XrcTim wrote:
It is also true that at his death he was surrounded by his Protestant friends.

Are you claiming that if a Roman Catholic has any Protestant friends that means that he is now actually a Protestant?

Dolan asserted that Erasmus died July 12, 1536, "fortified by the sacraments of the Church" (Essential Erasmus, p. 23). W. E. Campbell cited a source that said that Erasmus "died in the presence, and with the spiritual assistance of a Catholic priest, Lambert Coomans, a former protege of his, some time his secretary, who, at the very end, performed the duties of his chaplain" (Erasmus, Tyndale, and More, p. 275). Campbell noted that Coomans claimed that "Erasmus had died in his arms as a devout Catholic, with an invocation to our Lady on his lips" (p. 272). Campbell pointed out that "in 1529, seven years before his [Erasmus'] death, we have his own declaration that he would never dare to leave this life without having confessed his sins to a priest" (p. 277). Halkin also cited where Erasmus wrote: "I never dared, or would dare, to approach Christ's table, or to leave this life without having confessed to a priest what weighed on my conscience" (Erasmus, p. 255). Halkin maintained that the body of Erasmus "was placed in the Chapel of the Virgin in the Cathedral" (p. 266). Does the fact that Erasmus died in a Protestant city make him a "Protestant?" Erasmus had come to Basle in 1535 to superintend the publication of one of his books.