Erasmus of the Low Countries

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 C...