pacy in northern Italy, Erasmus also wrote
(anonymously) Julius Exclusus, in which
the pope, greedy for treasure and worldly
renown, is barred from the gates of heaven.
Erasmus returned to England in 1509,
taking a position as a lecturer in divinity
at the University of Cambridge. Hoping
for an invitation to the court of King
Henry VIII, who had just come to power,
he was to be disappointed in his ambition
and soon returned to the continent. In
1511 Erasmus publishedIn Praise of Folly,
a book that soon had an audience through-
out Europe. In this work, which he dedi-
cated to Sir Thomas More, Erasmus uses
satire to hold the Catholic Church at fault
for its worldliness and corruption, and of-
fered his support to the gathering move-
ment for reform of the church and a re-
turn to its roots. Instead of a hierarchy of
bishops, cardinals, popes, and other privi-
leged officials, Erasmus saw true Chris-
tianity as lying in the simple faith of the
believer.
His fame as a writer assured, Erasmus
was appointed as an adviser for Prince
Charles, heir to the Holy Roman Empire,
and for the prince wroteThe Education of
a Christian Princein 1516, advising Charles
that the best way to rule was to win the
trust and respect of his subjects. Erasmus
counseled the prince to find peaceful solu-
tions to the religious and civil conflicts
then brewing in Europe, and repeated
these opinions in two works,WarIsSweet
to Inexperienced MenandThe Complaint
of Peace.
In his study of the Bible and of the
classical authors, Erasmus strove to recon-
cile the humanist movement with the tra-
ditional doctrines of the church. He trans-
lated long sections of the Bible as well as
the writings of the early church fathers,
including Saint Augustine, Origen, and
Saint Jerome. In his translations he at-
tempted to convey the original meaning of
the texts, but in doing so offended church
leaders who held his scholarship to be
blasphemous and heretical. Undeterred, he
brought out an edition of the New Testa-
ment, in which Greek text and Latin trans-
lation was printed side by side. First pub-
lished in 1516, thisNovum Instrumentum
contained annotations, or explanations of
the original meaning of the text. He
changed and expanded his work in five
more editions, one of which would later
be used as the basis for the King James
version of the Bible. In his preface to the
work, Erasmus urged Pope Leo X to un-
dertake a sweeping reform of the church
and to disseminate the Bible among the
common people. His work, however, ran
counter to the idea that a single, funda-
mental meaning must be given to the
words of the Bible, which as the original
word of God could not be amended or
annotated by scholars or other ordinary
believers. In effect, Erasmus was proposing
an alternative view of Christianity, and the
wide popularity of his works and transla-
tions reflected the flowering of new doc-
trines brought about by the Protestant Ref-
ormation.
Erasmus favored reform of the church,
however, not the establishment of an en-
tirely new one, and accepted the final au-
thority of the pope on matters of doctrine.
He fled the city of Basel after it joined the
ranks of the Protestants, and he debated
with Martin Luther in his essayOn the
Freedom of the Will, which countered
Luther’s ideas on salvation and justifica-
tion by personal faith. The church, how-
ever, saw him as an opponent, and after
his death placed his books on its Index, a
list of books that were prohibited to its
members.Erasmus, Desiderius