Fordham Renaissance Scholar Dies At 84

NEW YORK – Retired Fordham History Professor John C. Olin, known for his research of the Catholic Reformation and Renaissance, died Tuesday, June 6, after a two-year bout with cancer. He was 84. Olin, who lived in West Nyack, received his master’s degree from Fordham in 1941 before traveling to Southeast Asia where he served as a U.S. Naval officer. In 1946, he returned to Fordham, where he spent the next four decades teaching history. He retired in 1986 at age 70. “He was highly respected for his work on Erasmus and the Catholic Reformation,” said Professor Roger Wines, who was a student of Olin’s prior to joining Fordham’s history department. “He was enormously effective in encouraging his students to go out and explore history. He had a sense of humor about him that always made him accessible to his students.” During his tenure at Fordham, Olin earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He went on to research the Renaissance and translated various works from Erasmus of Rotterdam and Ignatius Loyola. Olin lectured at universities all over the world, including Oxford, and published several articles and books, such as “The Reformation Debate,” in 1966 and “Erasmus and St. Ignatius Loyola,” in Luther, Erasmus and the Reformation in 1969. Olin is survived by his wife, Marian, a 1942 Fordham graduate; his four children, Mary Beth Deambrosis, John C. Olin Jr., Margaret Olin de Souza Santos and Thomas Olin; 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.