Johan Huizinga, the Dutch cultural historian celebrated for The Waning of the Middle Ages, brings the same subtlety and erudition to this study of Desiderius Erasmus. He portrays Erasmus as the supreme humanist intellectual of his age — irenic, learned, satirical — who sought to reform the Church from within even as Luther’s revolt threatened to tear Christendom apart.
Huizinga probes the tensions between Erasmian moderation and Reformation radicalism with sympathy and precision. This remains one of the finest short biographies of Erasmus and an essential introduction to the intellectual world of sixteenth-century Europe.