Introduction: Denouncing Past “Normal” Prejudices

The book deals with Erasmus’s ethnic prejudices concerning Turks, Jews, and Black Africans, while an extensive part of the book discusses Erasmus’s gender prejudices. Researchers may argue that such prejudices were normal in early modern Europe, and therefore judging Erasmus’s prejudices today is inappropriate. The anti-presentists argue that in order to comprehend texts, historians must concentrate on the intellectual and historical context in which they were produced. In other words, they argue that focus on context is the way to grasp its meaning and then (presumably) insist that the prejudices do not mean quite what they seem to mean. Accordingly, the right way to study Erasmus’s prejudices is through the lens of his time and values. In contrast, I argue that normal in past times is no justification for avoidance and failure to denounce prejudice today. The past cannot be detached from the present, nor should we seek a total separation between the two.

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