Erasmus
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Erasmus trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Desiderius Erasmus was the best-selling author of the early sixteenth century, a restless scholar who crossed Europe on horseback, wrote to kings and popes, and managed to annoy both sides of the Reformation. He was also funnier than his portraits suggest, and a surprising number of everyday sayings passed through his pen. This quiz collects the fun facts people look for about him: his unusual start in life, the friends who hosted him, the books that made him famous, his work on the Bible, his long quarrel with the reformers, and his complaints about food, drink and draughty rooms. It also covers the bridge, prize and European programme that still carry his name. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the page works as a quick read for classes, teachers and trivia hosts as well as a quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Erasmus's mistranslation of the Greek word for a large storage jar gave which mythical woman her famous box?
Pandora
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.
Q 02Critics claimed that Erasmus laid the egg that which German reformer hatched, a charge he wittily dismissed?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther had hatched 'a different bird entirely', Erasmus replied. He had mocked church abuses for years, but he never left the Catholic fold.
Q 03After a lifetime of writing his books and letters in Latin, Erasmus reportedly spoke his last words in which language?
Dutch
Dutch came back to him on his deathbed in 1536: after groaning prayers in Latin, he was heard to say 'Lieve God', dear God.
Q 04Which website's volunteer editors received the Erasmus Prize in 2015 under the theme of digital culture?
Wikipedia
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.
Q 05Which satire did Erasmus write in about a week, giving the speech to a goddess who boasts of her gifts?
The Praise of Folly
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.
Q 06Erasmus's collection of ancient proverbs spread the saying that in the land of the blind, who is king?
The one-eyed man
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.
Q 07Which port city in Holland gave Erasmus his byname, although he lived there for only four years?
Rotterdam
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.
Q 08A wooden figure of Erasmus from the stern of a ship that drifted ashore in 1600 survives in which country?
Japan
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.
Q 09Which English lawyer hosted Erasmus at his London house while the scholar wrote his best-known satire?
Thomas More
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.
Q 10For much of his career Erasmus wrote in which posture, as an engraved portrait by Albrecht Dürer shows?
Standing at a desk
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.
Q 11In which Swiss city did Erasmus die in 1536 and receive a Catholic funeral from its Protestant authorities?
Basel
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.
Q 12Which painter, later a court artist in Tudor England, made the most widely copied portraits of Erasmus in 1523?
Hans Holbein
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.
Q 13The European Union's Erasmus scheme, launched in 1987 and named for the travelling scholar, was set up to fund what?
Student exchanges
Q 21Which human capacity did Erasmus defend in a 1524 book, his first public attack on the German Reformation's teaching?
Free will
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.
Q 22For which New Testament book did Erasmus translate the last six verses from Latin back into Greek?
Revelation
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.
Q 23To which pope, a son of Lorenzo de' Medici, did Erasmus dedicate his Greek New Testament of 1516?
Leo X
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.
Q 14Which silent-film star shared the 1965 Erasmus Prize with the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman?
Charlie Chaplin
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.
Q 15Which bird gives its nickname to the Erasmus Bridge, the cable-stayed crossing of the Nieuwe Maas opened in 1996?
The Swan
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.
Q 16Which New York City borough is home to Erasmus Hall, a school founded in 1786 with donations from Alexander Hamilton?
Brooklyn
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.
Q 17Which English king, whom Erasmus first met as a boy, later executed two of the scholar's closest English friends?
Henry VIII
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.
Q 18Erasmus's Greek New Testament fed the Textus Receptus, the basis of which English Bible published in 1611?
King James Version
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.
Q 19Erasmus's The Education of a Christian Prince was written three years after which Florentine's advice book for rulers?
Niccolò Machiavelli
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.
Q 20Which 1516 book about a traveller's imaginary island was first printed at Leuven under Erasmus's editorship?
Utopia
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.
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.
Q 24Which soldier pope is turned away from heaven's gate by Saint Peter in a 1514 satire attributed to Erasmus?
Julius II
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.
Q 25Which book by Erasmus began as about 800 Greek and Latin proverbs and grew to over 4,000 by his death?
Adagia
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.
Q 26Which printer, whose family press issued over 200 works with Erasmus, was the father of the scholar's godson Erasmius?
Johann Froben
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.
Q 27In which Italian city did Erasmus work at the Aldine Press of Aldus Manutius on an enlarged edition of his proverbs?
Venice
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.
Q 28To which young Habsburg, soon to rule Spain and the Empire, did Erasmus dedicate The Education of a Christian Prince?
Charles V
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.
Q 29Erasmus was named after Erasmus of Formiae, a martyr whom sailors know better by which name?
Saint Elmo
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.
Q 30The longest essay in Erasmus's proverb collection argues that what is sweet only to those who have never tasted it?
War
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.