Erasmus' Egg: Humanism, Reformation, and the People's Book

Desiderius Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus was a brilliant scholar and theologian whose devotion to the cause of Christian humanism made him a celebrity throughout early modern Europe. Although technically an Augustinian monk, Erasmus forewent monastic life in favor of travelling, networking, and immersing himself in his writings and translations. 

As a linguist, Erasmus had been a vocal critic of Jerome's Vulgate and sought to produce a more accurate edition of the Scriptures. (Little did he realize that the texts with which he worked were faultier than those used by Jerome.) His Novum instrumentum omne, often called Erasmus' New Testament, which featured his Latin translation next to the original Greek, was published by Johann Froben in 1516, the same publisher who printed Erasmus' edition of Jerome's letters that same year.



Pabel, Hilmar M. Herculean Labours : Erasmus and the Editing of St. Jerome’s Letters in the Renaissance. Leiden ; Brill, 2008.

George, Timothy. Reading Scripture with the Reformers. Downers Grove, Ill. : IVP Academic, 2011.

 Josef Eskhult. “Latin Bible Translations in the Protestant Reformation.” In Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Scholars, and Their Readers in the Sixteenth Century, 20:167–86. Library of the Written Word. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012.
 

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