Desiderius Erasmus, as he came to be known, was born either in 1466 or, perhaps a shade more probably, in 1469, the illegitimate son of a future priest and a physician's daughter. He was brought up at first by his mother and went to school at Gouda for one year. It was probably immediately after Gouda that he spent a year as a chorister at Utrecht. From at least 1478 to 1483 he was at the famous school founded by Gerard Groote at Deventer where he learned Latin and developed a taste for Latin literature.

Deventer was already an intellectual centre and under Alexander Hegius, who arrived in the year in which Erasmus left, it was to become a cradle of Dutch humanism. Its alumni already included Nicholas of Cusa, the cardinal who taught the 'learned ignorance' of passive neoplatonist mysticism, and Thomas à Kempis, the author of the famous Imitation of Christ. Its founder, Gerard Groote, had also established the 'modern devotion' which emphasized the religious experience of the individual, cultivated an ethical and Biblical piety and remained largely indifferent to sacraments and monastic vows. Closely associated with the spirit of the modern devotion in which Erasmus was brought up were the Brethren of the Common Life, also founded by Groote as a lay congregation devoted to the schooling of the young. Their piety, however, like that of the Imitation of Christ, was anti-intellectual and, if they helped to create the situation which was to require and to produce the learned Christian humanism of Erasmus and his friends, they had themselves little influence on the development of humanism. Groote himself had admired Seneca and Cicero, and it is arguable that Rudolf Agricola, brought up at Groningen in the atmosphere of the modern devotion, remained true to Groote's spirit by going to Italy and returning imbued with the ideals of humanist rhetoric to be employed in the service of religion. Hegius was his friend and younger contemporary. Erasmus in his early days admired both, and took the term philosophia Christi from Agricola. In later years he reacted somewhat against them but it is possible, especially in the Praise of Folly, to see the devotional ideal of the Brethren rather uneasily clad in the richly embroidered humanist trappings of the early part of the satire. Throughout his life, Erasmus was to regard his knowledge of ancient languages and love of ancient literature as something to be put at the service of a religious ideal which does not differ substantially from that of Groote, although he no doubt went further than any of his predecessors in attributing valid religious and moral ideals to classical authors.