Page "Christian philosophy" Paragraph 61

* Desiderius Erasmus ( 1466 – 1536 ) was not a philosopher strictly speaking ; indeed, he wrote excoriatingly about philosophers.

He consolidated the space of Humanism in the late Medieval scholarship of letters, and came to represent its acme.

He was a leader of the development of the humanities into a department of European scholarly activities.

He bent his studies to recovery and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible's ancient languages and began building the first critical text, and the New Testament became a formal scholarly text.

He wrote about issues relevant to the Catholic Church and its ignorance.

He spent six years in an Augustinian monastery ; he was a joyful satirist ; and became most famous for his book The Praise of Folly.