'Desiderius Erasmus in de Nederlandse Wikipedia Goudæ conceptus, Roterodami natus (Rotterdam (waarschijnlijk), 28 oktober 1466, 1467 of 1469 - Bazel, 12 juli 1536) was een Nederlands priester, Augustijner kanunnik, theoloog, humanist, schrijver en filosoof. .

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (28 October 1466? – 12 July 1536), known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian.

Erasmus was a classical scholar who wrote in a pure Latin style. He was an early proponent of religious toleration, and enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists"; he has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists." Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament. These raised questions that would be influential in the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He also wrote The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works.

Erasmus lived through the Reformation period, but while he was critical of the Church, he did not join the cause of the Reformers. In relation to clerical abuses in the Church, Erasmus remained committed to reforming the Church from within. He also held to Catholic doctrines such as that of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favour of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps.

Erasmus died in Basel in 1536 and was buried in the formerly Catholic cathedral there, which had been converted to a Reformed church in 1529.

Erasmus was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. Desiderius was a self-adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The Roterodamus in his scholarly name is the Latinized adjectival form for the city of Rotterdam.

Ordination and monastic experience

In 1492, poverty forced Erasmus into the monastery. He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and took vows as an Augustinian canon at Steyn at about the age of 25 (1492-5), but he never seemed to have actively worked as a priest for a longer time, and certain tenets of monasticism were among the chief objects of his attack in his lifelong assault upon Church excesses.

While at Steyn, Erasmus fell in love with a fellow monk, Servatius Rogerus, and wrote a series of passionate letters in which he called Rogerus "half my soul". He wrote, "I have wooed you both unhappily and relentlessly."