The prince of the Christian humanists, whose Greek New Testament and biting satire prepared the ground for reform — though he remained within the Catholic Church.
Life
Erasmus (1466–1536), the foremost humanist scholar of his age, produced the first published Greek New Testament, editions of the Church Fathers, and works like The Praise of Folly and the Adages that combined erudition with wit and criticism of clerical abuses. Though his scholarship helped make the Reformation possible ("Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched"), he broke with Luther over free will and remained a Catholic, championing reform through learning and moderation rather than schism.