What did desiderius erasmus do

Desiderius Erasmus is considered one of the greatest minds in history; he was a humanist scholar, a theologian, a writer, a teacher, and, as he put it, "a citizen of the world." His reputation during his lifetime reached the loftiest heights and sunk to unexpected lows during the Lutheran crisis.

His published texts and numerous letters figure among the most seminal works of Western culture. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, Erasmus was "the most famous and influential humanist of the Northern Renaissance, a man of great talent and industriousness who rose from obscure beginnings to become the leading intellectual figure of the early sixteenth century, courted by rulers and prelates who wanted to enhance their own reputations by association with the greatest scholar of the age.

He was his generation's finest Latin stylist, in a society that revered good Latin, even more impres