500 Years of Laus Stultitiae

Erasmus composing his Laus Stultitiae (In Praise of Folly), alongside a portrait of Queen Beatrix, the inscription "Beatrix Koningin der Nederlanden", the year 2011, and the mintmarks.

Erasmus of Rotterdam is regarded as one of the most influential scholars of the European Renaissance — a humanist who navigated between confessions, mastered languages brilliantly, and questioned the thinking of his time more sharply than most of his contemporaries. His work Laus Stultitiae, published in Latin in 1511 and known in English as The Praise of Folly, is a literary-satirical masterpiece: personified Folly delivers a speech in praise of herself, in the process exposing clergy, princes, philosophers and scholars alike as fools. The work was written during a stay with Thomas More in England and originally composed in just a few days — yet it became one of the most widely read texts of the 16th century.

The connection to the Netherlands is close: Erasmus was born around 1469 in Rotterdam, in the area that today belongs to the Dutch province of South Holland. Rotterdam bears his name to this day, and the city regards him as a figure central to its identity. Dutch intellectual history places Erasmus as an early representative of a critical worldview grounded in reason and education, one that came to shape the region's self-understanding over the centuries. To mark the 500th anniversary of the publication of the Laus Stultitiae, the Netherlands issued a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2011 in honour of this enduring cultural significance.