nce Bruegel signed and dated many of his works, his artistic evolution can be traced from the early landscapes, in which he shows affinity with the Flemish 16th-century landscape tradition, to his last works, which are Italianate. He exerted a strong influence on painting in the Low Countries, and through his sons Jan and Pieter he became the ancestor of a dynasty of painters that survived into the 18th century. Desiderius Erasmus 1466?-1536, was a Dutch Renaissance scholar and Roman Catholic theologian who sought to revive classical texts from antiquity, restore simple Christian faith based on Scripture, and eradicate the improprieties of the medieval Church. His works include The Manual of the Christian Knight (1503) and The Praise of Folly (1509). He was a humanist who was the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance, the first editor of the New Testament and also an important figure in patristics and classical literature. Using the philological methods pioneered by Italian humanists, Erasmus helped lay the groundwork for the historical-critical study of the past, especially in his studies of the Greek New Testament and the Church Fathers. His educational writings contributed to the replacement of the older scholastic curriculum by the new humanist emphasis on the classics. By criticizing ecclesiastical abuses, while pointing to a better age in the distant past, he encouraged the growing urge for reform, which found expression both in the Protestant Reformation and in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Finally, his independent stance in an age of fierce confessional controversy--rejecting both Luther's doctrine of predestination and the powers that were claimed for the papacy--made him a target of suspicion for loyal partisans on both sides and a beacon for those who valued liberty more than orthodoxy.Sir Thomas More lived from 1478-1535. He was an English politician, humanist scholar, and writer who refused to comply with the A...
