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...

This book explores Erasmus's ethnic and gender prejudices. It does not in any way seek to undermine the esteem in which Erasmus is generally held, as a prince of the humanists; it is rather a consideration of common early modern prejudices. The book’s principal innovation is the use of Erasmus’s commentaries on thousands of Greek and Roman proverbs (his adagia) as a source for examining Erasmus’s worldview. Researchers have often considered the adages as not voicing or reflecting ...

This book investigates how Erasmus viewed non-Christians and different races, including Muslims, Jews, the indigenous people of the Americas, and Africans. Nathan Ron argues that Erasmus was devoted to Christian Eurocentrism and not as tolerant as he is often portrayed. Erasmus’ thought is situated vis-à-vis the thought of contemporaries such as the cosmographer and humanist Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini who became Pope Pius II; the philosopher, scholar, and Cardinal, Nicholas of Cusa; and th...

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), thinker, polymath, and cardinal, had a long-standing interest in Islam. To date, however, no work has satisfactorily dealt with his volatile attitude towards the Islamic faith and the Ottoman Turks. This book revisits Nicholas of Cusa’s attitude towards Islam, criticizing previous work that has overlooked Cusa’s involvement in preparations for a crusade, and the significance of Cusa’s polemical A Scrutiny of the Koran (Cribratio Alkorani) of 1461. The...