Week 7 Blog Post

Erasmus and the Age of Reformation Ch. 19-21

This week in my book it mainly chose to detail the closing of this man's gate to life. As his life slowly came to a close, he tried to finish most of his life's works, most likely just so that he would not have any regrets. I personally cannot blame the man for taking this route, not to mention that his works are still vital in modern day studies. He wrote many books against Luther and his methods during the Reformation because he personally was against the radical behavior. He remained faithful to the Catholic church throughout his entire life, although near the end he apparently did falter in his belief. It was said that even though he never truly rebelled against the Church, he did not receive proper burial rights, much less even a priest. He supposedly fell ill and passed away, although the book did not note what caused his death, I looked it up and supposedly it was the equivalent of diarrhea. I can't even imagine how frustrating it must have been for him to get so far and then be stopped by a disease. Unfortunately, he must have expected to live for longer in order to continue his work, but he did end up passing before he could. The book did not particularly detail what happened before he died, but I would assume that not a whole lot happened anyways. 

This book had many strengths, although some of its weaknesses held it back from telling what it needed to. Some of its flaws were that it did not actually discuss events that occurred in his life, but rather chose to analyze them. I don't think that analysis is wrong, just that it is difficult to understand the points they bring up when I am missing half or more of the context. This did not occur heavily, although it showed up enough to leave a sour image of the book for me. This book did present its information quite well though, it would space out what happened properly and chronologically for the most part, making it easy to follow. I would personally not recommend reading this book without having a basic understanding of the Reformation of the Catholic Church, because otherwise people may misinterpret what the book is saying. Quite a bit of Erasmus' texts and actions may seem to almost match a lunatic in the way he got to the choices, so people may get the wrong idea. The book also did not particularly go over how his work affected the people of that time, so the reader is left with figuring out how his work could have changed people's thinking. Since I have an above average understand of what happened during the Reformation due to multiple classes going over it, I knew how his work changed people, although readers with a basic comprehension almost draw the short end of the stick. Well, I suppose that is enough ranting for myself, overall I would rate this book highly on quality of information, sub par on presentation, and a low score on analysis. I would personally not recommend this to somebody who wants to learn, although it does have quite a bit of good information.