The humanist lawyers like Erasmus's contemporary Bude were concerned to disinter the text of ancient legislation from under the burden of medieval glosses which had hitherto determined its interpretation.
The inclusion of lawyers among the followers of Folly might seem less surprising than the omission of doctors, since later satirists spared neither, and Folly had earlier mentioned them both together. But even the lawyers are here seen as merely garrulous rather than the venal or stupid characters for which many later writers took them. Both legal and medical studies were being renewed by Erasmus's humanist contemporaries.