Erasmus Text Project
The purpose of this web site is to make available over the web various
texts/ of Desiderius Erasmus. Presently I am putting on-line all of the public-domain
texts/ and translations that I can get my hands on. I will tend to give priority
to those works less available in print.
If you have comments, or would like to help me bring Erasmus to the web, please
write me, Chris Cudabac,at ccudabac@bellsouth.net.
This drawing is Hans Holbien's Portrait of Erasmus,
which he drew in a margin of Frobien's copy of the Praise of Folly. Erasmus, when
he visited Frobien, saw the drawing and wrote above it that if he were as handsome
as Holbien depicted, then he should not be wanting for a wife. Holbien also painted
a more formal and involved portrait of Erasmus, again
at his desk. Albrecht Dürer did an engraving
along the same lines that Erasmus was not very impressed with at all. Erasmus
wrote a friend that the engraving looked nothing like him. This might be explained,
he noted, by the fact that the engraving was done in 1526 from a sketch
which Dürer made in 1520, and the intervening period had been a bad six years.
New (as of March 8th) on Colloquia: a translation of The Religious Treat
(aka The Godly Feast)
Now Completed (huzza!)
If you'd prefer to download this & read it later, there is a binhex
archive. This will only work for Mac users with MS Word 5.0 Those without one or the other can still download an
RTF interchange format version. (Please note that as of
22 June 1996 I still have not added to these beyond section 42.)
The Praise of Folly (English)
Translated by John Wilson in 1688
You may choose between a text-only version and a graphics-intensive
text with engravings by Hans Holbien the Younger
This text also has an archive,
which has the same specifications as above. If you are lacking in any of
these, you can still download an RTF
interchange format text.
The Prayer to God the Father, the Prayer to God the Holy Ghost, and the Prayer in Springtime, which I translated this April. I don't know of another translation of these.