250 years of history
mathematics and science, philosophy and religion
Dutch history
We left off at Erasmus Reinhold, creator of the Prutenic Tables, based on the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, which were used to create the Gregorian calendar.
Reinhold's Master of Arts degree in astronomy and astrophysics was earned at Wittenberg in 1535, as a student of Jacob Milich.
Not much is known of Milich. Plenty is known about one of his academic supervisors.
Milich grew up in Freiburg-im-Breisgau, one of the five classical university towns in Germany, the others being Gottingen, Heidelberg, Marburg, and Tubingen. He earned a medical degree at Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg and became a mathematics professor at Wittenberg. He is most famous for his commentary on Pliny the Elder and as an educator and administrator at Wittenberg.
Copernicus Crater is in the right center of the image to the right, with Reinhold and Reinhold B (the smaller, shallower, flooded crater) to the southwest.
Milichius Crater is one of the dome craters west of center in the image to the right. That's Hortensius to its south and Pi to the west. These craters are to the west of Copernicus Crater (right of center), while Reinhold Crater (southwest of Copernicus) is to the south of it.
Milich's advisors for his Master of Liberal Arts in 1520 and his medical degree in 1524 were Desiderius Erasmus and Ulrich Zasius.
Zasius was a jurist who received his doctorate at Freiberg in 1501 after a first career as a politician and director of the Latin school in Freiberg. While he was studying the law, he taught classes in rhetoric and poetry and kept his political career going on the side. He applied Humanism to the Law and engaged in vigorous discussions on the doctrines that guy, what's his name, Martin Luther, who he at first favored.
After 1521 he was a zealous opponent of Luther and died a firm adherent of the Roman Catholic faith.
We do not know the name of his dissertation or who his advisor was.
To place him in the correct setting, here's this about humanism from wikipedia:
The Humanists likewise recognize humans as born not with a burden of inherited sin due to their ancestry but with potential for both good and evil which will develop in this life as their characters are formed. The Humanists therefore reject Calvinistic predestination, and understandably therefore arouse the hostility of Protestant fundamentalists.
Renaissance humanists believed that the liberal arts (music, art, grammar, rhetoric, oratory, history, poetry, using classical texts, and the studies of all of the above) should be practiced by all levels of wealth. They also approved of self, human worth and individual dignity.
Noteworthy humanist scholars from this period include the Dutch theologian Erasmus, the English author (and Roman Catholic saint) Thomas More, the French writer Francois Rabelais, the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch and the Italian scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus is not just "an" Erasmus. He is "the" Erasmus, the "Prince of the Humanists." He created new Latin and Greek versions of the New Testament inculcating his humanist beliefs, versions which raised questions that were central to both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
While visiting with Thomas More, he wrote The Praise of Folly, one of the most influential works of Western literature, since it became extremely popular and included a clear statement of Christian ideals. It was written in 1509, eight years before the Reformation. In a visit to Tournehem, he wrote Handbook of a Christian Knight , "an appeal on Christians to act in accordance with the Christian faith rather than merely performing the necessary rites," which also became hugely influential. Additional texts included one on civilizing children, one on rhetoric, and probably the anonymous Julius Excluded from Heaven, which includes a section where Pope Julius II tries to have St. Peter excommunicated because he won't allow Julius passage into Heaven. Luther loved it:
so learned, and so ingenious, that is, so entirely Erastian, that it makes the reader laugh at the vices of the church, over which every true Christian ought rather to groan.
Erasmus remained neutral with respect to Luther's criticism of the Church, earning him attack from both sides, who believed neutrality was not possible in this matter.
I detest dissension because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature. I doubt that either side in the dispute can be suppressed without grave loss.
--Desiderius Erasmus
Erasmus did eventually write in opposition to Luther, lampooning Luther's idea of free will. Luther attacked Erasmus as not a Christian. Yada, yada, yada. Erasmus believed in the freedom of choice over free will.
In the Counter-Reformation, Erasmus was attacked as having
laid the egg that hatched the Reformation.
All of his works were
prohibited by Pope Paul IV.
Erasmus was educated a school run by the Brethren of the Common Life at the time of the plague, which took the lives of his parents. He was ordained a Catholic priest, became secretary of Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambray, and received his theological degree from the College de Montaigu in Paris, at the dispensation of Pope Leo X.
Therein lies the next leg of our story.