Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Erasmus Roterodamus on His Failed Monastic Attempt

Abstract

The article presents the first Russian translation of a famous letter from the Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam to his longtime friend Servatius Rogers, dated July 8, 1514. The letter is a response to the Prior’s demand to return to the Augustinian canon monastery in Steyne, of which the humanist had been a member since 1487. This epistolary source should be considered in the context of the “new biographical history”. Erasmus’s renouncing of the monastery is seen as a manifestation of Renaissance individualism. In explaining the humanist’s apostasy, more attention should be paid to his personal situation: it was not so much the shortcomings of the entire monastic community as the physical and psychological maladjustment to monastic life of the Rotterdam man himself that caused his departure from Stein. It is suggested that the epistle should be interpreted as an experience of the author’s self-representation. Erasmus deliberately selects autobiographical information demonstrates to the world the necessary image of himself. The humanist turns his justification for leaving the monastery into an Apology for the modus vivendi of a Renaissance intellectual.