humanistic ones. Under the inspiration of the franciscain Jean Glazier, guard (higher) of the convent of Saint-Omer, it writes the Enchirion militis christiani (“the handbook of the Christian soldier”).

1499: First stay in England where it meets John Colet, canon of Saint-Paul and Thomas More. 1505 - 1506: Second stay in England.

1506 - 1509: Stay in Italy. He becomes Doctor of Divinity at the university of Bologna.

1509 - 1514: Third stay in England at Thomas More, professor of Greek and theology. He writes the praise of the madness on the road between Italy and England.

1514: It enters in relation to the printer Johann Froben to Basle.

1516: To advise duke Charles.

1517: Leon X exempts it to wear the monastic dress.

1517 - 1521: Érasme remains mainly with Leuwen.

1519: Luther requests the support of Érasme which states to want to remain neutral.

1521 - 1529: Stay with Basle, where it publishes the major part of its work: Editions and comments of almost all the Fathers of the Church.

1522: First edition of the Conferences and publication of the Of conscribendis epistolis (manual of epistolography).

1524: Érasme attacks Luther in its Of libero arbitrio (Tests on the free will).

1526: Luther answers the attack of Érasme by the servo arbitrio . The polemic continues.

1528: Publication of the Cicéronien .

1529 - 1535: Basle very whole having passed with the Reform, Érasme will settle with Freiburg-in-Brisgau.

The large last works: Ecclésiaste .

1535: Return to Basle. The pope offers the cardinalat to him that he refuses.

July 12th 1536: Érasme dies in Basle.

Random links:

Manure | Mezel | Octosyllabic | Theligonaceae | Rural of Pernambouc