Reuchlin
NAME: Reuchlin, Johannes
ACHIEVEMENT(S): German humanist, scholar whose introduction of the study of Hebrew literature strengthened liberal causes in the years just before the Reformation.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: Humanist name, Capnion
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 22 February (or 28 December?) 1455, at Pforzheim,
Württemberg [Germany]
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 6 (30?) June 1522, in Bad Liebenzell, Germany. Aged 66
DISCIPLINE: Humanist and scholar
FIELD: Humanism
LANGUAGE: German and Latin
PARENTS: George Reuchlin and Eliza Erina
SIBLINGS: Dionysius and Elizabeth
SPOUSE: ?, married c. 1481
CHILDREN: ?
EDUCATION: University of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1470-73; University of Paris,
1473-74; University of Basel, 1474-78; University of Orleans, 1479-80;
University of Poitiers, 1480-81
MAJOR WORK: 'On the Fundamentals of Hebrew' 1506
LIFE AND TIMES:
Towards the end of 1474 Reuchlin moved to Basel University and began lecturing on Latin language, grammar and literature. In 1478, he moved to the University of Orleans in order to study law and to lecture in Greek and Latin, and then moved on to
Poitiers in 1479, where he lectured in Greek and Latin and composed a Greek
grammar. Within a year of his return to Germany in 1481, Reuchlin was professor of Latin and Greek at the University of Tubingen.
In 1484, Reuchlin moved to Stuttgart and the following year became Proctor for the entire Dominican Order in Germany, a post he held for the next 29 years. Reuchlin published a translation of the ‘Philippics’ of Demosthenes and studied Greek texts of the New Testament.
In 1490, Reuchlin made a diplomatic trip to Italy, and on his way through Florence met the scholar <influenced by> della Mirandola*, who urged him to master the Hebrew language without delay, and from this point onwards Reuchlin became a Hebrew enthusiast.
In 1492, during a diplomatic trip to the court at Linz, he hired Jacob Loans, private physician to Emperor Frederick III, as his Hebrew tutor. Pico had also interested Reuchlin in the Jewish Kabbalah, and Reuchlin published his first Christian Kabbalist work, 'De Verbo Mirifico' in Germany in 1494, in which he praised this esoteric system of Jewish theosophy as a divine science which can, if interpreted correctly, reveal hidden meanings within the Old Testament.
In 1502 he settled in Wurttemberg, where he became one of the three judges in the Swabian League (1502-13), and where he remained until 1520. In 1506 he published his best-known work, 'On the Fundamentals of Hebrew': a description of the Hebrew alphabet, a grammar and lexicon, which introduced the scientific study of the Hebrew language, up to then almost entirely neglected by Christians.
Reuchlin followed this with the 'Seven Penitential Psalms' in Hebrew with a Latin translation (the first Hebrew text to be printed in Germany), and a treatise on Hebrew accents, pronunciation and synagogue music entitled 'De Accentibus et Orthographia Linguae Hebraicae' (1518). He also published a second work on the Kabbalah, (1517) 'The Kabbalistic Art', the first full treatise on the Kabbalah written by a non-Jew, and soon to become the definitive text for Christian Kabbalists.
Reuchlin was increasingly embroiled in a serious religious and scholarly row with Johann Pfefferkorn, a convert from Judaism, who urged the confiscation and destruction of Jewish religious books as hostile to Christianity, and this began to take place in several German cities from 1509. In 1510, Reuchlin was consulted by Emperor <consulted by> Maximilian I*, and he alone defended the study and preservation of Hebrew literature for the benefit of Christian scholarship.
In 1513, the issue broadened when the Dominican inquisitor Hochstraten began procedures against Reuchlin for heresy, and Reuchlin appealed to Pope Leo X. Reuchlin was forced to meet At a legal tribunal at the court of the Bishop of Spires in 1514,
Reuchlin was acquitted of heresy and unorthodoxy , but the case dragged on in Rome and attacks on Reuchlin continued. In his support, a collection of letters ('Letters of Renowned Men'), came out in 1514, including a preface by Reuchlin's nephew, the reformer <nephew was> Melanchthon*.
The entire European liberal and humanist community aligned itself on Reuchlin's side against the Dominicans, and the case quickly became the symbol of the bitter struggle between conservative scholastic theologians and defenders of the new humanistic studies. The controversy - which became known as the 'Battle of the Books' - resulted in
a flood of pamphlets on both sides. In 1516 a papal commission acquitted Reuchlin of heresy and called for the matter to end. But the crisis caused by the Reformation had by
1520 inspired a new mood, and Leo X issued a mandate condemning Reuchlin.
In 1520-22, by the request of the Prince William of Bavaria, Reuchlin was appointed professor of Greek and Hebrew at the University of Ingolstadt. He returned to the University of Tubingen in early 1522, but he soon took ill, and died of jaundice.
ASSESSMENT: A major factor in the introduction of Hebrew studies in the Renaissance.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Johannes Reuchlin, humanist German Hebrew scholar
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
EB, New Catholic Encyclopedia
Spitz, Lewis W., The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1963