Sandra Langereis (b. 1967) is a historian of science and culture and a biographer. Her previous biography, The Wordsmith, about the 16th-century printer and publisher Christoffel Plantijn, was nominated for the Libris History Prize and chosen as best biography and best history book of 2014 by the newspapers de Volkskrant and Trouw. She considers her biography of Erasmus, in which he is portrayed as a rational and tolerant man, as ‘relevant for people today’.
(De Bezige Bij, 2021, 752 pages)
Erasmus (1469-1536) was a humanist, an icon of critical thought and tolerance. Nevertheless, he has always been a controversial figure. In his study of the Bible, he assumed that the scriptures were man-made. Through philological research, he showed how the ‘Holy Writ’ had developed over the course of centuries. That enraged both conservative clergymen and Martin Luther. Langereis presents Erasmus as a modern thinker, who sought to make those who read the Bible more rational and intelligent.
