Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522): A Unique Philosemitic Public Intellectual

ABSTRACT

Intellectuals have been engaged in public life since antiquity: from Biblical prophets down to figures such as Machiavelli, Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and other Enlightenment and later thinkers. This article focuses on the life and work of Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522). Its primary source is Reuchlin’s Expert Opinion Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books (Ratschlag Ob Man Den Juden Alle Ire Bücher Nemmen, Abthun Und Verbrennen Soll) published in 1510. Based on this and the scholarly literature, it is argued that as an outstanding philosemitic humanist who saved the Talmud and other Jewish books from destruction, Reuchlin should be recognized as a public intellectual, the greatest of his time. Arguably, by standing up against the destruction of Jewish religious and cultural life, Reuchlin stirred the German consciousness and public opinion that was crucial for the making of the Reformation. So far as the Jews were concerned, Jewish textual survival enabled national survival. Reuchlin contributed immensely to that survival.

KEYWORDS:

• Johannes Reuchlin
• Erasmus
• the Jews
• Talmud
• Public Intellectual
• national survival

I. Introduction

As a distinct elite group engaged in public life with a particular sense of its own moral authority, intellectuals came into being in late nineteenth-century France, as the turmoil of the Dreyfus Affair shook the state’s foundations.¹ Thus, in time, the public intellectual came to be understood as one who rises above the partial preoccupations of his own profession to deal with universal issues of truth, moral deliberations, judgment, and the questions of the hour.² However, it may be argued that, as individuals, intellectuals engaged in public life already existed long before the nineteenth century. Julien Benda, in his famous La Trahison des clercs (1927; The Treason of the Intellectuals, 1928), written very much under the influence of the moral protagonism displayed by Emil Zola (1840–1902), mentions Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) as an intellectual—a clerc, in Benda’s terms—who preached in the name of humanity and justice.³ Similarly, the continuity of public intellectual involvement from the Biblical prophets down to modern intellectuals, such as Alexander Herzen, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Orwell, has also been pointed out.⁴ Finally, figures such as Machiavelli, Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and other Enlightenment luminaries are often identified as public intellectuals.⁵ This article argues that Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) should be recognized as a unique philosemitic public intellectual, perhaps the most important public intellectual in early modern Europe. This reassessment of Reuchlin emphasizes his universal values in the struggle for religious freedom (for the Jews) at a time when such values were not yet recognized, and in this respect, it also draws him closer to the thinkers of the Enlightenment.

Johannes Reuchlin was an outstanding humanist and prominent Hebraist and one of the first Christians to compose and publish a Hebrew textbook and lexicon, which he titled The Basic Principles of the Hebrew Language (De rudimentis hebraicis, 1506). He also won fame for his Kabbalistic works, On the Wonder-working Word (De verbo mirifico, 1494) and The Practices of the Kabbalah (De arte cabalistica, 1517), which were based on his study of Hebrew writings, and were an attempt to create a Christian-Catholic Kabbalah.⁶

To define Reuchlin as “the greatest Humanist thinker of his time”⁷ is perhaps going a bit far. Erasmus, “the prince of humanists,” was the most prolific and influential scholar of his time.⁸ Indeed, Hugh Trevor-Roper defined Erasmus as a colossal intellectual in the history of ideas, the most significant intellectual hero of the sixteenth century, and a cosmopolitan in an age of emerging nationalism, whose work influenced the Enlightenment movement.⁹ For his part, and with the exception of the abovementioned evaluation, Reuchlin has never been idolized by modern historians. Yet nevertheless, besides being an eminent scholar, I argue that Reuchlin deserves to be hailed as the greatest public intellectual of his time, and this because of his outstanding role in the harsh polemical and toxic controversy known as “the Reuchlin affair” or “the Pfefferkorn–Reuchlin affair.”¹⁰ But before highlighting Reuchlin’s active role in this otherwise sordid episode, let us first consider the meaning of the term “philosemitism.”

II. Reuchlin’s Cultural Philosemitism

The term philosemitism is problematic. Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp explain:

The term is certainly an awkward one, and it has an awkward history. Coined in Germany in 1880 as the antonym to another neologism—antisemitism—the word “philosemitism” was invented by avowed antisemites as a sneering term of denunciation for their opponents. Almost all late nineteenth-century opponents of antisemitism strenuously sought to defend themselves from the charge of philosemitism, insisting instead that they regarded the Jews neutrally and were untainted by prejudice either for or against them.¹¹

Bearing in mind its relation to antisemitism, “this word [philosemitism] is uniquely serviceable as a discursive balancer, drawing attention to those facets of attitudes to Jews that are most egregiously misinterpreted or overlooked within a paradigm that recognizes antisemitism alone.”¹² With a similar awareness of the problematic aspects of the term, Franz Posset concludes that if we consider “philosemitism” as a collective term for a friendly attitude towards Jews, Judaism, or their cultural achievements, Reuchlin stands out as one of its most prominent representatives. On the other hand, if one is captivated by the nineteenth-century derogatory use of the term, employed especially by antisemites, then Reuchlin may undeservedly be evaluated as philosemitic.¹³ Having clarified this point, we can turn to David Katz’s view of “philosemitism” as used, “in the simplest sense, to describe an attitude which finds Jews and Jewish culture admirable, desirable or even in demand.”¹⁴ This, I argue, is precisely what we will find by investigating Reuchlin’s writings and deeds. To begin with, philosemitism can be detected, among other things, in the relations that existed at the time between Hebraists and their Hebrew teachers.

In 1486, Reuchlin hired a Jew named Kalman as his Hebrew language teacher. He acquired from him knowledge of the Hebrew Alef-Beth (alphabet) and a list of essential Hebrew words. A few years later, in 1492, Reuchlin met Yaakov ben Yechiel Loans (d. 1505?), the personal physician of Emperor Frederick III, who became his Hebrew teacher. In November 1500, Reuchlin wrote a letter to Loans in Hebrew, updating him on his proficiency in the Hebrew language. In it he thanks Loans in warm words for an achievement he credits to his teaching. The letter is full of expressions of sympathy and affection for a former teacher.¹⁵

In his letter he addresses Loans as follows: “My Lord, dear master Jacob, my companion, and my good friend … with deep longing I wish to see your blessed face to delight in the radiance of your bright countenance by hearing your most pure doctrine. And now I have written this scroll to tell you that after I left you, I succeeded in my studies and made a great achievement. I know that you would be pleased and rejoice.”¹⁶ Several years later, Reuchlin published this letter in a book that included his correspondence with eminent Christian scholars such as Erasmus and Willibald Pirckheimer (1470–1530).¹⁷ This letter triggered harsh attacks from Johann Pfefferkorn (1469–1523), an anti-Judaic convert from Judaism to Christianity, who described it as an unbearable demonstration of Reuchlin’s love of Jews and Judaism. In his Rudiments of the Hebrew Language, Reuchlin praised “my teacher, in my opinion, the powerfully learned Jacob Jehiel Loans, a Jew,” and “my most humane teacher, the excellent doctor.”¹⁸

At the end of his service at the imperial court in Linz, Loans arranged for Reuchlin to receive a valuable Hebrew Bible manuscript known as Codex Reuchlin 1 or The Reuchlin Bible, a farewell gift he had received from the Emperor.¹⁹ Reuchlin was an enthusiastic connoisseur of Hebrew books. His rich library stored, inter alia, the first complete Hebrew Bible to appear in print, published by Joshua Solomon ben Israel Nathan Soncino (d. 1493), at the Soncino Press in Italy in 1488. Some two to three hundred copies were printed. Reuchlin purchased one in Rome in 1492 for six gold coins—a year’s salary of a government clerk.²⁰

During his stay in Rome from 1497 to 1499, Reuchlin continued to study Hebrew with the scholar Rabbi Ovadia Sforno (c. 1475–1550), a physician with a broad education in philosophy. According to Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), Reuchlin’s relative, Reuchlin paid no less than a gold coin for each hour of study. Rumor had it that the young Martin Luther began to study Hebrew with the same Jewish scholar while he visited Rome in 1510.²¹ Thus both Luther and Reuchlin appreciated the adage “We Latin people drink from the swamp, the Greeks from the rivers, the Jews from the springs.”²² However, it is doubtful whether Luther, then a young mendicant friar, could have afforded the fees Reuchlin paid for his lessons. Be that as it may, Franz Posset, Reuchlin’s biographer, stresses that Reuchlin’s convictions, despite his bonds with Melanchthon and connections with other Reformation leaders, starkly contrasted with Luther’s antisemitism and anti-papalism.²³

Reuchlin was also interested in Yiddish books. He had a few Yiddish items in his library, such as Hebrew-Yiddish glossaries of the Hebrew Bible (Codices Reuchlin 8–9) and a Yiddish translation of Job, Proverbs, Psalms, and a literary text for the feast of Purim (Codex Reuchlin 13). Although we cannot infer from the mere possession of these books, that Reuchlin actually used them, the signs (maniculae, ‘small hands’ signs), and some notes in Latin and Hebrew on the margins of the texts indicate that he could read and understand Yiddish.²⁴

A few years later, Reuchlin was already teaching Hebrew, and apparently with considerable success. In the years 1519–1521 he taught Greek and Hebrew at the University of Ingolstadt. In September 1520 he received a letter written in Hebrew from the Augustinian Friar and eminent Hebraist Caspar Amman (c. 1450–1524), of the Lauingen friary in southern Germany. This letter attests to Reuchlin’s success in teaching Hebrew, probably to a large number of students:

My lord and friend, I have heard that you teach the holy language in Ingolstadt and have already taught the grammar of the late and blessed Rabbi Moshe Kimhi. And now you interpret The Seven Penitential Psalms. Also, you teach the root of the compound words and the use of the auxiliary letters [in humanist Latin called litterae serviles]. I was also told that many sophisticated and pleasant students sit daily in front of you, kissing the hem [of your garment], happy to hear and learn the pure doctrine from you. Blessed are they and all those who listen to you, see you, love you, and protect you. Indeed, their hearts are filled with joy and delight. I ask that you always continue like that because you are doing something outstanding. May God give your honorable highness grace and strength to act and teach at the university for years to come—to His praise. In short, love the one who loves you.²⁵

Reuchlin praised the Hebrew language as simple, unspoiled, holy, and concise, and as the language in which God communicated without a translator face to face. The Hebrew language “must be kissed tenderly and embraced with both arms.”²⁶ He testifies: “I studied and read these books out of the passion and love that I have had all my life for studying and reading books written in the holy language.”²⁷ Accordingly, Reuchlin held that the study of Hebrew should be promoted to achieve a better understanding of the original Word of God in the Scriptures, for thus one may discover the true and pure Christian faith. Following the Church Father Jerome, Reuchlin saw the Hebrew language as an entry point to God’s mysteries and grace. He believed that if we (the Christians) want to go ad fontes in studying our Scriptures and faith, we should hold the Jews in great esteem as the source of the fountain of that faith.²⁸

III. Reuchlin’s Activistic Philosemitism

With the aim of saving the Jewish books and enabling further Hebraic studies, Reuchlin stood up against Pfefferkorn in the controversy known as “the Reuchlin affair” or “the Pfefferkorn–Reuchlin affair.” This episode began in 1508 when Pfefferkorn, the Jewish convert to Christianity who plotted to burn the books of the Jews and subsequently convert them to Christianity, wrote a number of books against the Jews, notably the strident Enemy of the Jews (Judenfeind, 1509). The libelous tract contained a section on “How the Jews ruin land and people” and inveighed against the usurious practices of Jewish moneylenders. Two other tracts, Jewish Confession (Judenbeichte, 1508) and How the Blind Jews Keep Easter (Wie die blinden Juden yr Ostern halten, 1509), are of ethnographic interest today, but also contain hostile passages and go so far as to advocate the expulsion of the Jews or, if that is not possible, of forcing them to do lowly work such as “cleaning latrines or collecting dog feces.”²⁹ In his zeal to convert his former co-religionists, Pfefferkorn argued that Hebrew books spread false beliefs, and impede the conversion to the “true” Catholic religion, and should therefore be confiscated and burned.

Emperor Maximilian I, who initially supported the confiscation of Jewish books that were deemed anti-Christian, but not of all Jewish books, issued an official mandate authorizing Pfefferkorn to carry out his plan. Once the confiscation had commenced, he authorized Uriel von Gemmingen (1468–1514), the Archbishop of Mainz, to head a committee that included four universities (Mainz, Cologne, Erfurt, and Heidelberg) and three individuals, Johannes Reuchlin, Victor von Carben (1515–1422), a scholar who before converting to Christianity was a rabbi in Cologne, and Jacob van Hoogstraten (1469–1527), a Dominican theologian who also served as an inquisitor and was Reuchlin’s sworn persecutor.³⁰ The committee members were asked for their opinion concerning the Jewish books—whether to burn them or not. Reuchlin, in a detailed and well-reasoned response, was the only one who opposed Pfefferkorn’s call to destroy the books.³¹ The controversy was personal in major respects: Reuchlin was furious about Pfefferkorn’s defamations of his character and scholarship, and hoped the Emperor would put an end to Pfefferkorn’s plan. However, when his protests were ignored, Reuchlin published his polemical reply titled Augenspiegel (Eye Glasses). This book contained the text of his own Expert Opinion submitted previously and several other supporting documents. Thus the conflict moved into the public arena and brought Reuchlin into open conflict with the Inquisition, headed by Hoogstraten, and now risked his being branded as a heretic.³²

In his Expert Opinion, Reuchlin openly states: “The Jew is one of Our Lord God’s creatures just as much as I am,”³³ a statement as tolerant as can be concerning Jews in sixteenth-century Europe. No less so is Reuchlin’s paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 5:12: “that they are not members of the Christian Church and thus their beliefs are of no consequence to us.”³⁴ According to Reuchlin, the Jews are the Holy Roman Empire’s subjects, just as others are:

First: The Jews, as subjects of the Holy Roman Empire should be treated according to Imperial Laws. … Second: Our property should not be taken from us without our consent. … Third: Imperial and regal codes and also other princely decrees forbid that any person should have his property taken by force. … Fourth: Every person should be allowed to retain his old inherited traditions, customs and possessions, even if he were a robber. … Fifth: Therefore, the Jews should be permitted to retain their synagogues, called ‘schools’, in peace and tranquility and should not be interfered with. Sixth: Such Jewish books have never been condemned or censured by either Canon or Civil Law. … And therefore, they [our laws] state one should not wrench such books from the Jews, suppress or burn them.³⁵

As we can see, Reuchlin’s concern is not only with the books, which he strives to keep intact because of his scholarly preoccupations, but he expands the scope of his inquiry to include the right of the Jews to maintain their traditions, customs, and synagogues. Thus the Jews are fellow citizens (concives) of the Empire and are to be treated according to imperial law. Their property should not be confiscated, and since they are not members of the Church, their faith is their own business. Therefore, the Jews must be tolerated as law-abiding citizens of the Empire, even if they live in continuous error before they recognize the error of their religion and convert to Christianity.

As David Price affirmed, Reuchlin, very much swimming against the current, redefined the boundaries of Christian representation of Jews and Judaism.³⁶ Accordingly, “he [Reuchlin] created a new Christian discourse that represented Jews and Judaism favorably, thereby not only invoking a concept of justice for Jews … but also encouraging Christians to develop respect for the beleaguered minority and its religious heritage.”³⁷ Reuchlin also differed from Erasmus on certain questions and elements of thought. This becomes clear by positioning Reuchlin vis-à-vis Erasmus and their different stances on essential public issues. Erasmus, who at the beginning of the controversy supported Reuchlin, later changed his mind and refrained from openly standing on his side or coming to his aid. “Ego nec Reuchlinista sum,” he proclaimed, “I am no supporter of Reuchlin and not a part of any faction of people. … I am a Christian and as such approve Christians.”³⁸ While stressing his independent mind concerning the ongoing conflict, Erasmus remained passive and did not fulfill the role of the involved public intellectual. The public arena was thus left open to Reuchlin’s intellectual display.

Nevertheless, on Reuchlin’s side there were some brave albeit audacious intellectuals who stood out, such as Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523) and his co-authors of Letters of Obscure Men (Epistolae obscurorum virorum, 1515), which consisted of dozens of fabricated letters that ruthlessly attacked Pfefferkorn and the theologians who served at German universities, Dominicans, as a rule. These theologians are portrayed in the Letters as adulterers, greedy, as slaves to their lusts, and as barbarously rude as far as the cultural conventions and proper manners are concerned.³⁹ The bulk of the letters are addressed to Ortwin Gratius (d. 1542), who taught at the Faculty of Arts in Cologne, and incurred the wrath of the Reuchlinists for his support of the theologians and for translating Pfefferkorn’s writings into Latin. But eventually Gratius became the scapegoat in the affair and was slandered as a womanizer, a practitioner of magical arts, the illegitimate son of a priest, and the nephew of a hangman. Gratius allowed these insinuations in the Letters to go unchallenged until 1518, when he wrote an ineffectual response, the Lamentations of Obscure Men, containing fictitious letters by Reuchlinists. This defense did nothing to counter the negative image projected by the best-selling Letters of Obscure Men, which had become entrenched in public opinion through its frequent reprints. The blackening of Pfefferkorn in these letters is replete with what can be considered as harsh antisemitic degradations. As Posset, Reuchlin’s biographer, sharply noted:

The Reuchlinists, particularly the authors of the notorious, fictitious Letters of Obscure Men … are responsible for spreading the negative image of Pfefferkorn after 1515. Some of Pfefferkorn’s detractors portrayed him as a Christian in name only, and in doing so exposed themselves as racists: just as an animal cannot change its nature, a Jew cannot change his, and even if you boil a rock in water for three days, the rock will never be cooked.⁴⁰

Such antisemitic assertions, although penned by humanists and supporters of Reuchlin, were far from Reuchlin’s own writings and thought. He rejected the conventional perception of converts from Judaism according to which “once a Jew, always a Jew,” and was far from any kind of antisemitism.⁴¹

Erasmus, in contrast, wanted a Europe devoid of Jews. Historically, expulsions of Jews were common practice in medieval and early modern Europe. Erasmus praised France where, he stated: “The law flourishes as nowhere else, nowhere has religion so retained its purity without being corrupted by commerce carried on by the Jews, as in Italy, or infected by the proximity of the Turks or Marranos, as in Hungary and Spain.”⁴² The same idea recurs in his letter of March 1517: “Only France is not infected with heretics or Bohemian schismatics nor Jews or half Jews Marranos, and there are no Turks to be found in its vicinity.”⁴³ In a similar spirit, in a March 1518 letter to the theologian Wolfgang Faber Capito (1478–1541), Erasmus harshly condemned Jews in general and Marranos in particular, while expressing, among other things, his distaste for the Kabbalah:

I see them as a nation full of the most tedious fabrications, who spread a kind of fog over everything, Talmud, Kabbalah, Tetragrammaton, Gates of Light, words, words, words. I would rather have Christ mixed up with Scotus than with that rubbish of theirs. Italy is full of Jews, in Spain there are hardly any Christians. I fear this may give that pestilence that was long ago suppressed a chance to rear its ugly head.⁴⁴

Erasmus’s expressions imply an ideal of a Europe devoid of Jews and his endorsement of the deportation of French Jews during the Middle Ages—the most infamous occurring in 1306—and then in the late fifteenth and in the early sixteenth century. Against this background of such anti-Judaism expressed by his esteemed colleague, Reuchlin’s uniqueness shines out even brighter. Unlike Erasmus, he feared that if the Jews were expelled, they would no longer be available as a literary resource. In the preface to his Basic Principles of the Hebrew Language, he complains about the persecution of the Spanish and German Jews who were forced to seek residence elsewhere and turned to the Arab lands, for this meant that they would no longer serve as experts to be consulted and, without their presence, their Hebrew books would soon disappear.⁴⁵

In his Expert Opinion, Reuchlin classified the Jewish books into seven types: (1) The Hebrew Bible; (2) The Talmud; (3) Kabala, the most secret speech and words of God; (4) Glosses and commentaries written by scholars and scribes on every book of the Bible (Heb. “perusch”); (5) Sermons, disputations, prayerbooks (Heb.“Midrasch” or “Draschoth”); (6) Books of philosophers and scholars of all disciplines, generally called Sepharim, that is, “books,” and designated according to the scholar or discipline; and (7) Poetry, fables, tales, satires, and collections of didactic examples, each with its own title as devised by the author (the Jews themselves, he says, consider most of these as fictions and inventions).⁴⁶

Among the books of the seventh group, he maintained that there were only two which directly hurled insults and contempt at Christianity: Nizzachon (“Victory,” a collection of anti-Christian arguments written in the early fifteenth century by Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman of Millhausen); and Tolduth Ieschu hanozri (“A History of Jesus of Nazareth,” a medieval polemical tract describing Jesus as the illegitimate son of Miriam and Joseph Pandera). It was only these two books that may be confiscated and burned, and this only by imperial order. Reuchlin’s final recommendation was that the Imperial Majesty should decree, for the will of God and the Christian faith, that two maintained positions of master should be established at every university in the German speaking lands for a period of ten years. These masters should be competent and able to teach and instruct the students and pupils in the Hebrew language, in accordance with the Clementine decrees and ordinances. In order to equip those faculties, Jews who are resident in German lands should be of assistance, out of good neighborly relations, and willingly loan their books, in return for a substantial deposit, and care will be taken to protect them from damage, until such time the books have been copied or printed. For there is no doubt, that in a few years German students will then be so proficient in the Hebrew language, that they will be able to to make the Jews convert to Christianity with gentle persuasion, through logical and amiable arguments.⁴⁷

Indeed, in spite of the persecutions by haters of Hebrew and Judaism, the study of Hebrew flourished and intensified in German universities, mainly thanks to Reuchlin’s exertions and persistence. Thus, in the years 1519–1521, and almost until his death, Reuchlin continuted to teach Greek and Hebrew at the University of Ingolstadt.⁴⁸

No less outstanding was Reuchlin’s success in raising public opinion in Germany and beyond to support his case and oppose his persecutors. In his public campaign, his Letters of Famous Men (Clarorum Virorum Epistolae) of 1514 and 1519 (the second volume) played an important role. The two volumes consisted of a selection of letters addressed to Reuchlin by famous men of letters. As noted earlier, “This could well be the first letter writing campaign in the history of ideas in the West. A writer … uses public opinion and demonstrates the esteem by which he is held by ‘Intellectuals.’”⁴⁹ The implications of the Reuchlinist public campaign were far-reaching. As Price concluded, it paved the way for a favorable reception of the early Reformation movement.⁵⁰ Evidently, it testifies to Reuchlin’s success as a publicly involved intellectual. According to Heinrich Graetz in his History of the Jews, before the Reformation the German nation was considered heavy and stupid, a land of lawless knights, of daily conflicts over trifles, of political turmoil, a land of merciless oppression. Then the Reformation broke out and shook European affairs to their core, creating new conditions, putting an end to the Middle Ages and heralding the dawn of a new era. The Reformation was least expected to take place in Germany. Graetz attributes much of this to the Reuchlin–Pfefferkorn affair: “The Talmud had a great share in the awakening of these slumbering forces. We can boldly assert that the war for and against the Talmud [in which Reuchlin championed the Jewish Scripture] aroused German consciousness and created a public opinion, without which the Reformation, as well as other efforts, would have died at the hour of their birth, or perhaps would never have been born at all.”⁵¹

IV. An Instrumental Philosemitism?

Was Reuchlin’s attitude towards the Jews merely instrumental? Did he consider the Jews and their books no more than a tool for conducting his studies and ultimately for serving the Christian faith? The answer to this question leads us to Jacob ben Emmanuel, known as Bonetus or Bonet de Lattes, who was a Provencal Jew appointed by Pope Alexander VI to the office of papal physician, which he held till 1515. He enjoyed the confidence of the Pope to such a degree that Reuchlin sought to influence the Pope through his help and wrote to him a long letter, in Hebrew, of uncertain date, but possibly sometime before 1513. In this sense the letter was instrumental as well as sincere:

To my lord who sits in the seat of the wise, the great light, the pillar of the Jewish diaspora, a bright glare in the skies, an expert physician, my lord, and teacher. Mazal Tov, Bonetto, to use your name’s foreign version, in the state of Rome, the respectable physician of the Pope. Just as those who come through the gate of bowing, who enter in peace and in tranquility depart, so do I, the young one who signs at the margin of this sheet, who bows down to the ground underneath which there is nothing.⁵²

By the standards of the time, and perhaps not just of that time, such a demonstration of respect and appreciation by a Christian to a Jew was unheard of. The same goes for the attitude of the Jews towards him. Their response to Reuchlin’s death is telling. Although Reuchlin’s attitude to Judaism and the Jews may have been somewhat instrumental, there must have been more to it than that. The Jews regarded him as a redeemer and savior, and he was honored and commemorated by the Jewish community leaders. Josel of Rosheim (c. 1480–1554/55), for example, immortalized Reuchlin in his chronicle, Sefer ha-miknah, describing him as “one of the sages of the nations” and “a miracle within a miracle.”⁵³ Thanks to Reuchlin’s efforts, the books were saved “and God showed us a miracle within a miracle sent by a good and benevolent man, Dr. Reuchlin, from among the sages of the nations.” ⁵⁴ Chaim ben Bezalel (c. 1508–1588), a rabbi in Friedberg near Frankfurt, spoke of Reuchlin’s spirit as that of a wise Christian raised by God.⁵⁵

In his letter to Bonet de Lattes mentioned above, Reuchlin elaborates on Pfefferkorn’s plot to destroy the Jewish books and the Emperor’s request for a report on the matter. Reuchlin explains his objection to destroying the books and emphasizes that burning books on Kabbalah would be a significant loss. The heart of the matter is Reuchlin’s fear that Pfefferkorn and his associates would initiate judicial proceedings against him, not just in Germany:

[A]nd therefore, sir, since I am afraid they will demand to put me to trial elsewhere than my place and country. … I am beseeching you since I heard that his honorable highness is always found in the Pope’s chambers. … I am asking you, honorable highness, that you will do your utmost with the Pope, our lord, that they will not have the ability or permission to make me stand trial other than before the judges of my state according to our laws and regulations. … Therefore, I am willing to answer everything and straighten up issues in an orderly manner, but coming to Cologne to be tried by them or in their vicinity is, in my view, illegal. It is also unlawful that I will have to leave my country and stand trial outside my country. And thus, I will know that I found favor in the eyes of his honorable highness [the Pope] that I haven’t exerted and toiled with this thing in vain, that I was the reason the Talmud books were not burned in Germany. I surely know and believe that everything they [my opponents] said about these books and defamed them, he [Pfefferkorn] and they [his associates] did in order to draw public attention to themselves, etc. Therefore, I ask you and implore that my request should not be rejected since you have the ability to do this and even more. And in whichever way I can serve his honorable highness [the Pope] in my country or serve others at his honorable highness’s wish, I will wholeheartedly do so and in goodwill and agreeable soul. His honorable highness has only to order and I will obey. God, the unique one, knows this. He who always keeps his honorable highness and those who stay in your shadow in righteousness and health just as you and your loved one wishes, the one whose signature is displayed at the margin of this sheet.⁵⁶

This letter reveals Reuchlin’s full awareness of his situation: the attacks against him and the legal procedures he was facing. Although the letter was instrumental in essence, it reveals Reuchlin’s willingness to take immense risks not only to his reputation, his books, and his property, but also to his health and life. As mentioned earlier, Reuchlin treated the Jews as fellow citizens: “I know my adversaries are dismayed because I have called them [Jews] our fellow citizens. Now I would want them to go berserk, even more, [that] their guts may burst open because I say that the Jews are our brothers.”⁵⁷ Such an expression, testifies both to Reuchlin’s courage—personal as well as public—and to his sincere philosemitism regarding not just his professional interests (Jewish books, Jewish teachers and discussants) but his profoundly positive attitude towards them.

For Reuchlin the Jewish books were a means for a better understanding of Christianity. The Jews were the book carriers (capsarii), copyists (librarii), and librarians (bibliothecarii), who preserved the books from which Christians could extract the truth of their own faith. Following the Church Fathers, and Thomas Aquinas in particular, Reuchlin thus viewed the Jews and their books as indispensable to the Christian faith.⁵⁸ As he stated: “For the more the Talmud rebuffs us, so much the greater and stronger is the proof for us that our Christian faith is to be found in it.”⁵⁹ Undoubtedly, Reuchlin prioritized Christianity and was not blind to the missionary significance of Hebraism. However, he maintained that the conversion of the Jews to Christianity should be achieved by employing rational arguments, gently and kindly.⁶⁰

None of this negates his philosemitism. David Katz allows—and rightly so—that a Christian may be committed to the mission of converting the Jews and still be considered a philosemite: “The desire to convert Jews to Christianity and thereby save their souls has been one of the most powerful motivating forces behind philo-Semitism, and does not automatically exclude a positive attitude towards them.”⁶¹ Arguably, Reuchlin’s case supports this view.

Ludwig Geiger, Reuchlin’s nineteenth-century biographer, argued that Reuchlin was not motivated by empathy for the Jews or concern for their rights but strived only to maintain the freedom of academic research.⁶² Debra Kaplan has made clear that the interest Reuchlin showed in Kabbalah, Hebrew, and Judaism stemmed from what he saw as their benefit in validating the Christian truth.⁶³ However, there is no contradiction between Reuchlin’s instrumental approach and his philosemitic, clearly favorable attitude towards the Jews, their cultural heritage, and their civil status in the Empire. So, as Kaplan argues, even if “Christian Hebraism was not philosemitism, it was the study of Judaica for Christian purposes.”⁶⁴ Reuchlin redefined the boundaries of the Christian representation of Jews and Judaism, as David Price observed.⁶⁵ In his detailed evaluation, Price opines:

Reuchlin did not formulate a theology or philosophy of toleration, but he did defend Jewish life in two effective ways: he meticulously asserted the legal rights of Jews and the legality of Jewish writings, and, more distinctively, he created a new Christian discourse that represented Jews and Judaism favorably, thereby not only invoking a concept of justice for Jews … but also encouraging Christians to develop respect for the beleaguered minority and its religious heritage.⁶⁶

All in all, it appears that philosemitism existed in sixteenth-century Europe, but only as a rare phenomenon. Another defender of the Jews was Andreas Osiander (1498?–1552), an influential religious reformer in Nuremberg and a dedicated Hebraist who was one of Reuchlin’s students. In 1529 Osiander responded to the notorious blood libel in Pezinok, the former Hungarian Bazin and today Slovakian town, where thirty Jews were publicly burned to death after being condemned for murdering for ritual purposes, a nine-year-old Christian child. Drawing on his knowledge of Jewish practices, Osiander published an anonymous refutation of the ritual murder charge, titled Whether It be True and Credible That the Jews Secretly Strangulate Christian Children and Make Use of Their Blood. He argued, among other things, that the Jewish tradition, contrary to Christian slander, made no ritualistic use of human blood whatsoever. This led to a harsh literary dispute with Johannes Eck (1486–1543), another of Reuchlin’s students. Although Osiander was himself a Lutheran theologian, in a private letter to the Jewish Hebrew scholar Elijah Levita he denounced Martin Luther’s toxic anti-Jewish 1543 tract Vom Schem Hamphoras. Osiander left Nuremberg in 1548 to become a professor of Hebrew at the newly founded University of Koenigsberg, and died there a few years later.⁶⁷ These demonstrations of philosemitism were like rays of light piercing through the prevailing anti-Jewish Zeitgeist.

The public intellectual’s mission is to impress public opinion on matters of morals and values. Reuchlin courageously did just so. Consequently, after submitting his Expert Opinion and publishing his Eye Glasses, legal proceedings, which rolled on for about a decade, were initiated against him, both in Germany and in the Papal court in Rome. He was accused of demonstrating in his writings a preferential treatment of Judaism and the treacherous Jews (as defined by the Dominican Hoogstraten). Although not declared a heretic, he was fined for his allegedly slanderous Eye Glasses, which was condemned and banned.

Accordingly, we may say that Reuchlin not only stood up against the destruction of Jewish religious and cultural life, but that he also affected the upsurge of a domestic wave of religious feeling with far-reaching results and implications. Although Graetz’s estimation of Reuchlin’s assistance “in making the transition from Middle Ages to modern times”⁶⁸ may sound exaggerated, it reflects the sincere appreciation post-Reuchlinian intellectuals had for him. With due caution, it could be said that Reuchlin life’s work—without the conscious awareness of later Enlightenment thinkers and perhaps even without his own awareness—was an attempt to realize the freedom of religion and civil equality for the Jewish minority in the Holy Roman Empire.

In terms of their respective impacts on the Reformation, both Reuchlin and Erasmus played significant roles, whether directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Indeed, their contemporaries perceived Erasmus and Reuchlin as the “two eyes of Germany,” although “Reuchlin was not an Erasmian. Erasmus was not a Reuchlinist.”⁶⁹ Their attitude toward the Jews, the Hebrew language, and Hebrew books demonstrates their differences. Whereas Erasmus, who cherished the freedom of the intellectual to think, write and publish, was not involved in the struggle for religious freedom, Reuchlin demonstrated extraordinary persistence and dedication in the struggle for the religious freedom of the Jews, and essentially for their very national existence. These virtues could not have materialized without a significant amount of public and personal courage.⁷⁰ In dedicating himself to the struggle for the religious freedom and civil equality for the Jews, he stood out as a pioneering public intellectual. To Goethe’s praise of Reuchlin—“Who can be compared to him? A miracle in his time!”⁷¹—one may add that Reuchlin was an exemplary public intellectual not only by the standards of his time. It is important to emphasize that the heart of Judaism is the text. Jews are those who engage, first and foremost, in the study and interpretation of texts. As George Steiner explained, the Jews have read, and read again, learned, memorized, and interpreted endlessly, more than any other people. The text is their home; and every interpretation is a return home.⁷² More recently, Amos Oz and Fanya Oz, in their book Jews and Words, elaborate on Jewish textual survival as national survival.⁷³ To conclude, in his life-long struggle to save the Jewish books, Johannes Reuchlin contributed immensely to that survival.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nathan Ron

Nathan Ron, PhD, is a research fellow at the School of History at the University of Haifa, Israel. He specializes in intellectual history, and his research and publications center on the works of Desiderius Erasmus, Johannes Reuchlin, and Nicholas of Cusa. His translations from Latin into Hebrew include, inter alia, Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly and Reuchlin’s Expert Opinion Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books.

Notes

^1. On the first usages of the word intellectual (as a noun) in nineteenth to twentieth-century Britain, see Collini, Absent Minds, 17–40, 255–60. Term in France in the 1890s France, see Ory and Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France, 10–12; Posner, Public Intellectuals, 20. For a survey of definitions and interpretations of general and public forms of the intellectual, see Misztal, Intellectuals and the Public Good, 13–28. See also Said, Presentations of the Intellectual, 4–7.

^2. Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters, 2. See also Ahearne and Bennet, Intellectuals and Cultural Policy, 6; Furedi, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? 32; Etzioni, “Are Public Intellectuals an Endangered Species,” 3. See also Collini, Absent Minds, 256.

^3. Benda, Treason of the Intellectuals, 23, 27, 44.

^4. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 36–39.

^5. Posner in Public Intellectuals, 2, points to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) as the first of the modern intellectuals, and in many ways the most influential of them all. Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri in “The Intellectual,” 181–210, identifies intellectuals in the Middle Ages as a category of men who “worked with words and with the mind” (181) and who did not live on revenues from land nor were constrained to work with their hands, and were conscious of being different in this from other categories of people, but she does not explicitly call them “public intellectuals.”

^6. Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 4–5, 95–98, 122–54; O’Callaghan, Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 82–85.

^7. Adams and Heß, “Jewish Life and Books,” 17.

^8. E.g., Fridericus Nausea (1480–1552), a Church prelate and follower of Erasmus, wrote in his Monodia: “To whom do we owe it that in our age the ploughman at his plough thinks on some part of the Gospel? Is it not to Erasmus? And that the weaver accompanies his labours at the loom with something from the Gospel? Is it not to Erasmus?” quoted from Mansfield, Phoenix of His Age:, 10. On Erasmus’ immense influence on modernity, see Mansfield, Erasmus in the Nineteenth Century, 193–219.

^9. Trevor-Roper, Desiderius Erasmus, 35–60; Trevor-Roper, Religious Origins of the Enlightenment, 193–236.

^10. On the Pfefferkorn–Reuchlin affair, see Oberman, Roots of Anti-Semitism, 25–37; Oberman, Impact of the Reformation, 103, 157–60; Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate, 87–89; Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin; Carlebach, Divided Souls, 52–53; Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books; Diemling, “Historical Introduction,” 7–32; Shamir, Christian Conceptions of Jewish Books, 49–69, 91–96.

^11. Sutcliffe and Karp, “Introduction,” 1.

^12. Ibid., 3.

^13. Posset, “Katholischer Philosemit,” 56.

^14. Katz, “The Phenomenon of Philosemitism,” 327–28.

^15. Dall’Asta and Dörner, Johannes Reuchlin Briefwechsel, vol. 1, letter no. 105, 338.

^16. Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism,” 82, translated the opening lines into English. I completed the rest.

^17. The supplementary volume of Reuchlin, Letters of Illustrious Men (Illustrium virorum epistolae, 1519).

^18. Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism,” 82 and n. 13.

^19. Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 112, 201, 203; Oberman, Impact of the Reformation, 92.

^20. Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 201–3; Posset, Respect for the Jews, 26 n. 14; Oberman, Impact of the Reformation, 92.

^21. Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 189 nn. 132, 133; Posset, Respect for the Jews, 65.

^22. Cited from Posset, Respect for the Jews, 91; on the origin of this conception and its expressions by Luther and others, see also, 91–92, 201–10; Posset, “Vom Sumpf und den Bächen zurück zu den Quellen,” 159–65.

^23. Posset, “Katholischer Philosemit,” 56.

^24. Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 201–2, 209–10, 214.

^25. Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 4, letter no. 391, 354. I am indebted to Dr. Franz Posset for drawing my attention to this letter (my translation of the letter into English was revised in cooperation with Dr. Posset).

^26. In a letter to his brother cited in Posset, Respect for the Jews, 46.

^27. Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 2, letter no. 228 (in Hebrew), p. 430: 44–45.

^28. See note 22.

^29. Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin, Document 1, 56, 62. On some of Pfefferkorn’s writings on the Jews as a particular genre of “polemical ethnographies,” see Deutsch, Judaism in Christian Eyes, 35–36, 44, 49.

^30. Posset, “Katholischer Philosemit,” 61–62; Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism,” 80–81.

^31. The report (Ratschlag ob man den iuden alle ire buecher nemmen/ abthuen unnd verbrennen sol) is part of Reuchlin’s polemical book Augenspiegel (Eye Glasses) found in Reuchlin, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4/1, 27–64. There are also bilingual editions with Reuchlin’s German facing modern German: Reuchlin, Gutachten über das Juedische Schrifttum; Reuchlin, Ratschlag ob man den iuden alle ire buecher nemmen/ abthuen vnnd verbrennen sol. Fruehneuhochdeutsch / Neuhochdeutsch. For an English translation, see O’Callaghan, Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 120–98. For a much less annotated English translation, see Reuchlin, Recommendation Whether to Confiscate.

^32. See Diemling, “Historical Introduction,” 25.

^33. O’Callaghan, Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 190.

^34. Ibid., 168; Posset, Respect for the Jews, 42.

^35. O’Callaghan, Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 28, 122.

^36. Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism,” 82.

^37. Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign, 228. See also Dall’Asta, “Review of Price,” 217.

^38. Ron, Erasmus and the “Other, 152 n. 19.

^39. The fictional letters (Hutten, Epistolae obscurorum virorum) appeared as a supplement to von Hutten’s works edited and published by Böcking: Hutten, Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia, vol. 5; Hutten, On the Eve of Reformation: Letters of Obscure Men, translated by Stokes; Hutten, Letters of Obscure Men, translated by Rummel.

^40. Posset, “In Search of the Historical Pfefferkorn,” 46. For the reference, which is to epistle 2 of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum, see Stokes, On the Eve of the Revolution, 47; Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 584. Pfefferkorn was no outsider to Christianity and considered himself an authentic and legitimate Christian, and of deep spirituality. See Price, Johannes Pfefferkorn and Imperial Politics, 27–41 (esp. 39).

^41. On this issue, see Ron, “Renaissance Racism.”

^42. Erasmus, Querela Pacis, 306; Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 131–32, 141–45.

^43. Erasmus, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 279; Ep. 549: 11–13.

^44. Ibid., vol. 5, 347–48; Ep. 798: 19–25. See also Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign, 179; Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 863. The Kabbalistic work Sha’arei Orah was composed by Joseph Ibn Gikatilla (in the thirteenth century in Spain). The Latin edition was titled Portae lucis (Augsburg: Johannes Miller, 1516). The Hebrew original of this work was published in Mantua in 1561.

^45. Posset, Respect for the Jews, 46 and n. 27.

^46. O’Callaghan, Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 122–25.

^47. Ibid., 197.

^48. See note 24.

^49. Ménager, “Erasmus, the Intellectuals, and the Reuchlin Affair,” 48. See also Geiger, Johann Reuchlin, 322–23.

^50. Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign, 174.

^51. Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 4, 423.

^52. Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 2, letter no. 228, 431: 64–79 (Hebrew text plus Latin and German versions and extensive explanatory footnotes). On Bonet de Lattes and this letter, see Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 329–30, 420–21. On the dating of the letter, see Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 2, letter no. 228 n. 2 (p. 439).

^53. For Josel of Rosheim and Sefer ha-miknah, see Fraenke-Goldschmidt and Shear, Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim; Carlebach, “Between History and Myth,” 40–53.

^54. The citations are from Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 9–10, 866.

^55. Ibid., 10, 866–67.

^56. Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 2, letter no. 228, 431: 64–79 (Hebrew text plus Latin and German versions and extensive explanatory footnotes). On Bonet de Lattes and this letter, see Posset, Johann Reuchlin, 329–30, 420–41.

^57. Reuchlin, Sämtliche Werke, 19–22; Posset, Respect for the Jews, 42. See also Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin, 102.

^58. Reuchlin, Augenspiegel, 52; O’Callaghan, Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 177–78.

^59. Reuchlin, Augenspiegel, 39: “dann ye mer der Thalmud wider uns gemacht ist/ so vil besser unnd hefftiger synd die gezeugknus die für uns unnd unssern cristenlichen glauben darin erfunden warden;” O’Callaghan, Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 149.

^60. Reuchlin, Augenspiegel, 64; O’Callaghan, Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 198.

^61. Ibid., 328.

^62. Geiger, Johann Reuchlin, 426: “dass die wissenschaftliche freie Forschung in allen geistigen Gebieten Erlaubt.”

^63. Kaplan, “Review of David Price’s Johannes Reuchlin,” 104.

^64. Ibid.

^65. Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism,” 82.

^66. Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign, 228. See also Dall’Asta, Review of Price, 217.

^67. On Osiander, the blood libel and his attitude towards Jews, see Kammerling, “Andreas Osiander, the Jews and Judaism,” 219–47; Burnett, “Philosemitism and Christian Hebraism,” 143; Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign, 228–29. On Luther’s tract, see Roper, Living I Was Your Plague, 158–64; Kaufmann, Luther’s Jews, 119–21.

^68. Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 4, 432.

^69. Ibid., 27.

^70. On courage as a necessary quality of the modern public intellectual, see Misztal, Intellectuals and the Public Good, 65–87.

^71. Goethe, Zahme Xenien, in Goethes Werke Bd. 3, 241: “Reuchlin! Wer will sich ihm vergleichen, zu seiner Zeit ein Wunderzeichen.”

^72. Steiner, “Our Homeland, the Text,” 4–25.

^73. Oz and Oz-Salzberger, Jews and Words.