Obscure Men

The Letters of Obscure Men are fictitious, deliberately written in appalling, workaday Latin. They are certainly funny, but for anyone with a sensitive taste for refined Latin they can pall. The Obscure Men' come to the defence of Reuchlin's enemies. They write illiterate letters to each other attacking Reuchlin and all those who favour Humanism, and especially the study of Hebrew. In later expanded editions, Erasmus figures prominently as an enemy of the Obscure Men, The Letters of Obscure Men are certainly worth a laugh. But the reader must understand Latin; much of the laughter is aroused by their complacent abuse of the language of culture. Erasmus half-reveals a more private reason for placing the limits he does on Christian laughter: people were tracing back to him the Julius Exclusus, a satire he probably wrote before learning prudence.