How was Erasmus regarded by the Catholic Church after his death, according to Diarmaid MacCulloch?

Diarmaid MacCulloch says Erasmus was in good standing when he died, though his monument stands in Basel's former cathedral, by then a Protestant church. Afterwards he was blamed as the source of what had gone wrong: his books went on the Inquisition's Index and even his editions of the Church fathers were treated with suspicion, because radicals, including deniers of the Trinity, had admired him.

• Eamon Duffy says a lasting line of Erasmian mildness, scholarly freedom and commitment to peace runs through both Catholic and Protestant Christianity.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-10-19). Read the whole episode summary →

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