Christoph, Anna (2024). Rezension zu Sandra Langereis: Erasmus. Biografie eines Freigeists, aus dem Niederländischen übersetzt von Bärbel Jänicke, deutsche Ausgabe Berlin 2023. Ars docendi, 21, dicembre 2024.

This almost 900-page biography is a book that provides a particularly close insight into one of the greatest humanists and the father of philology from his birth - almost personally, because one of the author's choices is to use a lot of indirect speech by quoting from Erasmus' numerous private letters; the comments on life and historical events are therefore presented as in the first person. We get to know not only a character of the highest intellect, but also of an astonishing willpower and stubbornness in his daily battle to re-qualify ancient texts and free them from compromised traditions and translations - a battle that led to humanism and the Renaissance, in which the victorious outcome was by no means a foregone conclusion. Putting his whole life on the line and risking a great deal, Erasmus lived most of his life in poverty and only towards the end of his life did he receive the recognition and esteem he deserved. The book is not just a biography of an individual man but of an entire transitional period from the Middle Ages to the modern age, which also presents in detail the political, religious and philosophical coordinates, all in a particularly captivating literary style.