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.

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• 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/.