Talk:Erasmus

message: The more I read, the less comfortable I am that he was born in 1466. 1469 is very plausible.
As I understand it, the year was calculated by taking the year of his ordination (1493 according to Beatus Rheanus) and subtracting the 25(or 24?) year minimum age for ordination: 1469 is barely possible. 
However research of the Gouda archives (New Evidence on Erasmus’ Youth  In: Erasmus Studies 2017) makes the 1493 year implausible, and suggests 1496: which means Erasmus could be born before 1471. 
The attraction, to me, of a 1469-ish date is it makes much more sense of his biography: if his parents left Rotterdam after his first year (when his father started in Wouden,) he started school at 6 not 9, started Deventer at 9 not 12, was orphaned at 13 not 16, went to 's Hertogenbosch  at 14 not 17, went into the novitiate at 17 not 20, fell for Rogerius and professed at age 18 not 21 (Thomas Cromwell professed at age 14 b.t.w), went to Cambrai at 24, became a priest under Bishop Henry at age 25 and started studying in Paris at age 26 not 29: otherwise why would such a brilliant man have such a delayed education? 
I am not sure how to handle it: a little table with the two sets of dates for his life events? Rick Jelliffe (talk) 14:15, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birth date

message: There was a flag in the text saying that the phrase "and reactionary" needed a quotation from the citation to justify it. I have looked through the citation text, and I do not think "and reactionary" can be justified. So I have removed that phrase and the flag. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 01:08, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Radical and Reactionary

message: The phrase that Erasmus' criticism was also directed towards many of the Church's basic doctrines is, I believe, historically wrong but also is not supported by what the citation actually says.  
The citation says he "questioned" many of the Church's basic "teachings": "questioning" (a theologian's job, surely) is not "criticizing", and "teachings" is way broader than "doctrines". Erasmus certainly did not question the articles of the Creed, and he repeatedly said that once the church defined something (even though it were better if fewer things were defined not more) then we were duty-bound not to oppose it, for the sake of concord at least.  
When Erasmus was attacked for using different words in his NT that undermined what had been proof texts for some doctrines (i.e. the Johannine Comma, repentance for penance, presbyter for priest, favour for grace) his response was that the doctrines still stood (because of Tradition and the magisterium), just that those particular passages were simply not as direct evidence for it as had been thought (but also evidence for other things that should be taken on-board.) The same charge was made against him multiple times, and he denied that he was disavowing those doctrines. 
(Even in the famous case of transubstantiation, he made it clear that he certainly believed the Real Presence, but that the (theo)logical meaning of transubstantiation made no sense to him, according to his understanding of what "substance" could mean. He also said that if he had had any idea of how his words would be twisted, he would have expressed himself very differently.)
On the issue of payment for indulgences (Luther had taken many of his 95 Thesis direct from Erasmus' writings), Erasmus was actually mainstream Catholic: multiple church councils had anathemized simony, as had the recent Lateran Council IIRC. But Erasmus' own Liturgy for the Lady of Loreto (which he made as a model of how to turn a superstitious veneration of Mary into a devout veneration of Mary) was actually published with an indulgence from the local bishop: again, it was abuses not proper uses that he was against. Certainly his view of where the line between use and abuse stood was to err on the side of primitivism and gradualism. 
So what "basic doctrines" (as far as had been defined before the Council of Trent) does that leave? 
What that phrase also misses is that much of Erasmus' opposition was to scholastic theology itself, which he had studied at the Sorbonne. A theological tradition is not quite the same a doctrine. (He was a proponent of  mystical theology appealing to the affections, such as he saw in the patristic and pre-scholastic monastic eras, but non-fanatical and non-partisan.) 
So it would be better to have something like was also directed towards some of the Church's recent theology with a suitable citation. I have not done this. (Rick Jelliffe)
::  I changed it to "in the view of some was also directed towards many of his Church's basic teachings"Rick Jelliffe (talk) 02:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Attempts at impartiality

message: A difference issue in the same section: I have changed a sentence from
 "The issues between the Catholic Church and the growing religious movement which would later become known as Protestantism, had become so clear that few could escape the summons to join the debate."
to the more NPOV
 "The issues between the reforming and reactionary tendencies of the Catholic Church, from which Protestantism later emerged, had become so clear that few could escape the summons to join the debate. "
This is because the old sentence frames what went on from the sharp black-hat/white-hat POV of much later Protestant commentary: Erasmus is surely a poster-boy that many pre-reformation reformers did not became Protestants, and that the issue was not between the Catholic Church (by which is meant the hierarchy? the Sorbonne/Salamanca/Louven university theologians?) and the "outsider"  reformers (noting that the English Bishops funded Erasmus, that the Pope put in a glowing letter of recommendation for Erasmus' New Testament which included lots of reforming annotation, that they wanted to make Erasmus a Cardinal: not good evidence of Erasmus as a maverick outsider...)  
After the Reformation some things did indeed become more describable in terms of "Protestant" (or "Lutheran") versus "Roman Catholic", of course, even for Erasmus...
There is a relevant passage, in an article on Erasmus' works' secret trial at Valladolid before all the important bishops and religious theologians, and chaired by the head of the Spanish Inquisition IIRC) that while most of the Bishops found some passages in his work unacceptable, they all disagreed on which passages were unacceptable, sometimes strongly: in other words most (even, or especially, conservatives) agreed on most of his reformist statements: so there was almost universal agreement on the need for reform, but pockets of resistance to most specific reforms. (That 'trial' fizzled out without being able to reach a consensus on almost anything; when Erasmus' Enchiradon was placed on the Spanish Index, it was only one provocative sentence "Monkishness is not piety" that was required to be censored in order to de-contaminate it.) 
(Another, perhaps partisan, article I have read said IIRC of the difficulties Pope Adrian had when attempting reform was that the powerful would agree to reform of other's abuses but not their own. This diversity of reform agenda was reflected in Protestants and pre-Protestant movements too: consider that the Hussites were willing to give up their struggle if Rome allowed them married priests, communion under both species, etc.: demands that were nothing to do with sola fide.)
Cardinal Cajetan is another good example of how it is an over-simplification to speak of reformers versus the monolithic Catholic Church (hierarchy): an establishment figure who negotiated the aborted compromise with the Lutherans.  
So I think it is more NPOV to couch the sentence in terms of reformist and reactionary "tendencies", and not a simple trajectory that you had reformers and they all became Protestants.
Apologies for the long justification here, which probably seems excessive for the small change. But it is symptom of much partisan/revisionist writing on Erasmus to sloppily substitute blanket "Catholic church" for the more varied  and complex targets of reform that modern historians describe. The article is improved by a little more precision on these things. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 01:34, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Catholic Church versus reformers is over-simplification (before the Reformation) not NPOV? 

message: I have added the following routemap
The justification for this is that Erasmus rarely stayed longer than three years in any location (and he lived to 70) and that these locations were key parts of his story, and this is can very easily be confusing, especially for those of us outside Western Europe who may not have a good grasp of its geography. (Plus he regularly popped over to whichever city his books were being published in, to oversee production.) 
Also, so many of his colloquies and event are tied to places (the pilgrimage to Wokingham, the pilgrimage to Canturbury, his participation in the Field of the Cloth of Gold near Calais, his year spent with Aldus Manutius in Venice, and so on.) 
I didn't see any way to show his individual trips (e.g. he went to England 5 times, to Paris numerous ties, to Italy twice, and so on) so I think this is a good compromise.  
 
I used the places in the Wikipedia article, plus several biographies as source, such as CCEL and Huizinga, so I don't think there is any original research it. It uses the Wikipedia Routemap tags, so it can be maintained by anyone. It is pretty much North-South like a map: the red are trips he would have made on horseback or carriage, the blue is trips he would have made by boat (English Channel, Rhein River).  (The Green is his first 25 years in the Netherlands.) Places he stayed only passingly are shown in a lighter colour. The thin line at the bottom is when he crossed the Alps.
On a larger level, a picture is worth a thousand words, especially if you are a "visual thinker" I guess. So also I hope it might stimulate contributors on other pages to take up this great facility of Wikipedia's!
Anyway, talk and help is very welcome.
* After reading this, I understand what is going on and agree that it adds value. But I think the meaning of the colours, shading, etc need to be explained in the article, since they're not obvious. Does the template allow one to include a legend? Furius (talk) 20:43, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Routemap does allow a footnote: I have added some extra info (and may try to improve it following reflection, as of course, can anyone: though I think it is best if super-terse?)  Rick Jelliffe (talk) 02:44, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Brilliant! Furius (talk) 19:52, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Routemap 

message: I have been bold and removed the section "other" which says that Erasmus wrote about Pier Gerlofs Donia. The following reasons:
1)  I have looked at the reference The Age of Erasmus and I could not find anything about it. (If there is a reference there, it is using very different words and names.)
2) It suggests that Erasmus wrote a book or something major, which seems unlikely. ( I could not find anything, nor could Google.)
3) When I look at other references on Google, they all are derived from this Wikipedia article's reference to The Age of Erasmus. Even the Dutch Wikipedia page only refers to the same thing: a Dutch page mentioning only an English-language source for a Dutchman writing about a Dutch subject gives no confidence. So there is no corroborating or alternative source for this, that I could find. 
4) The academic paper Dutch Proverbs and Expressions in Erasmus' Adages, Colloquies, and Letters  has a lot of material related to Dutch, and mentions Frisia several times, but I could see no mention of it.
5) Even if it turns out to be true, it lacks Notability for the English Wikipedia page. For the Dutch page, certainly...just not for the English.
So, all things considered, I will remove it here, and mark the Donia page's reference with a dubious. Please feel free to restore if you can find a good source and why it is notable.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 12:49, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Pier Gerlofs Donia

message: The section on Erasmus' flat head is strange. I have marked it dubious.
For a start, it is not certain that it was Erasmus' body exhumed. (The examining doctor also claimed the body had signs of syphilis, though Erasmus never complained of any of the symptoms of it, unusually for him.) There is a more recent scholarly paper that points out that the body examined was relatively tall and muscular with small cranial capacity, while Erasmus was rather short and had a "frail and delicate little body" 
Also, there are two scholars who specialize in Erasmus' bonnet, of all things: Jane Malcolm-Davies and Geeske Kruseman. Well, on renaissance knitware at least. In their discussions, I do not see any reference to flat heads or upholstering.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 09:32, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Rewritten. Added section on Exhumation.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 09:32, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flat Head 

message: The current text of the Biography starts with "Erasmus's almost 70 years can be divided into quarters" then gives them; which has been tagged "according to whom". I think the tag misses the point: it is not an invocation to unspecified authorities, but a summary of the following information. 
I think such a summary is highly needed due to the lengthy and complex bio section. I will change the "can "to "may" and add "overview" as an unnecssary heading.  Rick Jelliffe (talk) 12:51, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  4 periods