| German humanist, political counselor, and classics
scholar whose defense of Hebrew literature helped awaken liberal
intellectual forces in the years immediately preceding the
Reformation.
Reuchlin studied at various universities, specializing
in Greek and publishing a Latin lexicon in 1475–76.
He then switched to law, obtaining his degree in 1481, and
he held court and judicial posts in Württemberg and
its capital, Stuttgart, from the 1480s until 1512. Reuchlin
was a pioneer in the scientific study of classical Greek
and translated many classical texts. In the 1490s he became
interested in Hebrew, and in 1506 there appeared his celebrated
De Rudimentis Hebraicis (“On the Fundamentals of Hebrew”),
a grammar and lexicon that was of great importance in promoting
the scientific study of Hebrew and hence of the Old Testament
in its original language.
When the Dominicans of Cologne led by Johannes Pfefferkorn
succeeded in getting Emperor Maximilian I to order (1509)
the destruction of Hebrew books as hostile to Christianity,
Reuchlin defended the study and preservation of Hebrew literature.
The Dominican inquisitor Jacob Hochstraten began procedures
against Reuchlin himself in 1513, and in response Reuchlin
appealed to Pope Leo X. As the dispute went on, the entire
European liberal and humanist community aligned itself on
Reuchlin's side against the Dominicans, and in 1516 a papal
commission acquitted Reuchlin of heresy. The controversy
occasioned the Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515; “Letters
of the Obscure Men”), a satirical pamphlet by young
humanists that mercilessly ridiculed late scholasticism
as represented by the Dominicans. But interest in the controversy
was soon displaced by the shift of public attention to Martin
Luther and his clash with the Roman Catholic church.
Reuchlin was second only to Desiderius Erasmus among German
humanists and was the most important German teacher of Greek
and Hebrew in his day. Though his stand in the Hebrew-literature
controversy had proven beneficial to the Protestant cause,
Reuchlin repudiated his nephew, Philip Melanchthon, and
Luther in their separation from Roman Catholicism.
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