Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus was born about 1466 in Rotterdam, the illegitimate son of a priest; orphaned as a boy, he was placed by his guardians in a monastery. He disliked monastic life and was later allowed to leave, studying and teaching in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Venice and Basel, and becoming a lifelong friend of Thomas More. He edited the first printed Greek New Testament and compiled the Adages, a collection of thousands of classical proverbs; he was the greatest humanist scholar of the Northern Renaissance, called 'the prince of the humanists'. He sought to reform the Church through reason and tolerance, and in the fierce conflicts of Luther's Reformation pleased neither side.