What do you think about Erasmus of Rotterdam?

>>9156650
cool name.

I actually read The Praise of Folly yesterday, didn't expect it to be that funny. would really rec it, it really is genius.

he really is criminally underread on /lit/.


>>9156665
his full name is 'Desiderius Erasmus'

>>9156650
shitty uni

>>9156650
He has a Google quote which could not be more /lit/.

>When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

>>9156650
Shit, I want that coat. Hot damn.

>>9156650
Fantastic writer, even in translation it is really fun to flip through his works. So many great one liners
Malo nodo, malus quærendus cuneus.
Desperate times call for desperate measures

Thank you for introducing me to him.

“Your library is your paradise.”
― Erasmus

“The desire to write grows with writing.”
― Erasmus

I'm saving all of his quotes as I go down his page, and I'm excited to read his works. He is everything and more - thank you. (I had to stop at the first two quotes on GR otherwise I would've pasted too many...)

>>9156650
Now watch the opinions change below

HE WAS A PLATONIST

>>9156650

He has a bitching-ass coat

He was gay

He was dutch

>>9156940
less*

>>9156650
I can't remember where I saw it. I think in a Gleick maybe. He was the last human to have the ability to read every word written in his languages, in his lifetime. After him, the scale of what existed got too big.

>>9160422
How do you even prove something like that.

>>9160422
>>9160432

With Erasmus I don't know, but I think he had him confused with this goy right here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_Kircher

>>9160432
The number of manuscripts extant between 1466 and 1536 can be estimated from records and libraries' catalogs, as can their availability to Erasmus. The number of type-printed books from that epoch is well known, since they were so new and such a big deal. Then divide by a number which represents an estimate of the number of words per day, times the number of hours spent per day, factor in his reading ability lifetime of about 60 years.

An example, which I can;t vouch for, would look like:

10,000 words per day
365 days
3.65 million words per year
Xs 60=
219,000,000 words in his lifetime.

As of 1536 if there were fewer than 219 million original words in print, it is possible he could have read them all. Double to 20,000 words per day, and you get 438 million. Take all the greek and latin manuscripts in existence and available to Erasmus in Paris plus the English and French from London and Paris, remember there were no "books" as we call them, it was all scrolls and folios and quartos, painstakingly copied out by hand; and it is possible he could have read everything.

Gutenberg's invention made him the last scholar who could have done it.

>>9160477
No I got the right guy. Kircher was 200 years after Gutenberg, so even though he may have read more than Erasmus, the sheer volume of books in existence was bubble-proportions bigger by 1680.

>>9160432
If there was an account of the literature at his disposal as well as a formal record of his academic studies and career, you could roughly deduce.

Some reliable data.

https://ourworldindata.org/books/