50 Fun Facts About Erasmus

Erasmus's mistranslation of the Greek word for a large storage jar gave which mythical woman her famous box?

Pandora opened a pithos, a big jar, in the Greek myth; Erasmus wrote pyxis, a small box, in his Latin retelling. The slip stuck, and the jar has been a box ever since.

Critics claimed that Erasmus laid the egg that which German reformer hatched, a charge he wittily dismissed?

Martin Luther had hatched 'a different bird entirely', Erasmus replied. He had mocked church abuses for years, but he never left the Catholic fold.

After a lifetime of writing his books and letters in Latin, Erasmus reportedly spoke his last words in which language?

Dutch came back to him on his deathbed in 1536: after groaning prayers in Latin, he was heard to say 'Lieve God', dear God.

Which website's volunteer editors received the Erasmus Prize in 2015 under the theme of digital culture?

Wikipedia's community took the award, one of Europe's leading cultural honours, for spreading knowledge through an encyclopedia open to everybody. Three young editors collected it.

Which satire did Erasmus write in about a week, giving the speech to a goddess who boasts of her gifts?

The Praise of Folly lets Folly herself take the pulpit and flatter lovers, princes, scholars and monks alike. Erasmus later said he almost regretted writing it, such was the trouble it caused him.

Erasmus's collection of ancient proverbs spread the saying that in the land of the blind, who is king?

The one-eyed man is king there, in a saying Erasmus gathered with thousands of others from Greek and Roman writers. Many reached modern European languages through his pages.

Which port city in Holland gave Erasmus his byname, although he lived there for only four years?

Rotterdam claims him proudly, yet he left as a small child and never went back. The city now has a bridge, a university and a hospital that carry his name.

A wooden figure of Erasmus from the stern of a ship that drifted ashore in 1600 survives in which country?

Japan has kept the carving since the ship De Liefde, once itself named Erasmus, reached Kyushu. A temple in Tochigi held it under another name until scholars identified it in the 1920s.

Which English lawyer hosted Erasmus at his London house while the scholar wrote his best-known satire?

Thomas More's surname is hidden in the satire's Latin title, which doubles as a compliment to him. The two friends shared a taste for dry humour and translated Lucian together.

For much of his career Erasmus wrote in which posture, as an engraved portrait by Albrecht Dürer shows?

Standing at a desk was his habit, and he rose early to answer up to 40 letters a day in his own hand. He did no work after dinner.

In which Swiss city did Erasmus die in 1536 and receive a Catholic funeral from its Protestant authorities?

Basel had banned the Mass in 1529, driving him away for six years, yet the city buried him with great ceremony in its minster, the former cathedral.

Which painter, later a court artist in Tudor England, made the most widely copied portraits of Erasmus in 1523?

Hans Holbein painted him at least three times, and Erasmus sent the pictures to patrons abroad as gifts. A letter of recommendation from the sitter later helped the artist settle in England.

The European Union's Erasmus scheme, launched in 1987 and named for the travelling scholar, was set up to fund what?

Student exchanges were the whole point: 3,244 students took part in the first year, and the total passed two million in 2009. The name also works as an acronym of the scheme's long official title.

Which silent-film star shared the 1965 Erasmus Prize with the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman?

Charlie Chaplin and Bergman were joint winners of an award usually handed over by the monarch at the Royal Palace of Amsterdam. It honours contributions to culture, society or social science.

Which bird gives its nickname to the Erasmus Bridge, the cable-stayed crossing of the Nieuwe Maas opened in 1996?

The Swan is the nickname earned by the bridge's single asymmetrical pale blue pylon. The crossing is such a landmark that it features in its home city's official logo.

Which New York City borough is home to Erasmus Hall, a school founded in 1786 with donations from Alexander Hamilton?

Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall was the first secondary school chartered by New York State's Regents, and Aaron Burr gave money too. Barbra Streisand graduated from it in 1959.

Which English king, whom Erasmus first met as a boy, later executed two of the scholar's closest English friends?

Henry VIII had Bishop John Fisher and a former Lord Chancellor beheaded in 1535 for staying loyal to Rome. Erasmus, old and ill by then, outlived them by only a year.

Erasmus's Greek New Testament fed the Textus Receptus, the basis of which English Bible published in 1611?

The King James Version leaned on Greek texts descended from his 1516 edition, which he admitted was rushed out rather than properly edited. Up to 300,000 copies of his editions were printed in his lifetime.

Erasmus's The Education of a Christian Prince was written three years after which Florentine's advice book for rulers?

Niccolò Machiavelli thought it safer for a ruler to be feared than loved; Erasmus argued the reverse and urged a rounded education. The Erasmus book reached print first, sixteen years ahead.

Which 1516 book about a traveller's imaginary island was first printed at Leuven under Erasmus's editorship?

Utopia went to press with Erasmus overseeing the edition. Its author, an old friend, had worked on it during a diplomatic mission to the Low Countries.

Which human capacity did Erasmus defend in a 1524 book, his first public attack on the German Reformation's teaching?

Free will was the ground Erasmus chose because he thought Scripture keeps calling sinners to repent. The reply, a book arguing that human choice is in bondage, appeared the following year.

For which New Testament book did Erasmus translate the last six verses from Latin back into Greek?

Revelation's closing leaf had been torn from the one Greek manuscript he could borrow, so he rebuilt the missing verses from the Latin Vulgate. He told readers what he had done, and the dispute has never quite ended.

To which pope, a son of Lorenzo de' Medici, did Erasmus dedicate his Greek New Testament of 1516?

Leo X had met Erasmus in Rome while still a cardinal, and he later supplied a letter of recommendation that was printed among the prefaces of the second edition.

Which soldier pope is turned away from heaven's gate by Saint Peter in a 1514 satire attributed to Erasmus?

Julius II arrives drunk and tries the lock with the key to his money-chest, then threatens Peter with his army. Erasmus stayed evasive about the dialogue, though a friend reported a copy in his handwriting.

Which book by Erasmus began as about 800 Greek and Latin proverbs and grew to over 4,000 by his death?

Adagia made his name: each saying came with a commentary, and some notes swelled into essays on politics and morals. Phrases such as leaving no stone unturned passed through it into everyday speech.

Which printer, whose family press issued over 200 works with Erasmus, was the father of the scholar's godson Erasmius?

Johann Froben favoured the new roman type over blackletter, and Erasmus joined his firm as literary superintendent in return for an annuity and a share of the profits.

In which Italian city did Erasmus work at the Aldine Press of Aldus Manutius on an enlarged edition of his proverbs?

Venice taught him the print-shop routine he kept for life: correcting proofs the moment the ink dried. Aldus said Erasmus got through twice as much work as any other man he had met.

To which young Habsburg, soon to rule Spain and the Empire, did Erasmus dedicate The Education of a Christian Prince?

Charles V, then aged 16, had just made Erasmus an honorary councillor with an annuity that was rarely paid. The book was the new adviser's first counsel to him.

Erasmus was named after Erasmus of Formiae, a martyr whom sailors know better by which name?

Saint Elmo, patron of sailors, gave his name to the glow seen on ships' masts in storms. Erasmus's father favoured the saint, and the son later wrote a shipwreck dialogue featuring that eerie fire.

The longest essay in Erasmus's proverb collection argues that what is sweet only to those who have never tasted it?

War is sweet to the inexperienced, runs the tag Dulce bellum inexpertis, which he took from the Greek poet Pindar. He pressed the same case for concord in The Complaint of Peace.

The Collegium Trilingue that Erasmus helped launch at Louvain in 1517 taught Latin, Greek and which third language?

Hebrew completed the trio, on the model of a Spanish college at Alcalá, and a friend's bequest paid for it. Erasmus himself never got far with the language.

At which university did Erasmus lecture between 1511 and 1515 while lodging at Queens' College?

Cambridge still has an Erasmus Tower and an Erasmus Room at the college, which also kept a chair said to be his. He taught Greek there and grumbled about draughty English buildings.

Erasmus grumbled that Queens' College could not supply enough decent what, a Renaissance remedy for his gallstones?

Wine was his medicine, and he was fussy about it, while beer upset his stomach. The college long kept a corkscrew a third of a metre in length that was said to be his.

Erasmus's 1533 catechism reportedly sold out within three hours at the famous book fair of which German city?

Frankfurt's fair was a showcase for the book trade, and Erasmus was its star: by the 1530s his writings made up an estimated 10 to 20 per cent of book sales in Europe.

Erasmus's rendering of a Greek word for a trough gave English the idiom about calling which tool by its name?

A spade entered the saying when Erasmus turned Plutarch's trough into a digging tool in Latin. An English translation of 1542 carried the new image into the language.

Which Roman author's slavish imitators did Erasmus mock in a 1528 dialogue about a pedant who reads nobody else?

Cicero's fans refused any word their idol had not used; one character takes six nights to write a six-sentence letter. Erasmus feared such purism would turn Latin into a dead language.

At which university did Erasmus study theology from 1495, lodging in the austere Collège de Montaigu?

Paris meant the regime of the ascetic Jan Standonck, which wrecked his health within a year, and there is no record that he graduated. He paid his way by tutoring visiting English nobles.

As Erasmus left England in 1500, customs officers confiscated which parting gift from his generous friends?

His gold and silver was seized because those same friends had given him bad legal advice. He crossed the Channel with nothing but a fever that lasted months.

Which courtier, whose daughter Anne became queen of England, commissioned Erasmus's book on preparing for death?

Thomas Boleyn proved a surprising patron: he also asked for a commentary on Psalm 23. The handbook on dying well became one of Erasmus's most popular works.

Which London school, newly founded by his friend John Colet, did Erasmus help with textbooks and staff recruitment?

St Paul's School got textbooks from Erasmus, and Colet's urging also set him writing De copia, his guide to a rich and varied Latin style.

Which pope from the Netherlands, an old Louvain friend of Erasmus elected in 1522, tried to entice the scholar to Rome?

Adrian VI had once taught Erasmus and was governing Spain as regent at his surprise election. His planned reforms of the Curia stalled, and he died the following year.

Which book by Erasmus began as Latin practice dialogues for schoolboys and later became a target of censors?

Colloquies grew into some fifty witty skits on everything from shipwrecks to beggars' tricks. One, about a storm at sea, probably fed the opening scenes of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Which religious order's canons did the orphaned Erasmus join at Stein, near Gouda, taking vows in 1488?

Augustinians of Stein took him in when poverty left him few choices; he later said he had joined voluntarily but not freely. Papal dispensations eventually released him from the habit, though he stayed a canon all his days.

To which Catholic university town did Erasmus flee in 1529 after his Swiss home city banned the Mass?

Freiburg sheltered him for six years, first on the top floor of the Whale House and then, after a quarrel over rent, in a house he bought himself.

A house in Anderlecht where Erasmus stayed for five months in 1521 is now a museum in which capital city?

Brussels counts Anderlecht among its municipalities, and the Erasmus House has been a museum since 1931, with a garden of sixteenth-century medicinal plants. He went for the country air, hoping to shake off his fevers.

Which doctrine rested on the Johannine Comma, a disputed passage missing from Erasmus's first Greek New Testament?

The Trinity seemed to be spelled out in the passage, so critics charged Erasmus with Arian leanings. He answered that no Greek manuscript he knew held the words, then printed them from his third edition once one turned up.

Which Roman god of boundaries did Erasmus adopt as his personal emblem and wear carved on a signet ring?

Terminus was a mistake: the ancient carving, a gift from a pupil in Rome, really showed the Greek god Dionysus. Erasmus paired the emblem with the motto Concedo Nulli, I concede to no one.

Which Dürer engraving of an armoured rider is often linked to Erasmus's Enchiridion, a manual for Christian soldiers?

Knight, Death and the Devil shows a horseman riding calmly past two monsters, much as the Enchiridion tells believers to ignore their enemies. Erasmus wrote the book for a rough soldier whose wife wanted him reformed.

Which Italian university awarded Erasmus his doctorate in theology in 1506 as he passed through on the road to Bologna?

Turin handed the highest theological degree, with its right to teach anywhere, to a traveller with no record of graduating from his earlier university.

Which town's Latin school, among the best in the Netherlands, taught Erasmus from about the age of nine?

Deventer gave him his first Greek, then a rarity in northern Europe below university level. Thomas à Kempis had been a pupil there before him.