Hellenist, philologist, historian, friend and counsellor to the King, mythical founding member of the Collège de France, as well as family man, Guillaume Budé appears to us as a hero of humanism and compels our collective admiration because he could lead simultaneously a contemplative and an active life. How was he perceived by his contemporaries? A few months after the death of the humanist (August 1540), while still in mourning, his disciple Loys Le Roy — a future bright light in the study of Greek — published the G. Budaei Vita. This biography is a virtual hagiography of a lay saint, endowed with a high mission, who sacrificed his health, even his life, to the cause of knowledge and the service of the King. This paper analyzes how a young humanist defines the role of humaniores litterae in an ordered society through their greatest incarnation.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Magnien, M., (2025), "Portrait de Budé en «intellectuel»: la G. Budæi viri clarissimi Vita de Loys Le Roy (1540)", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Magnien, Michel. "Portrait de Budé en «intellectuel»: la G. Budæi viri clarissimi Vita de Loys Le Roy (1540)." Renaissance and Reformation 36 (4): 2020. 29-48. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v36i4.8660. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.