Erasmus’s teachings are still pertinent today

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS was the last great intellectual of a united Christian Europe: a scholar of universal renown, a friend to kings and tutor to princes, and a self-proclaimed “citizen of the world”. He produced a translation of the New Testament that changed the way Christians think about their faith. He also shaped popular culture. His dictionary rescued phrases such as “breaking the ice”, “teaching an old dog new tricks” and “leaving no stone unturned” from obscurity. His “In Praise of Folly” (1511) was hailed as a comic masterpiece.

In an age when birth was generally destiny, he was a self-made man. Born in the small provincial town of Rotterdam in 1466, the illegitimate son of a priest, he was dumped in a local monastery at the earliest opportunity. He grew up far from the centre of the Renaissance in northern Italy. His subsequent stardom was purely the result of his extraordinary intellectual gifts.