The biography opens by examining the fifteenth-century Low Countries, noting their position as geographical and cultural outskirts, and details the early years of Erasmus, born illegitimate in Rotterdam around fourteen sixty-six. Huizinga portrays his education in the schools of the modern devotion and his unhappy entrance into the Augustinian monastery of Steyn, where he formed deep sentimental friendships and immersed himself in Latin poetry. He describes how Erasmus escaped monastic confinement to enter the service of the Bishop of Cambray and subsequently studied at the University of Paris amidst the dry scholasticism he so deeply detested. His first stay in England in fourteen ninety-nine brought a crucial turning point, introducing him to John Colet and Thomas More, which directed his aspirations away from secular literature toward serious theological study.
The text details his relentless efforts to master Greek, his composition of the Adagia following a harsh customs mishap at Dover, and his journey to Italy where he received his doctorate at Turin and worked intensively with the printer Aldus Manutius in Venice. Huizinga highlights the creation of the Praise of Folly, written in More's London house, as the masterpiece of Renaissance irony that exposed universal human foolishness and ecclesiastical corruption. The narrative then follows Erasmus through his third stay in England, his residence at Louvain, and his growing alienation from both conservative scholastic theologians and the turbulent, uncompromising spirit of the Lutheran Reformation. Finally, the biography settles into his long period of residence at Basle, working tirelessly in Froben's printing office to edit Jerome and the Greek New Testament, striving always for peace, simplicity, and Christian liberty amidst a violently divided Europe.
