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Erasmus
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esiderius Erasmus was one of the most significant figures of the Reformation.
His monumental Greek New Testament may have precipitated the events.
Erasmus was the illegitimate son of a priest. (Charles Reade's The
Cloister and the Hearth tells his story in novel form). He pressed
for reform, had contact with major reformers, but he stayed within the
Roman church.
Another of Erasmus' famous works was The Praise of Folly. You
can still get it in any library today. It raised a stir across Europe,
yet when he wrote it, he never expected it to be published. Erasmus explained:
"I was staying with [Sir Thomas] More after my return from Italy, and
I was kept several days in the house by an attack of lumbago. My books
had not arrived, and even if they had, my illness forbade exertion in
more serious studies. So, in order to have something to do, I began to
amuse myself with The Praise of Folly, not with the intention of
publishing the result but to relieve the discomfort of sickness by this
sort of distraction. I showed a specimen of the unfinished work to some
of my friends in order to heighten the enjoyment of all this ridiculousness
by sharing it."
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