I am seriously embarrassed in concluding this essay without a real conclusion. It is an open epilogue. My research leaves unresolved too many questions and too many problems for a single scholar to answer. In the previous chapters I have shown the possibilities and the limits of the democratization of knowledge. What I would like to point out at the end of this investigation are some consequences of this process, recapitulating what has been outlined above.

From the very beginning I have stressed the pivotal role of Erasmus. Starting from Erasmus is not a historiographical arbitrary choice. As we have seen, his work and spirit galvanise the thought of the vulgarizers and democratizers in a period in which to be associated with or related to Erasmus was extremely dangerous. Pier Paolo Vergerio recognizes the influence Erasmus had on generations of scholars:

To understand Erasmus’s contribution is essential for understanding how the process of the democratization of knowledge was sparked in sixteenth-century Italy. I do not want in any way to suggest that Erasmus was the initiator of this project, or to trace a direct genealogical line that sees in Erasmian thought the essential precondition without which some processes would not have happened. His thought, rather, represented a platform upon which intellectuals carried on the idea of the democratization of knowledge.