Erasmus

Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) - a Dutch historian and cultural scientist of world renown, whose works preceded the emergence of the Annales school. Among his most well-known works, which are constantly reissued worldwide, are The Autumn of the Middle Ages and the treatise Homo ludens (Man Playing).
Erasmus (1467-1536) - a great humanist, translator, and author of commentaries on the texts of the Old and New Testaments. His books The Praise of Folly and Colloquies easily made him one of the most famous Latin authors. According to classicist philologist Yu. A. Shichalin, Erasmus was "the linchpin of the tradition that preserved for Europe the unity of its ancient roots with Christianity, a tradition that we rightly call humanistic".
In the biography Erasmus (1924), Huizinga explores the complex and contradictory personality of the great Rotterdamer. Desiderius Erasmus is portrayed not only as a witty writer and philosopher, a ruler of thoughts during the Humanism era, but also as a person with his weaknesses and shortcomings, "endowed with too few prejudices and too refined taste, with some deficiency (oh, not in all areas!) of that very Stultitia (Folly), which he celebrated as an inherent element of life".
Erasmus anticipated the New Age not only with his convictions but also with his personality and character. He became a preacher of peace, moral education, and universal tolerance, which human society is still so lacking.
The edition is illustrated with reproductions of engravings by great European masters of the 14th-18th centuries (Hans Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Dürer, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Theodore de Bry, and others).