REUCHLIN, JOHANNES°

REUCHLIN, JOHANNES° (Capnio, or Phorcensis; 1455–1522), German and Hebraist; one of the architects of the Christian kabbalah and famous as the defender of the Talmud and Jewish scholarship against the attacks of johannes pfefferkorn and the "obscurantists." Born in Pforzheim, Baden, Reuchlin served Duke Eberhard of Wuerttemberg and Elector Philip of the Palatinate, was ennobled by Emperor Frederick III in 1492, and later served as a member of the Swabian League's supreme court (1502–13). One of the leading Greek scholars of his day, Reuchlin first tried to study Hebrew in Paris (1473) and is said to have learned the Hebrew alphabet from a Jew named Calman in 1486. Another of his early teachers is thought to have been the convert flavius mithridates . After a visit to the famous library of J. Trithemius at Sponheim (1496), Reuchlin turned his attention to Hebrew linguistics, publishing De rudimentis Hebraicis (Pforzheim, 1506), comprising a lexicon and a students' guide to Hebrew grammar (based mainly on the work of David Kimḥi), which was oddly printed from right to left. Although Reuchlin's younger colleague, conrad pellicanus , had published a brief, crude Hebrew grammar in 1504, the Rudimenta was in fact the real pioneering work of its kind by a Christian scholar. However, Reuchlin's De accentibus et orthographia linguae hebraicae (Haguenau, 1518) showed many improvements. Apart from various works of general humanistic scholarship, Reuchlin also published an annotated Hebrew text and Latin translation of seven penitential Psalms (Tuebingen, 1512), and a Latin version of jehoseph ezobi 's Ka'arat Kesef (ibid., 1512). Reuchlin's last public appointments were to the chairs of Greek and Hebrew at the University of Ingolstadt (1520–21) and of Hebrew at Tuebingen (1521–22). His lectures drew vast numbers of students and his pupils included the Hebraists johann forster , sebastian muenster , and philipp melanchthon . -"Battle of the Books" Reuchlin's attitude toward the Jews was, at first at least, far more ambiguous than it was toward Jewish scholarship. Despite his friendship with his Jewish teachers and a few other Jews, he initially shared the prejudices of his age and social class. Thus, while (in the prefatory dedication to his Rudimenta) he expressed his fear that the expulsion of Jews from Spain (1492) and other lands might adversely affect Hebrew studies, he showed little sympathy for the unfortunate Jews themselves who – until their conversion – remained in "the devil's captivity." This approach also characterized his Tuetsch Missive warumb die Juden so lang im Ellend sind (Pforzheim, 1505). Unlike Erasmus, however, Reuchlin had no strong personal bias against the Jews. When, early in 1510, Reuchlin was visited by the apostate ex-butcher Johannes Pfefferkorn and was asked to assist in the confiscation and destruction of Hebrew books, he demurred, only to be drawn unwillingly into the affair by the imperial decree setting up a commission to deal with the problem. Although he felt a greater sense of outrage over the suppression of kabbalistic literature, Reuchlin refused to condemn the Talmud and, unlike most of his contemporaries, he would not agree to damn what he himself did not thoroughly know and understand. His reaction was characteristic: "The Talmud was not composed for every blackguard to trample with unwashed feet and then to say that he knew all of it." Only frankly anti-Christian works such as the toledot yeshu were, in Reuchlin's opinion, liable to condemnation. Pfefferkorn and his backers, notably jacob hoogstraaten and the Cologne Dominicans, accepted the challenge and, during the next decade, the "Battle of the Books" intermittently raged throughout Germany and in scholarly Christian circles further afield. Pfefferkorn's abusive and slanderous Handspiegel wider und gegen die Juden (1511) was answered by Reuchlin's Augenspiegel; Wahrhafftige Entschuldigung gegen und wider ains getaufften Juden genant   Pfefferkorn … unwahrhaftigs Schmachbuechlin (Tuebingen, 1511) and supplemented by Ain clare verstentnus in tuetsch uff Doctor Johannsen Reuechlins Ratschlag von den Judenbuechern (ibid., 1512). When Hoogstraaten leveled a charge of heresy against the Augenspiegel and its author, Reuchlin appealed to Pope Leo X and, in a famous letter, sought the good offices of the papal physician, bonet de lattes , a professing Jew, in terms reminiscent of the Book of Esther (1513). It may well be as a result of this appeal that Reuchlin stood trial not before Hoogstraaten at Cologne but before the bishop of Speyer, who acquitted him in 1514. This particular episode was more in the tradition of the Italian than of the German Renaissance. Leo X called a temporary halt to the conflict in 1516, but the battle was resumed when Reuchlin's publication of the Clarorum virorum Epistolae Latinae, Graecae, et Hebraicae … ad J. Reuchlin (ibid., 1514), which contained a list of eminent German scholars who supported him, brought a curious response. An apparent rejoinder appeared, entitled Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515, 15174), the total effect of which was to ridicule Reuchlin's opponents, the "obscurantists" (Dunkelmaenner), and bring their cause into utter disrepute. The first edition of this celebrated satire was mainly the work of Crotus Rubianus, and the two editions brought out in 1517 largely showed the hand of another of Reuchlin's allies, Ulrich von Hutten. One of the most advanced claims made by Reuchlin in the course of this battle was that the Jews be accorded proper treatment as "members of the Empire and imperial burghers." So far as the Jews themselves were concerned, victory had been achieved when Hebrew books were saved from the flames; but for the humanist intelligentsia the fight was not yet at an end. pietro columna galatinus published his De arcanis catholicae veritatis (Ortona, 1518) ostensibly as an anti-Jewish polemic, but its printer was gershom soncino and it was, to a far greater extent, a Christian kabbalist's protest on Reuchlin's behalf. The latter's De arte Cabalistica (Haguenau, 1517) ended with a letter to Leo X regarding the Augenspiegel and this provoked Hoogstraaten's reply, Destructio Cabale … (Cologne, 1519), which in turn drew an answer from paulus ricius . Reuchlin's own final contribution to the "Battle of the Books" was his Dialogus an Judaeorum libri Thalmud sint potius supprimendi quam tenendi … (Cologne, 1519). Reuchlin's militant supporter, Franz von Sickingen, secured the deposition of Hoogstraaten and the silencing of the Dominicans in 1520, but in the same year Leo X, appalled by the gathering storm of the Reformation, decided the case against Reuchlin, all of whose works were subsequently placed on the Index. This was the supreme irony for, throughout the controversy, which had set Franciscans against Dominicans, Austria against France, and most of the humanists against the erudite reactionaries, Reuchlin had remained a loyal Catholic; and the reformation which the "Battle of the Books" had hastened, and in which Reuchlin's own nephew, Melanchthon, was to play a prominent part, evoked only bitterness and hostility from the weary, but unvanquished, Hebraist of Pforzheim. (Godfrey Edmond Silverman) -Reuchlin and the Kabbalah Reuchlin's interest in the kabbalah was aroused by pico della mirandola , whom he met in Italy in 1490, and by Jacob b. Jehiel Loans (d. 1506), the Jewish court physician of Frederick III who taught Reuchlin Hebrew. He sensed the affinity between the neoplatonic elements in kabbalistic teaching and the basic conceptions of the great German platonic philosopher, Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus), whom he deeply admired. His attraction to Kabbalah remained constant throughout his life and was most probably the positive driving power behind his defense of Jewish literature. Like Pico, he expected to find in the Kabbalah a kind of esoteric Christianity, although in an as yet undeveloped state. In 1494 he published in Basle De verbo mirifico ("The miracle-working word"), the first book in Latin devoted to the subject of the Kabbalah. It consists of three conversations between the author (Capnion), an epicurean philosopher (Sidonius), and a Jew (Baruchias). Their common ground is the conviction that all religions express, albeit in different symbols and at various stages of perfection or distortion, the same original revelation of truth. Presenting a highly garbled and largely unauthentic version of Kabbalah (reflecting Reuchlin's very rudimentary knowledge of the subject at the time), Baruchias praises it as against epicurean philosophy. Reuchlin, who, as it were, stands above the parties, presents the Christian point of view in theosophic garb. The conversations still have a strong anti-Jewish bias. Capnion reveals to his Jewish protagonist the true mystery of the word which works miracles, the true Name of God, which is nothing but the unfolded Name of God, as against the Tetragrammaton YHWH, which is said to represent the Name of God in the period of the dominion of the Law of Moses: the miraculous name in the period of the Messiah consists of the five letters YHSWH, representing, according to Reuchlin, the name of Jesus. This innovation was his main contribution to the development of a Christian Kabbalah. The emphasis in the kabbalistic chapters of the book is on the Names of God and their magical implications, seen as some kind of preparation for Christianity. Twenty years later, Reuchlin returned to the subject. He had in the meanwhile studied some kabbalistic manuscripts, especially Gikatilla's Ginnat Egoz and Sha'arei Orah (the latter in a Latin translation by Paulus Ricius, published 1516) and a codex of kabbalistic collectanea which indeed contained much valuable information concerning kabbalistic doctrine. In his new work, De arte Cabalistica (Haguenau, 1517, Basle, 15503), which he dedicated to Pope Leo X, he again developed his theme in conversations between Simon, the Jewish kabbalist, the Muslim, Marannus, and Philolaus, who represents Pythagorean and mystical philosophy. Unlike in his former book, Reuchlin here identifies himself more or less with the Jewish kabbalist and explicitly underlines the affinity of some central kabbalistic teaching on God with that of Nicholas of Cusa. The first and third books of the work discuss the Kabbalah at considerable length and with a fair amount of objectivity and sympathy, while the second book contains a long   dialogue on Pythagoras' philosophy. Citing many passages from his sources (most of which are found in Ms. Halberstam 444 in the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York), Reuchlin lays equal stress on the theosophic school of Kabbalah as on Abulafia's and Gikatilla's teachings on the Holy Names and their permutations and combinations, although he dissociates himself from the magical misuse of such speculations. Christology no longer plays a part in these expositions and appears, if at all, in marginal comments. The quiet and dignified tone and the wealth of new information assured wide interest in the book and made it a classic of the "Christian Kabbalah." In his polemical Destructio Cabale … (Cologne, 1519), Jacob Hoogstraaten denounced the "kabbalistical perfidy" propagated by Reuchlin, but because of his ignorance of the subject he failed to undermine the considerable influence of Reuchlin's kabbalistic studies. (Gershom Scholem) -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Geiger, Johann Reuchlin; Sein Leben und seine Werke (1871); idem, Johann Reuchlins Briefwechsel (1875); H. Heidenheimer, in: MGWJ, 53 (1909), 17ff.; G.H. Box, in: E.R. Bevan and C. Singer (eds.), The Legacy of Israel (1927), 319–23 and index; G. Scholem, Die Erforschung der Kabbala von Reuchlin bis zur Gegenwart (1969); idem, Bibliographia Kabbalistica (1933), 126f.; idem, Ursprung und Anfaenge der Kabbala (1962), 275n., 375, 389; J.L. Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (1944), 41ff.; J. Benzing, Bibliographie der Schriften Johannes Reuchlins im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (1955); M. Krebs (ed.), Johannes Reuchlin, 1455–1522; Festgabe seiner Vaterstadt Pforzheim zur 500. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages (1955); J. Litvin, in: Jewish Quarterly (= J. Sonntag (ed.), Caravan (1962), 32–44); F. Secret, Le Zôhar c hez les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance (19642), index; idem, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance (1964), 44–72 and index; J.R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World (1938), 159–64; G. Kisch, Zasius und Reuchlin (1961); J. Reucblin, Gutachten ueber das juedische Schrifttum, ed. by A. Leinz and V. Dessauer (1965); Baron, Social2, 13 (1969), 182–91, 197f.; H.H. Ben-Sasson, The Reformation in Contemporary Jewish Eyes (1970) = PIASH, 4 no. 12 (1970); M. Brod, Johannes Reuchlin und sein Kampf (1965).