Intellectuals have been more than once accused of not caring about world affairs. Now, Erasmus appears to announce a modern reflection on power and knowledge. An archetype of our contemporary intellectual, he looked at and criticized the society he lived in. As a theologian and a priest, he conferred sacerdotal authority on his speech, but he spoke for a large audience, not exclusively for scholars. As a famous man, he played a role in the “Reuchlin affair,” the first time that intellectuals made a public engagement. Without blindly following the “Reuchlinist party,” Erasmus defended a scholar with his name and his pen. But he trusted the civil authorities more than pure truth, and he refused to discredit the theologians.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Ménager, D., (2025), "Érasme, les intellectuels et l’affaire Reuchlin", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Ménager, Daniel. "Érasme, les intellectuels et l’affaire Reuchlin." Renaissance and Reformation 36 (4): 2020. 49-63. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v36i4.8661. 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/.