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134-557: Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus ( / ˌ d ɛ z ɪ ˈ d ɪər i ə s ɪ ˈ r æ z m ə s / DEZ -i- DEER -ee-əs irr- AZ -məs ; Dutch: [ˌdeːziˈdeːrijʏs eːˈrɑsmʏs] ; 28 October c. 1466 – 12 July 1536), commonly known in English as Erasmus of Rotterdam or simply Erasmus , was a Dutch Christian humanist , Catholic priest and theologian , educationalist , satirist , and philosopher . Through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he

268-532: A fragment of Rufus of Ephesus preserved by Oribasius ; these ancient medical authorities suggest bubonic plague had appeared in the Roman Empire before the reign of Trajan , six centuries before arriving at Pelusium in the reign of Justinian I . In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian (541–549 CE, with recurrences until 750) was Y . pestis . This

402-456: A "hybrid term... which some from a Christian background have been attempting to put into currency". Copson argues that attempts to append religious adjectives such as Christian to the life stance of humanism are incoherent, saying these have "led to a raft of claims from those identifying with other religious traditions – whether culturally or in convictions – that they too can claim a 'humanism'. The suggestion that has followed – that 'humanism'

536-403: A "passionate attachment" ( Latin : fervidos amores ), with a fellow canon, Servatius Rogerus, and wrote a series of love letters in which he called Rogerus "half my soul", writing that "it was not for the sake of reward or out of a desire for any favour that I have wooed you both unhappily and relentlessly. What is it then? Why, that you love him who loves you." This correspondence contrasts with

670-544: A Christian Knight ( Enchiridion militis christiani ) in 1503, writing about his new intellectual direction, the philosophia christi ('Christ's philosophy'). It became incredibly popular with 29 Latin editions between 1519–1523 and receiving translations into English, Dutch, German, French, and Spanish. The popularity of Erasmus and his work was further amplified by the success of his literary works such as The Praise of Folly , published in 1511, and Colloquies , published in 1518. He also gained incredible success as

804-425: A celebration of uniqueness and individual self-determination. The literature of the period is filled with statements such as the following about the dignity, excellence, rationality, and power of individual human beings: Renaissance humanism is linked to those who, following Pico della Mirandola , emphasized the dignity and potential of created humankind. And those, such as Petrarch and Thomas More , who believed

938-750: A description of the disease modelled on Thucydides 's account of the 5th century BCE Plague of Athens , noting the spread of the Black Death by ship between maritime cities. Nicephorus Gregoras , while writing to Demetrios Kydones , described the rising death toll, the futility of medicine, and the panic of the citizens. The first outbreak in Constantinople lasted a year, but the disease recurred ten times before 1400. Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347;

1072-407: A disagreement with the friars over rent that caused bad blood. He assisted his friend John Colet by authoring Greek textbooks and securing members of staff for the newly established St Paul's School and was in contact when Colet gave his notorious 1512 Convocation sermon which called for a reformation of ecclesiastical affairs. At Colet's instigation, Erasmus started work on De copia . In 1511,

1206-816: A few Christian poets from the Late Roman Empire towards creating a new form of education that would provide church leaders educated in Christian religion, prominent Church authors and a few important classical writings and hence improve Christendom's condition. John Colet (1467–1519) was another major figure in early Christian humanism, exerting more cultural influence than his older contemporary, Jakob Wimpfeling. Being attracted to Neoplatonic philosophers such as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola and gaining an appreciation for humanistic methods of analyzing texts and developing detailed ideas and principles regarding them, he applied this humanistic method to

1340-461: A four-volume edition of St. Jerome 's letters. His satires and criticisms were widely popular and renowned for decades to come, and he succeeded in having "truly and fully" founded Christian humanism. Literary critic Lee Oser has suggested that Christian humanism ended with Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope ; however, it began again with G.K. Chesterton , T.S. Eliot and J.R.R. Tolkien . Personalism , an intellectual stance that emphasizes

1474-553: A full purse from his generous friends, to allow him to complete his studies. However, he had been provided with bad legal advice by his friends: the English Customs officials confiscated all the gold and silver, leaving him with nothing except a night fever that lasted several months. Opponents : Noël Béda (or Bédier) Following his first trip to England, Erasmus returned first to poverty in Paris, where he started to compile

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1608-533: A given time as any other man he had ever met. In 1507, according to his letters, he studied advanced Greek in Padua with the Venetian natural philosopher, Giulio Camillo . He found employment tutoring and escorting Scottish nobleman Alexander Stewart , the 24-year old Archbishop of St Andrews, through Padua, Florence, and Siena Erasmus made it to Rome in 1509, visiting some notable libraries and cardinals, but having

1742-519: A handful of pagan texts (predominantly Cicero and Virgil ), however, Colet's restrictions on the teaching of other classical texts was seen as anti-humanistic and quickly reverted by the school's headmasters. After his death, the school at St. Paul's become an influential humanistic institution. His notable convocation sermon urged his fellow priests to "return to the God of love and peace". Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (1453–1536) was, alongside Erasmus ,

1876-465: A human epidemic . Definitive confirmation of the role of Y. pestis arrived in 2010 with a publication in PLOS Pathogens by Haensch et al. They assessed the presence of DNA / RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y. pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with

2010-588: A kind of conversion experience, and introduced him to Origen . In 1502, Erasmus went to Brabant, ultimately to the university at Louvain. In 1504 he was hired by the leaders of the Brabantian "Provincial States" to deliver one of his few public speeches, a very long formal panegyric for the Philip "the Fair" , Duke of Burgundy and later King of Castille: the first half being the conventional extravagant praise, but

2144-457: A less active association with Italian scholars than might have been expected. In 1509, William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Mountjoy lured him back to England, now ruled by what was hoped would be a wise and benevolent king ( Henry VIII ) educated by humanists. Warham and Mountjoy sent Erasmus £10 to cover his expenses on the journey. On his trip over the Alps via Splügen Pass, and down

2278-478: A letter to a fictitious Papal secretary, Lambertus Grunnius ("Mr. Grunt"). His parents could not be legally married: his father, Gerard, was a Catholic priest who may have spent up to six years in the 1450s or 60s in Italy as a scribe and scholar. His mother was Margaretha Rogerius (Latinized form of Dutch surname Rutgers), the daughter of a doctor from Zevenbergen . She may have been Gerard's housekeeper. Although he

2412-528: A rue du Pipi. Pigs, cattle, chickens, geese, goats and horses roamed the streets of medieval London and Paris. Medieval homeowners were supposed to police their housefronts, including removing animal dung, but most urbanites were careless. William E. Cosner, a resident of the London suburb of Farringdon Without, received a complaint alleging that "men could not pass [by his house] for the stink [of] . . . horse dung and horse piss." One irate Londoner complained that

2546-634: A small sporadic outbreak characteristic of transmission from rodents to humans with no wide-scale impact. According to Achtman, the dating of the plague suggests that it was not carried along the Silk Road , and its widespread appearance in that region probably postdates the European outbreak. Additionally, the Silk Road had already been heavily disrupted before the spread of the Black Death; Western and Middle Eastern traders found it difficult to trade on

2680-539: A team led by Galina Eroshenko placed its origins more specifically in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China. However more recent research notes that the previous sampling contained East Asian bias and that sampling since then has discovered strains of Y. pestis in the Caucasus region previously thought to be restricted to China. There is also no physical or specific textual evidence of

2814-584: A textual scholar, interpreting, translating and editing numerous texts of Greek and Roman classics, Church Fathers and the Bible. This textual success began when he discovered and published Lorenzo Valla 's Annotations on the New Testament in 1504–1505, and in a single year, in 1516, Erasmus published the first Greek edition of the New Testament, an edition of the works of the Roman philosopher Seneca , and

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2948-479: A year staying at recently married Thomas More 's house, now a lawyer and Member of Parliament, honing his translation skills. Erasmus preferred to live the life of an independent scholar and made a conscious effort to avoid any actions or formal ties that might inhibit his individual freedom. In England Erasmus was approached with prominent offices but he declined them all, until the King himself offered his support. He

3082-509: A year. Eventually Erasmus moved to the same abbey as a postulant in or before 1487, around the age of 16 (or 19.) Poverty had forced the sickly, bookish, teenaged orphan Erasmus into the consecrated life, entering the novitiate in 1487 at the canonry at rural Stein , very near Gouda, South Holland : the Chapter of Sion community largely borrowed its rule from the larger monkish Congregation of Windesheim who had historical associations with

3216-415: Is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas and through the air. One of the most significant events in European history, the Black Death had far-reaching population, economic, and cultural impacts. It was the beginning of the second plague pandemic . The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history. The origin of

3350-479: Is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture. Erasmus was an important figure in classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and natural Latin style. As a Catholic priest developing humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared pioneering new Latin and Greek scholarly editions of

3484-522: Is known as the first plague pandemic . In 610, the Chinese physician Chao Yuanfang described a "malignant bubo" "coming in abruptly with high fever together with the appearance of a bundle of nodes beneath the tissue." The Chinese physician Sun Simo who died in 652 also mentioned a "malignant bubo" and plague that was common in Lingnan ( Guangzhou ). Ole Jørgen Benedictow believes that this indicates it

3618-481: Is needed to the range of (especially non- commensal ) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague. Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of numerous rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London, and that the disease spread too quickly to support the thesis that Y. pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person. This theory

3752-413: Is seen as untrustworthy precisely because it is exempt from the vagaries of human discourse. Jens Zimmermann argues that "God's descent into human nature allows the humans ascent to the divine". "If God speaks to us in the language of humanity, then we must interpret Gods speech as we interpret the language of humanity." Incarnational humanism asserts a unification of the secular and the sacred with

3886-469: Is signed by friend and Polish religious reformer Jan Łaski . By this time More was a judge on the poorman's equity court ( Master of Requests ) and a Privy Counsellor . Opponents : Latomus  • Edward Lee  • Ulrich von Hutten  • Nicolaas Baechem (Egmondanus) Christian humanist Christian humanism regards classical humanist principles such as universal human dignity , individual freedom , and

4020-479: Is something of which there are two types, 'religious humanism' and 'secular humanism', has begun to seriously muddy the conceptual water." Black Death The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. The disease

4154-568: Is still contested. It is speculated that rats aboard Zheng He 's ships in the 15th century may have carried the plague to Southeast Asia , India , and Africa. Research on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan dynasty shows no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India and no specific evidence of plague in 14th-century China, suggesting that the Black Death may not have reached these regions. Ole Benedictow argues that since

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4288-528: Is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and fleas during the second plague pandemic . Academic debate continues, but no single alternative explanation for the plague's spread has achieved widespread acceptance. Many scholars arguing for Y. pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus , smallpox , and respiratory infections . In addition to

4422-401: Is the specific characteristic that distinguishes "Christian humanists" as a group from other humanists who just happened to be religious. Modern theologians such as Jens Zimmerman make a case for the concept of Christian humanism as a cogent force throughout the history of Christianity. In Zimmerman's account, Christian humanism as a tradition emerges from the Christian doctrine that God , in

4556-457: Is unclear: in later life he calculated his age as if born in 1466, but frequently his remembered age at major events actually implies 1469. (This article currently gives 1466 as the birth year. To handle this disagreement, ages are given first based on 1469, then in parentheses based on 1466: e.g., "20 (or 23)".) Furthermore, many details of his early life must be gleaned from a fictionalized third-person account he wrote in 1516 (published in 1529) in

4690-415: Is where he began learning it. His education there ended when plague struck the city about 1483, and his mother, who had moved to provide a home for her sons, died from the infection; then his father. Following the death of his parents, as well as 20 fellow students at his school, he moved back to his patria (Rotterdam?) where he was supported by Berthe de Heyden, a compassionate widow. In 1484, around

4824-816: The Adagio for his students, then to Orléans to escape the plague, and then to semi-monastic life, scholarly studies and writing in France, notably at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Bertin at St Omer (1501,1502) where he wrote the initial version of the Enchiridion ( Handbook of the Christian Knight .) A particular influence was his encounter in 1501 with Jean (Jehan) Vitrier, a radical Franciscan who consolidated Erasmus' thoughts against excessive valorization of monasticism, ceremonialism and fasting in

4958-477: The Bible and Church Fathers . The Waldensians have been viewed as a humanistic synthesis of Christianity. Although the first humanists did little to orient their intellectual work towards reforming the church and reviving spiritual life through humanist education, the first pioneering signs and practices of this idea emerged with Jakob Wimpfeling (1450–1528), a Renaissance humanist and theologian . Wimpfeling

5092-766: The Brethren of the Common Life , but also with the notable pastoral, mystical and anti-speculative post-scholastic theologians Jean Gerson and Gabriel Biel : positions associated also with Erasmus. In 1488–1490, the surrounding region was plundered badly by armies fighting the Squire Francis War of succession and then suffered a famine. Erasmus professed his vows as a Canon regular of St. Augustine there in late 1488 at age 19 (or 22). Historian Fr. Aiden Gasquet later wrote: "One thing, however, would seem to be quite clear; he could never have had any vocation for

5226-667: The East Smithfield burial site in England. Schuenemann et al. concluded in 2011 "that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist". Later in 2011, Bos et al. reported in Nature the first draft genome of Y. pestis from plague victims from the same East Smithfield cemetery and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of Y. pestis . Later genomic papers have further confirmed

5360-475: The Italian Peninsula . There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread from person-to-person as pneumonic plague , thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague. In 2022, it was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in what is today Kyrgyzstan from

5494-533: The Late Neolithic - Early Bronze Age . Research in 2018 found evidence of Yersinia pestis in an ancient Swedish tomb, which may have been associated with the " Neolithic decline " around 3000 BCE, in which European populations fell significantly. This Y. pestis may have been different from more modern types, with bubonic plague transmissible by fleas first known from Bronze Age remains near Samara . The symptoms of bubonic plague are first attested in

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5628-871: The Mamluk Sultanate , cultural center of the Islamic world , and the largest city in the Mediterranean Basin ; the Bahriyya child sultan an-Nasir Hasan fled and more than a third of the 600,000 residents died. The Nile was choked with corpses despite Cairo having a medieval hospital, the late 13th-century bimaristan of the Qalawun complex . The historian al-Maqrizi described the abundant work for grave-diggers and practitioners of funeral rites ; plague recurred in Cairo more than fifty times over

5762-850: The New Testament and of the Church Fathers , with annotations and commentary that were immediately and vitally influential in both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Reformation . He also wrote On Free Will , The Praise of Folly , The Complaint of Peace , Handbook of a Christian Knight , On Civility in Children , Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style and many other popular and pedagogical works. Erasmus lived against

5896-474: The Psalms and Pauline epistles and was keen to study textual variations between surviving manuscripts. According to Nauert, these "biblical publications constitute the first major manifestation of the Christian humanism that dominated not only French but also German, Netherlandish, and English humanistic thought through the first half of the sixteenth century". Erasmus (1466–1536) was the greatest scholar of

6030-573: The University of Cambridge 's chancellor, John Fisher , arranged for Erasmus to be (or to study to prepare to be) the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity , though whether he actually was accepted for it or took it up is contested by historians. He studied and taught Greek and researched and lectured on Jerome . Erasmus mainly stayed at Queens' College while lecturing at the university, between 1511 and 1515. Erasmus' rooms were located in

6164-582: The epistles of Paul the Apostle . In 1505, he completed his doctorate in theology, and then became the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral . From there, he used his fortune to found near the cathedral St Paul's School for boys. The school was humanistic, in its teaching of Latin, Greek and moral preparation of its students, as well as its recruitment of prominent humanists to recommend and compose new textbooks for it. The best Christian authors were taught, as well as

6298-553: The germ theory of disease . Until then streets were usually unhygienic, with live animals and human parasites facilitating the spread of transmissible disease . By the early 14th century, so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste. In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for "shit". There were rue Merdeux, rue Merdelet, rue Merdusson, rue des Merdons and rue Merdiere—as well as

6432-542: The humanities could aid the precepts and study of divinity . And those such as Erasmus who also promoted human flourishing. Christian humanism originated towards the end of the 15th century with the early work of figures such as Jakob Wimpfeling , John Colet , and Thomas More ; it would go on to dominate much of the thought in the first half of the 16th century with the emergence of widely influential Renaissance and humanistic intellectual figures such as Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and especially Erasmus , who would become

6566-512: The northern Renaissance and the most widely influential Christian humanist scholar in history, becoming the most famous scholar in Europe in his day. He believed that "learning and scholarship were a powerful weapon both for the cultivation of personal piety and institutional church reform", which is called instrumentalism . One of the defining components of his intellectual success was his mastery of Greek. He had published his Handbook of

6700-508: The phylogenetic placement of the Y. pestis strain responsible for the Black Death as both the ancestor of later plague epidemics—including the third plague pandemic —and the descendant of the strain responsible for the Plague of Justinian . In addition, plague genomes from prehistory have been recovered. DNA taken from 25 skeletons from 14th-century London showed that plague is a strain of Y. pestis almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013 . Further DNA evidence also proves

6834-404: The poll tax of the year 1377. Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures for the clergy. Mathematical modelling is used to match the spreading patterns and the means of transmission . In 2018 researchers suggested an alternative model in which "the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people". The second model claims to better fit the trends of

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6968-435: The " I " staircase of Old Court. Despite a chronic shortage of money, he succeeded in mastering Greek by an intensive, day-and-night study of three years, taught by Thomas Linacre , continuously begging in letters that his friends send him books and money for teachers. Erasmus suffered from poor health and was especially concerned with heating, clean air, ventilation, draughts, fresh food and unspoiled wine: he complained about

7102-457: The 1640s. Nestorian gravesites dating from 1338 to 1339 near Issyk-Kul have inscriptions referring to plague, which has led some historians and epidemiologists to think they mark the outbreak of the epidemic ; this is supported by recent direct findings of Y. pestis DNA in teeth samples from graves in the area with inscriptions referring to "pestilence" as the cause of death. Epidemics killed an estimated 25 million across Asia during

7236-513: The 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated Danish : den sorte død , lit.   'the black death'. This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as a calque : Icelandic : svarti dauði , German : der schwarze Tod , and French : la mort noire . Previously, most European languages had named

7370-770: The 48-(or 51-)year-old his independence but still, as a canon, capable of holding office as a prior or abbot. In 1525, Pope Clement VII granted, for health reasons, a dispensation to eat meat and dairy in Lent and on fast days. Erasmus traveled widely and regularly, for reasons of poverty, "escape" from his Stein canonry (to Cambrai ), education (to Paris , Turin ), escape from the sweating sickness plague (to Orléans ), employment (to England ), searching libraries for manuscripts, writing ( Brabant ), royal counsel ( Cologne ), patronage, tutoring and chaperoning (North Italy ), networking ( Rome ), seeing books through printing in person ( Paris , Venice , Louvain , Basel ), and avoiding

7504-518: The Black Death and subsequent resurgences. The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany, "ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y. pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages". In 2011 these results were further confirmed with genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in

7638-418: The Black Death in 14th century China. As a result, China's place in the sequence of the plague's spread is still debated to this day. According to Charles Creighton, records of epidemics in 14th-century China suggest nothing more than typhus and major Chinese outbreaks of epidemic disease post-date the European epidemic by several years. The earliest Chinese descriptions of the bubonic plague do not appear until

7772-530: The Black Death in the late 1330s; when combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may not have been due to Mongol conquests in the 14th century, as previously speculated. The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317 ) and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of

7906-555: The Black Death is disputed. Genetic analysis suggests Yersinia pestis bacteria evolved approximately 7,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Neolithic , with flea-mediated strains emerging around 3,800 years ago during the late Bronze Age . The immediate territorial origins of the Black Death and its outbreak remain unclear, with some evidence pointing towards Central Asia , China, the Middle East , and Europe. The pandemic

8040-513: The Black Death, because there were actually four strains of Yersinia pestis that became predominant in different parts of the world. Mongol records of illness such as food poisoning may have been referring to the Black Death. Another theory is that the plague originated near Europe and cycled through the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Russia before making its way to China. Other historians, such as John Norris and Ole Benedictaw, believe

8174-623: The European population, as well as approximately 33% of the population of the Middle East. There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, also due to other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages ), the European population did not regain its 14th century level until the 16th century. Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century. European writers contemporary with

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8308-483: The Gouda region. In 1505, Pope Julius II granted a dispensation from the vow of poverty to the extent of allowing Erasmus to hold certain benefices, and from the control and habit of his order , though he remained a priest and, formally, an Augustinian canon regular the rest his life. In 1517, Pope Leo X granted legal dispensations for Erasmus' defects of natality and confirmed the previous dispensation, allowing

8442-547: The Great Pestilence in 1893 and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague". In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J. I. Pontanus : "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" ( Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant ). Research from 2017 suggests plague first infected humans in Europe and Asia in

8576-541: The Greek language, which would enable him to study theology on a more profound level. Erasmus also became fast friends with Thomas More , a young law student considering becoming a monk, whose thought (e.g., on conscience and equity) had been influenced by 14th century French theologian Jean Gerson , and whose intellect had been developed by his powerful patron Cardinal John Morton (d. 1500) who had famously attempted reforms of English monasteries. Erasmus left London with

8710-674: The Islamic city of Almería in al-Andalus . Mecca became infected in 1348 by pilgrims performing the Hajj . In 1351 or 1352, the Rasulid sultan of the Yemen , al-Mujahid Ali, was released from Mamluk captivity in Egypt and carried plague with him on his return home. During 1349, records show the city of Mosul suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of

8844-461: The Islamic world in 1347–52. However, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence for pandemic disease on the scale of the Black Death in China at this time. War and famine – and the diseases that typically accompanied them – probably were the main causes of mortality in the final decades of Mongol rule. Monica Green suggests that other parts of Eurasia outside the west do not contain the same evidence of

8978-561: The Rhine toward England, Erasmus began to compose The Praise of Folly . In 1510, Erasmus arrived at More's bustling house, was confined to bed to recover from his recurrent illness, and wrote The Praise of Folly , which was to be a best-seller. More was at that time the undersheriff of the City of London . After his glorious reception in Italy, Erasmus had returned broke and jobless, with strained relations with former friends and benefactors on

9112-595: The Silk Road by 1325 and impossible by 1340, making its role in the spread of plague less likely. There are no records of the symptoms of the Black Death from Mongol sources or writings from travelers east of the Black Sea prior to the Crimean outbreak in 1346. Others still favor an origin in China. The theory of Chinese origin implicates the Silk Road, the disease possibly spreading alongside Mongol armies and traders, or possibly arriving via ship—however, this theory

9246-711: The Stein house and take up the post of Latin Secretary to the ambitious Bishop of Cambrai , Henry of Bergen, on account of his great skill in Latin and his reputation as a man of letters. He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood either on 25 April 1492, or 25 April 1495, at age 25 (or 28.) Either way, he did not actively work as a choir priest for very long, though his many works on confession and penance suggests experience of dispensing them. From 1500, he avoided returning to

9380-600: The Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', ( Latin : mors atra ) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease. The 12th–13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used atra mors to refer to a "pestilential fever" ( febris pestilentialis ) in his work On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases ( De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium ). The phrase mors nigra , 'black death',

9514-538: The age 14 (or 17), he and his brother went to a cheaper grammar school or seminary at 's-Hertogenbosch run by the Brethren of the Common Life : Erasmus' Epistle to Grunnius satirizes them as the "Collationary Brethren" who select and sort boys for monkhood. He was exposed there to the Devotio moderna movement and the Brethren's famous book The Imitation of Christ but resented the harsh rules and strict methods of

9648-562: The age of 6 (or 9), his family moved to Gouda and he started at the school of Pieter Winckel, who later became his guardian (and, perhaps, squandered Erasmus and Peter's inheritance.) Historians who date his birth in 1466 have Erasmus in Utrecht at the choir school at this period. In 1478, at the age of 9 (or 12), he and his older brother Peter were sent to one of the best Latin schools in the Netherlands, located at Deventer and owned by

9782-627: The backdrop of the growing European religious reformations . He developed a biblical humanistic theology in which he advocated the religious and civil necessity both of peaceable concord and of pastoral tolerance on matters of indifference . He remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the church from within. He promoted the traditional doctrine of synergism , which some prominent reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favor of

9916-501: The bacterium Yersinia pestis , is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents , including marmots , in various areas, including Central Asia , Kurdistan , West Asia , North India , Uganda , and the western United States. Y. pestis was discovered by Alexandre Yersin , a pupil of Louis Pasteur , during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacterium

10050-427: The blockage via regurgitation , resulting in thousands of plague bacteria flushing into the feeding site and infecting the host. The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts , keeping the disease endemic , and a second that lacks resistance. When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating

10184-477: The bubonic infection, others point to additional septicemic and pneumonic forms of plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms. In 2014, Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during

10318-445: The canonry at Stein even insisting the diet and hours would kill him, though he did stay with other Augustinian communities and at monasteries of other orders in his travels. Rogerus, who became prior at Stein in 1504, and Erasmus corresponded over the years, with Rogerus demanding Erasmus return after his studies were complete. Nevertheless, the library of the canonry ended up with by far the largest collection of Erasmus' publications in

10452-554: The careers and opportunities open to the children of unwed parents. Erasmus' own story, in the possibly forged 1524 Compendium vitae Erasmi was along the lines that his parents were engaged, with the formal marriage blocked by his relatives (presumably a young widow or unmarried mother with a child was not an advantageous match); his father went to Italy to study Latin and Greek, and the relatives misled Gerard that Margaretha had died, on which news grieving Gerard romantically took Holy Orders, only to find on his return that Margaretha

10586-464: The chapter clergy of the Lebuïnuskerk (St. Lebuin's Church). A notable previous student was Thomas à Kempis . Towards the end of his stay there the curriculum was renewed by the new principal of the school, Alexander Hegius , a correspondent of pioneering rhetorician Rudolphus Agricola . For the first time in Europe north of the Alps, Greek was taught at a lower level than a university and this

10720-490: The city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants, though it is also likely that infected rats travelled across the siege lines to spread the epidemic to the inhabitants. As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople , where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347. The epidemic there killed the 13-year-old son of the Byzantine emperor , John VI Kantakouzenos , who wrote

10854-503: The continent, and he regretted leaving Italy, despite being horrified by papal warfare. There is a gap in his usually voluminous correspondence: his so-called "two lost years", perhaps due to self-censorship of dangerous or disgruntled opinions; he shared lodgings with his friend Andrea Ammonio (Latin secretary to Mountjoy, and the next year, to Henry VIII) provided at the London Austin Friars ' compound, skipping out after

10988-418: The continent. According to some epidemiologists, periods of unfavorable weather decimated plague-infected rodent populations, forcing their fleas onto alternative hosts, inducing plague outbreaks which often peaked in the hot summers of the Mediterranean and during the cool autumn months of the southern Baltic region . Among many other culprits of plague contagiousness, pre-existing malnutrition weakened

11122-528: The degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology ( Sacra Theologia ) from the University of Turin per saltum at age 37 (or 40.) Erasmus stayed tutoring in Bologna for a year; in the winter, Erasmus was present when Pope Julius II entered victorious into the conquered Bologna which he had besieged before. Erasmus travelled on to Venice, working on an expanded version of his Adagia at the Aldine Press of

11256-684: The disease spread rapidly all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point into northern Italy. Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseilles . From Italy , the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France , Spain , Portugal, and England by June 1348, then spreading east and north through Germany , Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It

11390-544: The disease. Symptoms of the plague include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints , nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise . Left untreated, 80% of victims die within eight days. Contemporary accounts of the pandemic are varied and often imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos ) in the groin, neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. Boccaccio 's description: In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by

11524-619: The doctrine of monergism . His influential middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps. Erasmus's almost 70 years may be divided into quarters. Desiderius Erasmus is reported to have been born in Rotterdam on 27 or 28 October ("the vigil of Simon and Jude") in the late 1460s. He was named after Erasmus of Formiae , whom Erasmus' father Gerard (Gerardus Helye) personally favored. Although associated closely with Rotterdam, he lived there for only four years, never to return afterwards. The year of Erasmus' birth

11658-551: The draughtiness of English buildings. He complained that Queens' College could not supply him with enough decent wine (wine was the Renaissance medicine for gallstones, from which Erasmus suffered). As Queens' was an unusually humanist-leaning institution in the 16th century, Queens' College Old Library still houses many first editions of Erasmus's publications, many of which were acquired during that period by bequest or purchase, including Erasmus's New Testament translation, which

11792-466: The emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg ... From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As

11926-439: The famous printer Aldus Manutius , advised him which manuscripts to publish, and was an honorary member of the graecophone Aldine "New Academy" ( Greek : Neakadêmia (Νεακαδημία) ). From Aldus he learned the in-person workflow that made him productive at Froben: making last-minute changes, and immediately checking and correcting printed page proofs as soon as the ink had dried. Aldus wrote that Erasmus could do twice as much work in

12060-488: The fifteen years before the Black Death reached Constantinople in 1347. The evidence does not suggest, at least at present, that these mortality crises were caused by plague. Although some scholars, including McNeill and Cao, see the 1333 outbreak as a prelude to the outbreaks in Europe from the late 1340s to the early 1350s, scholars of the Yuan and Ming periods remain skeptical about such an interpretation. Nonetheless,

12194-462: The first clear reports of the Black Death come from Kaffa , the Black Death most likely originated in the nearby plague focus on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea . Demographic historians estimate that China's population fell by at least 15 per cent, and perhaps as much as a third, between 1340 and 1370. This population loss coincided with the Black Death that ravaged Europe and much of

12328-475: The first of the great Christian humanists to see the importance of integrating Christian learning, in both the patristics and biblical writings , with many of the best intellectual achievements of ancient civilizations and classical thought. He was educated in the University of Paris and began studying Greek under George Hermonymus due to his interest in contemporary cultural changes in Italy. He taught humanities as Paris and, among his earliest scholarly works,

12462-491: The following one and a half centuries. During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza by April; by July it had reached Damascus , and in October plague had broken out in Aleppo . That year, in the territory of modern Lebanon , Syria , Israel , and Palestine , the cities of Ascalon , Acre , Jerusalem , Sidon , and Homs were all infected. In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch . The city's residents fled to

12596-416: The generally detached and much more restrained attitude he usually showed in his later life, though he had a capacity to form and maintain deep male friendships, such as with More , Colet, and Ammonio. No mentions or sexual accusations were ever made of Erasmus during his lifetime. His works notably praise moderate sexual desire in marriage between men and women. In 1493, his prior arranged for him to leave

12730-575: The goal of a common humanity. This unification is fully realized in the participatory nature of Christian sacraments , particularly the Eucharist . The recognition of this goal requires a necessary difference between the church and the world, where both "spheres are unified in their service of humanity". Critics suggest it is quite wrong to establish a separate theology of the incarnation, and that proponents tend to abstract Jesus from his life and message. Andrew Copson refers to Christian humanism as

12864-418: The gradual development of ideas that had long been current. Nevertheless, there are elements in Renaissance thought that recur frequently in comparison to earlier centuries. In the Middle Ages, people typically yielded some of their identity to corporations—the church, the state, the feudal society, the guild, the university, and the monastic order. With the Renaissance came an increased sense of individuality and

12998-497: The greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance . These scholars committed much of their intellectual work to reforming the church and reviving spiritual life through humanist education, and were highly critical of the corruption they saw in the Church and ecclesiastical life. They would combine the greatest morals in the pre-Christian moral philosophers, such as Cicero and Seneca with Christian interpretations deriving from study of

13132-469: The immune response, contributing to an immense decline in European population. The disease struck various regions in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic , leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. By autumn 1347, plague had reached Alexandria in Egypt, transmitted by sea from Constantinople via a single merchant ship carrying slaves. By late summer 1348, it reached Cairo , capital of

13266-470: The importance of happiness as essential and principal or even exclusive components of the teachings of Jesus . Proponents of the term trace the concept to the Renaissance , linking their beliefs to the scholarly movement and worldview often called just humanism . Historian Margaret Mann Phillips wrote that the basis of Christian humanism was "the belief that all that is good comes from God, and

13400-519: The importance of human persons, has been treated as a modern name for the Christian humanism associated with Pope John Paul II and John Henry Newman . Incarnational humanism is a type of Christian humanism which places central importance on the Incarnation , the belief that Jesus Christ was truly and fully human. In this context, divine revelation from God independent of the Incarnation

13534-779: The influence of Renaissance humanism. For instance, Erasmus became an intimate friend of an Italian humanist Publio Fausto Andrelini , poet and "professor of humanity" in Paris. During this time, Erasmus developed a deep aversion to exclusive or excessive Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and started finding work as a tutor/chaperone to visiting English and Scottish aristocrats. There is no record of him graduating. Patrons : William Blount  • William Warham  • John Fisher  • John Longland  • Margaret Beaufort  • Catherine of Aragon Erasmus stayed in England at least three times. In between he had periods studying in Paris, Orléans, Leuven and other cities. In 1499 he

13668-585: The north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey. Within two years, the plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa. The pandemic spread westwards from Alexandria along the African coast, while in April 1348 Tunis was infected by ship from Sicily. Tunis was then under attack by an army from Morocco; this army dispersed in 1348 and brought the contagion with them to Morocco, whose epidemic may also have been seeded from

13802-496: The one hand, and on the other hand, their study of ancient Christianity, including the Bible and the Church Fathers... Even more important, they associated their scholarly work (classical as well as biblical and patristic) with a determination to bring about a spiritual renewal and institutional reform of Christian society. That connection between their scholarly efforts and their longing for spiritual and institutional renewal

13936-504: The pandemic a variant or calque of the Latin : magna mortalitas , lit.   'Great Death'. The phrase 'black death' – describing Death as black – is very old. Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla , with her mouths "full of black Death" ( Ancient Greek : πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο , romanized :  pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio ). Seneca

14070-615: The people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive. Geoffrey the Baker , Chronicon Angliae Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. During a protracted siege of the city in 1345–1346, the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg —whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease— catapulted infected corpses over

14204-408: The period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis. Currently, while osteoarcheologists have conclusively verified the presence of Y. pestis bacteria in burial sites across northern Europe through examination of bones and dental pulp , no other epidemic pathogen has been discovered to bolster the alternative explanations. The importance of hygiene was not recognized until the 19th century and

14338-477: The persecution of religious fanatics (to Freiburg ). He enjoyed horseback riding. In 1495 with Bishop Henry's consent and a stipend, Erasmus went on to study at the University of Paris in the Collège de Montaigu , a centre of reforming zeal, under the direction of the ascetic Jan Standonck , of whose rigors he complained. The university was then the chief seat of Scholastic learning but already coming under

14472-644: The person of Jesus, became human in order to redeem humanity, and from the further injunction for the participating human collective (the church) to act out the life of Christ. The term has been criticized by figures associated with the modern secular humanist movement , with some noting that it lacks coherence, or is in fact used to argue for the "exceptionalism" of Christianity. Some modern Christian humanists, for example, go so far as to suggest that other understandings of humanism are inauthentic, saying that, "common humanity, universal reason, freedom, personhood, human rights, human emancipation and progress, and indeed

14606-399: The plague described the disease in Latin as pestis or pestilentia , 'pestilence'; epidemia , 'epidemic'; mortalitas , 'mortality'. In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the "pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death". Subsequent to the pandemic "the furste moreyn " (first murrain ) or "first pestilence"

14740-668: The plague likely originated in Europe or the Middle East, and never reached China. Norris specifically argues for an origin in Kurdistan rather than Central Asia. The seventh year after it began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire , where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive. ... But at length it came to Gloucester , yea even to Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted

14874-530: The plague's death toll, as the rat-flea-human hypothesis would have produced a delayed but very high spike in deaths, contradicting historical death data. Lars Walløe argued that these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread". Similarly, Monica Green has argued that greater attention

15008-482: The pre-Christian ages were inspired by Holy Spirit for his own purposes." In the Renaissance, the initial distinguishing factor between Christian humanism and other varieties of humanism was that Christian humanists not only discussed religious or theological issues in some or all of their works (as did all Renaissance humanists) but according to Charles Nauert, made a connection between their humanistic teaching and scholarship on classical languages and literature, on

15142-604: The religious brothers and educators. The two brothers made an agreement that they would resist the clergy but attend the university; Erasmus longed to study in Italy, the birthplace of Latin, and have a degree from an Italian university. Instead, Peter left for the Augustinian canonry in Stein , which left Erasmus feeling betrayed. Around this time he wrote forlornly to his friend Elizabeth de Heyden "Shipwrecked am I, and lost, 'mid waters chill'." He suffered Quartan fever for over

15276-920: The religious life. His whole subsequent history shows this unmistakably." But according to one Catholic biographer, Erasmus had a spiritual awakening at the monastery. Certain abuses in religious orders were among the chief objects of his later calls to reform the Western Church from within, particularly coerced or tricked recruitment of immature boys (the fictionalized account in the Letter to Grunnius calls them "victims of Dominic and Francis and Benedict"): Erasmus felt he had belonged to this class, joining "voluntarily but not freely" and so considered himself, if not morally bound by his vows, certainly legally, socially and honour- bound to keep them, yet to look for his true vocation. While at Stein, 18-(or 21-)year-old Erasmus fell in unrequited love, forming what he called

15410-615: The remarkably high mortality rates during the Datong mortality should discourage us from rejecting the possibility of localized/regional outbreaks of plague in different parts of China, albeit differing in scale from, and unrelated to, the pandemic mortality of the Black Death. What we lack is any indication of a plague pandemic that engulfed vast territories of the Yuan Empire and later moved into western Eurasia through Central Asia. According to John Norris, evidence from Issyk-Kul indicates

15544-545: The role of Y. pestis and traces the source to the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan . Researchers are hampered by a lack of reliable statistics from this period. Most work has been done on the spread of the disease in England, where estimates of overall population at the start of the plague vary by over 100%, as no census was undertaken in England between the time of publication of the Domesday Book of 1086 and

15678-420: The runoff from the local slaughterhouse had made his garden "stinking and putrid", while another charged that the blood from slain animals flooded nearby streets and lanes, "making a foul corruption and abominable sight to all dwelling near." In much of medieval Europe, sanitation legislation consisted of an ordinance requiring homeowners to shout, "Look out below!" three times before dumping a full chamber pot into

15812-399: The second half being a strong treatment of the miseries of war, the need for neutrality and concilliation (with the neighbours France and England), and the excellence of peaceful rulers: that real courage in a leader was not to wage war but to put a bridle on greed, etc. This was later published as Panegyricus . Erasmus then returned to Paris in 1504. For Erasmus' second visit, he spent over

15946-435: The street. Early Christians considered bathing a temptation. With this danger in mind, St. Benedict declared, "To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted." St. Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing. According to a team of medical geneticists led by Mark Achtman , Yersinia pestis "evolved in or near China" over 2,600 years ago. Later research by

16080-523: The very notion of secularity... are literally unthinkable without their Christian humanistic roots." Scholars since the 18th century have agreed that some sort of change took place in Western European civilization in the period from 1300 to 1600. However, the extent and nature of this change have been widely debated. Some have seen the period as one in which a radically new sense of the world and humanity emerged, whereas others have seen instead

16214-475: Was a punishment. Some Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a disease sent by God. Others adopted preventive measures and treatments for plague used by Europeans. These Muslim doctors also depended on the writings of the ancient Greeks. Due to climate change in Asia , rodents began to flee the dried-out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease. The plague disease, caused by

16348-409: Was alive; many scholars dispute this account. In 1471 his father became the vice-curate of the small town of Woerden (where young Erasmus may have attended the local vernacular school to learn to read and write) and in 1476 was promoted to vice-curate of Gouda . Erasmus was given the highest education available to a young man of his day, in a series of monastic or semi-monastic schools. In 1476, at

16482-471: Was an offshoot of the first plague pandemic which made its way eastward to Chinese territory by around 600. A report by the Medical Faculty of Paris stated that a conjunction of planets had caused "a great pestilence in the air" ( miasma theory ). Muslim religious scholars taught that the pandemic was a "martyrdom and mercy" from God, assuring the believer's place in paradise. For non-believers, it

16616-411: Was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague. The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as "black" in the time of occurrence in any European language, though the expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease beforehand. "Black death" was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English until

16750-406: Was born out of wedlock, Erasmus was cared for by his parents, with a loving household and the best education, until their early deaths from the bubonic plague in 1483. His only sibling Peter might have been born in 1463, and some writers suggest Margaret was a widow and Peter was the half-brother of Erasmus; Erasmus on the other hand called him his brother. There were legal and social restrictions on

16884-546: Was inclined, but eventually did not accept and longed for a stay in Italy. Opponents : Alberto Pío , Sepúlveda In 1506 he was able to accompany and tutor the sons of the personal physician of the English King through Italy to Bologna. His discovery en route of Lorenzo Valla 's New Testament Notes was a major event in his career and prompted Erasmus to study the New Testament using philology . In 1506 they passed through Turin and he arranged to be awarded

17018-472: Was introduced into Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy , then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen ). Finally, it spread to northern Russia in 1352 and reached Moscow in 1353. Plague was less common in parts of Europe with less-established trade relations, including the majority of the Basque Country , isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands , and isolated Alpine villages throughout

17152-408: Was invited to England by William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy , who offered to accompany him on his trip to England. His time in England was fruitful in the making of lifelong friendships with the leaders of English thought in the days of King Henry VIII . During his first visit to England in 1499, he studied or taught at the University of Oxford . There is no record of him gaining any degree. Erasmus

17286-560: Was particularly impressed by the Bible teaching of John Colet , who pursued a style more akin to the church fathers than the Scholastics . Through the influence of the humanist John Colet, his interests turned towards theology. Other distinctive features of Colet's thought that may have influenced Erasmus are his pacifism, reform-mindedness, anti-Scholasticism and pastoral esteem for the sacrament of Confession. This prompted him, upon his return from England to Paris, to intensively study

17420-457: Was present in rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission. The mechanism by which Y. pestis is usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage starves the fleas, drives them to aggressive feeding behaviour, and causes them to try to clear

17554-532: Was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347. From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa , West Asia , and the rest of Europe via Constantinople , Sicily , and

17688-571: Was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" ( De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni ), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease. The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about

17822-481: Was very critical of ecclesiastical patronage and criticized the moral corruption of many clergymen; however, his timidity stopped him from converting his work from speech to action for fear of controversy. Although he loved reading many of the classics of the writings of classical antiquity, he feared introducing them to mainstream Christianity and sought to use the works of the Latin Church Fathers and

17956-676: Was writing an introduction to Aristotle 's Metaphysics . He would write many other works on Aristotle and promote the use of direct translations of Aristotle's work from the original Greek rather than the medieval Latin translations that currently existed. His focus then began to shift to the Greek Church Fathers whom he personally considered abler sources for the pedagogy of spiritual life than medieval scholasticism, and his goal became to help revive spiritual life in Europe, retiring in 1508 to focus on precisely this. He began publishing various Latin texts of biblical books such as

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