History of the Reformation. Thomas M. Lindsay
Rubeanus), George Burkhardt from Spalt (Spalatinus), Henry and Peter Eberach. Eoban of Hesse (Helius Eobanus Hessus), the most gifted of them all, and the hardest drinker, joined the circle in 1494.
Similar university circles were formed elsewhere: at Basel, where Heinrich Loriti from Glarus (Glareanus), and afterwards Erasmus, were the attractions; at Tübingen, where Heinrich Bebel, author of the Facetiæ, encouraged his younger friends to study history; and even at Köln, where Hermann von Busch, a pupil of Deventer, and Ortuin Gratius, afterwards the butt of the authors of the Epistolæ obscurorum virorum, were looked upon as leaders full of the New Learning.
As in Italy Popes and cardinals patronised the leaders of the Renaissance, so in Germany the Emperor and some princes gave their protection to Humanism. To German scholars, who were at the head of the new movement, Maximilian seemed to be an ideal ruler. His coffers no doubt were almost always empty, and he had not lucrative posts at his command to bestow upon them; the position of court poet given to Conrad Celtes and afterwards to Ulrich von Hutten brought little except coronation in presence of the imperial court with a tastefully woven laurel crown;40 but the character of Maximilian attracted peasantry and scholars alike. His romanticism, his abiding youthfulness, his amazing intellectual versatility, his knight-errantry, and his sympathy fascinated them. Maximilian lives in the folk-song of Germany as no other ruler does. The scheme of education sung in the Weisskunig, and illustrated by Hans Burgmaier, entitled him to the name “the Humanist Emperor.”
§ 9. Reuchlin.
The German Humanists, whether belonging to the learned societies of the cities or to the groups in the Universities, were too full of individuality to present the appearance of a body of men leagued together under the impulse of a common aim. The Erfurt band of scholars was called “the Mutianic Host”; but the partisans of the New Learning could scarcely be said to form a solid phalanx. Something served, however, to bring them all together. This was the persecution of Reuchlin.
Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), like Erasmus after him, was very much a man by himself. He entered history at first dramatically enough. A party of Italian Humanists had met in the house of John Argyropoulos in Rome in 1483. Among them was a young unknown German, who had newly arrived with letters of introduction to the host. He had come, he explained, to study Greek. Argyropoulos gave him a Thucydides and asked him to construe a page or two into Latin. Reuchlin construed with such ease and elegance, that the company exclaimed that Greece had flown across the Alps to settle in Germany. The young German spent some years in Italy, enjoying the friendship of the foremost Italian scholars. He was an ardent student of the New Learning, and on his return was the first to make Greek thoroughly popular in Germany. But he was a still more ardent student of Hebrew, and it may almost be said of him that he introduced that ancient language to the peoples of Europe. His De Rudimentis Hebraicis (1506), a grammar and dictionary in one, was the first book of its kind. His interest in the language was more than that of a student. He believed that Hebrew was not only the most ancient, but the holiest of languages. God had spoken in it. He had revealed Himself to men not merely in the Hebrew writings of the Old Testament, but had also imparted, through angels and other divine messengers, a hidden wisdom which has been preserved in ancient Hebrew writings outside of the Scriptures—a wisdom known to Adam, to Noah, and to the Patriarchs. He expounded his strange mystical theosophy in a curious little book, De Verbo Mirifico (1494), full of out-of-the-way learning, and finding sublime mysteries in the very points of the Hebrew Scriptures. Perhaps his central thought is expressed in the sentence, “God is love; man is hope; the bond between them is faith. … God and man may be so combined in an indescribable union that the human God and the divine man may be considered as one being.”41 The book is a Symposium where Sidonius, Baruch, and Capnion (Reuchlin) hold prolonged discourse with each other.
Reuchlin was fifty-four years of age when a controversy began which gradually divided the scholars of Germany into two camps, and banded the Humanists into one party fighting in defence of free inquiry.
John Pfefferkorn (1469–1522), born a Jew and converted to Christianity (1505), animated with the zeal of a convert to bring the Jews wholesale to Christianity, and perhaps stimulated by the Dominicans of Köln (Cologne), with whom he was closely associated, conceived an idea that his former co-religionists might be induced to accept Christianity if all their peculiar books, the Old Testament excepted, were confiscated. During the earlier Middle Ages the Jews had been continually persecuted, and their persecution had always been popular; but the fifteenth century had been a period of comparative rest for them; they had bought the imperial protection, and their services as physicians had been gratefully recognised in Frankfurt and many other cities.42 Still the popular hatred against them as usurers remained, and manifested itself in every time of social upheaval. It was always easy to arouse the slumbering antipathy.
Pfefferkorn had written four books against the Jews (Judenspiegel, Judenbeichte, Osternbuch, Jeudenfeind) in the years 1507–1509, in which he had suggested that the Jews should be forbidden to practise usury, that they should be compelled to listen to sermons, and that their Hebrew books should be confiscated. He actually got a mandate from the Emperor Maximilian, probably through some corrupt secretary, empowering him to seize upon all such books. He began his work in the Rhineland, and had already confiscated the books of many Jews, when, in the summer of 1509, he came to Reuchlin and requested his aid. The scholar not only refused, but pointed out some irregularities in the imperial mandate. The doubtful legality of the imperial order had also attracted the attention of Uriel, the Archbishop of Mainz, who forbade his clergy from rendering Pfefferkorn any assistance.
Upon this Pfefferkorn and the Dominicans again applied to the Emperor, got a second mandate, then a third, which was the important one. It left the matter in the hands of the Archbishop of Mainz, who was to collect evidence on the subject of Jewish books. He was to ask the opinions of Reuchlin, of Victor von Karben (1422–1515), who had been a Jew but was then a Christian priest, of James Hochstratten (1460–1527), a Dominican and Inquisitor to the diocese of Köln, a strong foe to Humanism, and of the Universities of Heidelberg, Erfurt, Köln, and Mainz. They were to write out their opinions and send them to Pfefferkorn, who was to present them to the Emperor. Reuchlin was accordingly asked by the Archbishop to advise the Emperor “whether it would be praiseworthy and beneficial to our holy religion to destroy such books as the Jews used, excepting only the books of the Ten Commandments of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalter of the Old Testament?” Reuchlin's answer was ready by November 1510. He went into the matter very thoroughly and impartially. He divided the books of the Jews into several classes, and gave his opinion on each. It was out of the question to destroy the Old Testament. The Talmud was a collection of expositions of the Jewish law at various periods; no one could express an opinion about it unless he had read it through; Reuchlin had only been able to procure portions; judging from these, it was likely that the book did contain many things contrary to Christianity, but that was the nature of the Jewish religion which was protected by law; it did contain many good things, and ought not to be destroyed. The Cabala was, according to Reuchlin, a very precious book, which assured us as no other did of the divinity of Christ, and ought to be carefully preserved. The Jews had various commentaries on the books of the Old Testament which were very useful to enable Christian scholars to understand them rightly, and they ought not to be destroyed. They had also sermons and ceremonial books belonging to their religion which had been guaranteed by imperial law. They had books on arts and sciences which ought to be destroyed only in so far as they taught such forbidden arts as magic. Lastly, there were books of poetry and fables, and some of them might contain insults to Christ, the Virgin, and the Apostles, and might deserve burning, but not without careful and competent examination. He added that the best way to deal with the Jews was not to burn their books, but to engage in reasonable, gentle, and kindly discussion.
Reuchlin's opinion stood alone: all the other authorities suggested the burning of Jewish books, and the University of Mainz would not exempt the Old Testament until it had been shown that it had not been tampered with by Jewish zealots.
The temperate and scholarly answer of Reuchlin was made a charge against him.