La bataille de Guillaume Budé, princeps de la République des Lettres, contre la barbarie des gens de justice

Abstract

This article focuses on the battle that Guillaume Budé waged against the barbarity of the magistrates of the French sovereign court, who, despising the study of letters and prone to the pursuit of gain, relied solely on the Bartolist science of law. I argue that, at the court of Francis I, Budé, already recognised as princeps of the Republic of Letters, assumed the political role of “advocate of the Philologists’ nation” and proposed, based on his idea of encyclopaedia, the ideal of the orator-philosopher able to achieve justice.

Keywords

• Budé Guillaume (1468-1540)
• Erasmus (1469-1536)
• bonae literae
• philosophy
• eloquence
• Republic of Letters