Week 4 Blog Post

Erasmus and The Age of Reformation Ch. 10-12

This week, I read quite a bit about Erasmus' stay within Europe, although this time was short-lived. He originally planned to stay there for longer because of the research materials that he could have looked at, but he left early because he ran into some trouble with some people there. He found some of the professors quite arrogant and annoying, which was strange seeing as how he mostly worked by himself. One thing that stood out for me was that no matter who he met, he never actually liked the extravagant people or the unmannerly people. The book hinted that he had some higher social standards, but it was still strange that he was not as accepting. I would have thought that with what he came from as a child, he would have been more content with whoever, since he did not ever truly have a relationship that he enjoyed in his home life. When he decided to up and leave, it was right after the war between France and Europe ended, which was one of the major reasons he did not leave earlier. This action really made Erasmus out to be a person who only did something that would benefit him, although it is only natural for people to do that I suppose. It still seemed odd how much he disliked people who were extravagant, although I can relate. One thing that was really strange was that yet again, he left his entire leave from Europe undocumented. Of course, people do not have the most amount of time to write letters when they are travelling, it still seemed strange because of the person he was. That was until the book revealed how much of his personal writings were being published, which was ridiculous. People obviously drive themselves into other's business quite frequently, but this was just blatant trespassing. They were not just publishing letters that were more official, but some of his more personal letters were being published and sold on the street! It would have been terrible if he had lived in the modern era, I can only begin to imagine how much more of his private life would have been leaked. It was even said that if he did go out and find somebody selling copies of his letters, he would buy them all and burn them. Although there could have been better approaches, this one made sense after reading about him, since he never really just let stuff happen, he would take charge instead. Within chapter twelve, Erasmus' mental traits were examined, which was extremely intriguing. Although most of his traits were well defined, some of his negatives were not necessarily discussed greatly. One problem that the book discussed in great detail was his lack of empathy towards anything that went against reason. This included any sort of religious practice, because he believed that people were not preforming them with emotion or understanding, but just doing it because the Church said to. While this is not completely against reason, it does stand as a problem for him, because of what he does. He was a theologian, so it would bring to question how he would even work with anybody else, especially knowing how that field could be. The field of theology is completely based on belief, not fact, so anything that people said could easily be proven wrong the next day. This week's reading revealed a lot about Erasmus and how he handled things, and I expect that more is yet to come because of the next chapter's title.