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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Johann Reuchlin Biography REUCHLIN, roik'len, Johann, known also by the Greek form of his name, Capnio (1455–1522). The first humanist of Germany and one of the earliest promoters of Hebrew studies in that country. He was born at Pforzheim in Baden, Feb. 22, 1455. He began his studies at his native place, continued them at Freiburg, and in 1473 accompanied Prince Frederick of Baden to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Johann Wessel (q.v.), studied Greek with Gregory Typhernas, and attended the lectures of Lapierre and Gaguin. The next year he went to Basel, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1475 and his master's in 1477. He then revisited France, studied law at Orleans and Poitiers, and gave lectures in Greek and Latin. In 1481 he established himself at Tübingen as teacher of jurisprudence and literature. He entered the service of Eberhard, first Duke of Württemberg, accompanied him to Italy in 1482, and was employed in a number of public services. He visited Italy again in 1490. In 1492 the Emperor made him a count of the German Empire, and about the same time he began the study of Hebrew under Jacob Jechiel Loans, a learned Jew who was Imperial physician. In 1496, after Eberhard's death, he went to Heidelberg and made a third visit to Italy in the service of the Elector Palatine in 1498, whom he defended in a discourse delivered before the Pope and the college of cardinals. At Rome he applied himself with renewed vigor to the study of Hebrew with Obadiah Sporno and Greek with Johannes Argyropulos (q.v.). He returned to Württemberg in 1490 and in 1502 was made a member of the Swabian confederate tribunal, retaining the office till 1513. In consequence of a quarrel between Ulrich, Duke of Württemberg, and the Swabian League, he went to Ingolstadt in 1519 and taught Greek and Hebrew at the university. When the plague broke out at Ingolstadt two years later, he returned to Tübingen, but soon fell sick, and died at Liebenzell, June 30, 1522. Reuchlin is justly regarded as the father of Greek and Hebrew studies in Germany. His devotion to Hebrew was the cause of the most interesting and important incident of his life. In 1509 one Johann Pfefferkorn, a baptized Jew, called upon princes and subjects to prosecute the religion of his fathers and especially urged the Emperor to burn or confiscate all Jewish books except the Bible. The Emperor, through the Elector of Mayence, ordered Reuchlin to give his opinion. In his response of Oct. 6, 1510, Reuchlin maintained that of all Jewish literature only books written directly against Christianity should be destroyed. This attitude drew upon him the enmity of the Dominicans and particularly of the Inquisitor Jakob van Hoogstraten (q.v.). The Epistolœ Obscurorum Virorum (q.v.), written by Crotus Rubianus and Ulrich von Hutten, was an outcome of the contest. While there was much in Reuchlin's character and experience to draw him towards the Reformation, he never openly joined the movement and late in life declared against Luther. Melanchthon was his great-nephew. Reuchlin's works include editions and Latin translations of Greek texts: a Vocabularius Latinus Breviloquus (1475); a manuscript Greek grammar (not published); the Rudimenta Linguœ Hebraicœ (1506), which with pardonable pride he declares to be "the first attempt to execute a grammar of the Hebrew tongue" and made "without any foreign help"; De Accentibus et Orthographia Hebrœorum Libri III (1518); an edition of the seven Penitential Psalms (1512), the first Hebrew book printed in Germany; De Verbo Mirifico (1494); and De Arte Cabbalistica (1517), works on the Cabbala; Scenica Progymnasmata (1497) and Sergius (1507), Latin satirical comedies, not without humor and literary merit; the Augenspiegel (1511; ed. by Mayerhoff, Berlin, 1836), a reply to a book by Pfefferkorn (the Handspiegel). Two of Reuchlin's Greek treatises, the De Quatuor Idiomatibus and Colloquia Grœca, have been published by Horawitz under the title Griechische Studien (Berlin, 1884). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 741-742. |