Erasmus

This book is a sequel to Nathan Ron's Erasmus and the Other. Should we consider Erasmus an involved or public intellectual alongside figures such as Machiavelli, Milton, Locke, Voltaire, and Montesquieu? Was Erasmus really an independent intellectual? In Ron's estimation, Erasmus did not fully live up to his professed principles of Christian peace. Despite the anti-war preaching so eminent in his writings, he made no stand against the warlike and expansionist foreign policies of specific European kings of his era, and even praised the glory won by Francis I on the battlefield of Marignano (1515). Furthermore, in the face of Henry VIII's execution of his beloved Thomas More and John Fisher, and the atrocities committed by the Spanish against indigenous peoples in the New World, Erasmus preferred self-censorship to expressions of protest or criticism and did not step forward to reproach kings of their misdeeds or crimes.

Serves as a sequel to Nathan Ron's previous book, Erasmus and the "Other" Explores Erasmus' attitudes toward the expansionist foreign policy of European kings Compares Erasmus and Reuchlin with regard to their intellectualism and cosmopolitanism

Autorentext

Nathan Ron is Research Fellow at the School of History, The University of Haifa, Israel.

Klappentext

This book is a sequel to Nathan Ron's Erasmus and the Other. Should we consider Erasmus an involved or public intellectual alongside figures such as Machiavelli, Milton, Locke, Voltaire, and Montesquieu? Was Erasmus really an independent intellectual? In Ron's estimation, Erasmus did not fully live up to his professed principles of Christian peace. Despite the anti-war preaching so eminent in his writings, he made no stand against the warlike and expansionist foreign policies of specific European kings of his era, and even praised the glory won by Francis I on the battlefield of Marignano (1515). Furthermore, in the face of Henry VIII s execution of his beloved Thomas More and John Fisher, and the atrocities committed by the Spanish against indigenous peoples in the New World, Erasmus preferred self-censorship to expressions of protest or criticism and did not step forward to reproach kings of their misdeeds or crimes.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Introduction: Prefiguring the Modern Intellectual?- Chapter 2: The Public Good.- Chapter 3: An Intellectual Against Crusading.- Chapter 4: Erasmus on the Education and Nature of Women.- Chapter 5: In the Face of the Execution of Thomas More.- Chapter 6: In the Face of Francis I's Foreign Policy.- Chapter 7: In the Face of the Destruction of the Amerindians.- Chapter 8: Erasmus's Turkophobic Bias.- Chapter 9: Erasmus and Reuchlin: The Jews and their Language.- Chapter 10: Conclusions.
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