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The University Hall! This is where students
come to register for their first year of university.

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Erasmus himself must
have come here five hundred years ago

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to register as a theology student.

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He was a good friend of Adrian of Utrecht,
the later pope,

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and due to this friendship, Erasmus was offered
a professorship at the university during his first stay in Leuven.

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But he declined.

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Erasmus was a humanist through and through

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and much preferred to spend his
time travelling and writing.

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The dictum "<i>The whole world is my fatherland</i>",

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from his work <i>"Adagia"</i> was certainly applicable to him;

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He was never tied down to a particular place.

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Look here, this memorial commemorates
the seventy months that Erasmus spent here in Leuven

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and the impact he had on the university.

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The European exchange programme
in which students spend

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part of their programme studying at a
university abroad

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is named after – you guessed it – Erasmus.

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During his second period in Leuven
from 1517 to 1521,

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Erasmus founded the Collegium Trilingue
and studied theology here.

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Erasmus was not only extremely erudite,

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he of course also wrote a number
of important works.

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<i>"In Praise of Folly"</i> is probably his most famous;

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it's a critical indictment of the corruption
and abuses in his time.

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But he also wrote <i>"the Adagia"</i>, a collection of proverbs,
editions of the Greek texts of the New Testament

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and other works. All of these
books also needed to be printed.

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Directly across the street from this building stood
the printing house of Dirk Martens,

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who was also a humanist and
one of Erasmus' best friends.

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Martens printed numerous works by

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famous writers like Erasmus and Thomas
More, but he also printed course books

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for students at the university and
the Collegium Trilingue.