Publisher's Synopsis
In this biography, now available in paper, Leon Halkin vividly reconstructs Erasmus′s life. A portrait emerges of a man who, although denounced as a heretic in his own lifetime, holds an enduring fascination and relevance today. A contemporary of Columbus, Luther and Rabelais, Erasmus was both a child of the Middle Ages and one of the founders of the modern world. Born in Rotterdam in 1469, he died in Basel in 1536 having travelled widely and lived in Paris, Louvain, London and Rome. In addition to In Praise of Folly and the Colloquies, he wrote numerous other works and, through them, took part in the great intellectual debates of humanism, pacifism and religious reform, so central to Renaissance thinking and was arguably the most outstanding intellectual figure of the sixteenth century.
