The Ages of Erasmus and the Year of His Birth*

Abstract

It is a Perennial Paradox of Erasmus studies that neither the wealth of autobiographical information that the Dutch humanist has left us nor the enormous mass of scholarly literature that has grown up around his life and works has ever given us a firm grip on the year of his birth and the chronology of his youth. We do not know with certainty, for example, how old Erasmus was when he entered Steyn monastery. If he were born in 1466, as he indicates at times, and became a postulant in the middle of 1487, as other information suggests, he would then have been twenty years of age. Yet in an appeal to Pope Leo X for a release from some of his monastic obligations in August 1516 Erasmus asserts that he was just sixteen when he was prevailed upon to enter the monastery. On the strength of this and other evidence R. L. DeMolen has argued with equal logic that Erasmus must have been born in 1469 and entered Steyn in 1485-86.