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His sensitiveness to style and beauty came to terms with his conscientious scholarship. He was happily married, with a growing family, and the many elements of his mind drew together into a unity. During the ten years that he spent as professor at Groningen, he found himself. It has been well said of him that he never became either a pedant or a doctrinaire. As time went on he examined aspects of history which at first he had passed over, and he acquired a clear insight into the political and economic life of the past. All through his life it was characteristic of him that after a spell of creative work, when he had finished a book, he would turn aside from the subject that had absorbed him and plunge into some other subject or period, so that the books and articles in the eight volumes of his collected works (with one more volume still to come) cover a very wide range.

For two or three years before giving up school-teaching he lectured in the University of Amsterdam on Sanskrit, and it was almost an accident that he became professor of history in the University of his native town.

Until he was over thirty he was a schoolmaster at Haarlem, a teacher of history but it was still uncertain whether European or Oriental studies would claim him in the end. Science and current affairs scarcely interested him, and until his maturity imagination seemed to satisfy him more than research. He studied Dutch history and literature and also Oriental languages and mythology and sociology he was a good linguist and he steadily accumulated great learning, but he was neither an infant prodigy nor a universal scholar. He was born in 1872 in Groningen, the most northerly of the chief towns of the Netherlands, and there he went to school and to the University. His friends knew that he was unique, but neither he nor they foresaw what direction his studies would take. Until that time his powers were ripening, not so much slowly as secretly. Huizinga's great success and reputation came suddenly when he was over forty. I remembered that I had heard of his talent for drawing, and as we walked and talked I felt the influence of a strong, quiet personality deep down in which an artist's perceptiveness was fused with a determination to search for historical truth. His eye was not merely informed but sensitive. At All Souls he pointed out the seldom appreciated merits of Hawksmoor's twin towers. He told me which of the decorative motifs on the Tower of the Four Orders were usual at the time when it was built, and which were less common. What surprised and delighted me was his seeing eye. He understood the purposes of these ancient buildings, the intentions of their founders and builders but that was to be expected from an historian who had written upon the history of universities and learning. Even with a man who was well known all over the world as a writer, I expected that these two or three hours would be much like the others I had spent in the same capacity with other visitors but this proved to be a day to remember. As it was not his first stay in the city, and he knew the principal buildings already, we looked at some of the less famous. Rather more than twenty years ago, on a spring morning of alternate cloud and sunshine, I acted as guide to Johan Huizinga, the author of this book, when he was on a visit to Oxford. AT WAR WITH HUMANISTS AND REFORMERS, 1528-9īy G.N. CONTROVERSY WITH LUTHER AND GROWING CONSERVATISM, 1524-6Ĭhapter XIX. FIRST YEARS OF THE REFORMATIONĬhapter XVIII. THIRD STAY IN ENGLAND, 1509-14Ĭhapter XIII. YEARS OF TROUBLE-LOUVAIN, PARIS, ENGLAND, 1502-6Ĭhapter X. THEOLOGICAL ASPIRATIONS, 1501Ĭhapter VII. FIRST STAY IN ENGLAND, 1499-1500Ĭhapter VI. THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, 1495-9Ĭhapter IV.

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH, 1466-88Ĭhapter III. Library of Congress catalogue card number 57-10119 ContentsĬhapter I. Originally published under the title: "Erasmus of Rotterdam"įirst HARPER TORCHBOOK edition published 1957 Reprinted by arrangement with Phaidon Press, Ltd., London The section from the Letters of Erasmus was translated by Barbara Flower. Hopman and first published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1924. Huizinga's text was translated from the Dutch by F.