Few historical figures have been more important in modeling   the   ideal of impartial critical scholarship than Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-  1536).   Yet his critical scholarship, though beholden to no one, was not   dispassionate.   James Tracy shows how Erasmus the scholar sought through his writings to   promote   the moral and religious renewal of Christian society.  Tracy finds the genesis of the humanist's notion of a "Christian   republic" of   pious and learned individuals in his "Burgundian," or Low Countries,   roots.   Erasmus's vision of reform, Tracy argues, sprung from a humanist   tradition   focusing on the importance of teaching (doctrina), a tradition from   which   Erasmus departed in his optimism about human nature and his deep   suspicion of   the powers that be. Amid the storms of Reformation controversy, he   pruned back   the "dissimulation" by which he had thought to convey different meanings   to   different readers, yet in the end he could not control the way his words   were   read. If Erasmus's scholarly ideal carries an enduring fascination, so   too does   his dilemma as a man of circumspection who would also be a reformer.

Erasmus of the Low Countries PDF

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