Renaissance Lives | Erasmus of Rotterdam: the Spirit of a Scholar

Erasmus of Rotterdam came from an obscure background but, through remarkable perseverance, skill, and independent vision, became a powerful and controversial intellectual figure in Europe in the early sixteenth century. He was known for his vigorous opposition to war, intolerance, and hypocrisy, and at the same time for irony and subtlety that could confuse his friends as well as his opponents. His ideas about language, society, scholarship, and religion influenced the rise of the Reformation and had a huge impact on the humanities, and that influence continues today. This book shows how an independent textual scholar was able, by the power of the printing press and his wits, to attain both fame and notoriety. Drawing on the immense wealth of recent scholarship devoted to Erasmus, Erasmus of Rotterdam is the first English-language popular biography of this crucial thinker in twenty years.

Speakers: William Barker (University of King's College & Dalhousie University), Micha Lazarus (Warburg Institute & University of Cambridge), François Quiviger (Warburg Institute)

William Barker is the Inglis Professor and former president of the University of King’s College as well as professor emeritus of English at Dalhousie University. He is the editor of The Adages of Erasmus.

Micha Lazarus is Associate Fellow of the Warburg Institute and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

Renaissance Lives is a series of biographies published by Reaktion Books as well as a series of conversations discussing the ways in which individuals transmitted or changed the lives of traditions, ideas and images. https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/renaissance...

This event was filmed on 20 January 2022