Week 3 Blog Post

Erasmus and the Age of Reformation Ch. 7-9

This week in Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, it went over quite of bit of what happened during Erasmus'  travels. He appeared to travel primarily just for the experience, with a little bit of religious need. One strange occurrence that appeared throughout this book thus far has been that he never chose to do anything just because he wanted to, he did it with an actual reason. Although Erasmus always seemed decisive in everything he did thus far, he did seem to be shaken up during his visit to London. This was most likely due to the fact that one of his friends had just passed away, so he went for a funeral. It was unfortunate that he did not write any letters or anything of the sort about how the passing affected him, so their relationship appeared to be mostly in the dark. This seemed strange, simply because he actually did not have many letters at all for the entirety of that year, so maybe due to all his trips around the continent in earlier years to study theology did not allow him to write many. Thankfully when he went to visit Paris, he began to write letters again with a larger frequency. He primarily went there to study theology again, which he hoped would be the final place he would need to move to in order to study, although that appeared to not work out when he had to move yet again later that year. This time, he moved to Italy, where he received his degree in theology. He had planned to move forward in order to study in Bologna, but unfortunately due to the war that was in progress at the time, he had to retire back to Florence in order to stay out of harm's way. Something interesting occurred however when he arrived in Florence, which was that he began to take a major interest in the print of religious text. This was a major transition for him, which led me to question if he wanted to translate the Bible or something of the sort. This was confirmed later when he began to realize just how much deceit there was within the world. This massive change in opinion appeared to be caused by the death of King Henry VII, because he had held the King in such high regards, and the prince who would succeed him in almost higher. Overall, it appeared that many pieces were beginning to be set in place for something big to happen within Erasmus' life.