Johannes Reuchlin

Humanist

• Born: February 22, 1455
• Birthplace: Pforzheim, Baden, Germany
• Died: June 30, 1522
• Place of death: Liebenzell, Germany

Biography

Johann Reuchlin, best known for his literary contributions that opened the way to the Reformation, was born in the mid- 1400’s in Pforzheim, Germany, where his father was an official at a Dominican monastery. Reuchlin, who was known also by his Gaelicized name, Capnion, and by a version of his home town name, Phorencsis, grew up in the Black Forest. He was believed to have married, but little is known of the marriage and there were no children. However, for a time, Reuchlin was close to his sister’s grandson, until the Reformation divided them.

Reuchlin studied Latin at the local monastery school, and in his mid-teens went to the university with little effect on his studies. While studying at Freiburg, his singing talent was noted and earned him admittance to the household of Charles I, Margrave of Baden. With his background in Latin, he accompanied Fredrick, a son of the prince, to the University of Paris. This event shaped the course of his life, leading him to become the great humanist and Greek and Hebrew scholar who commanded merit in his field and in the politics of the times.

Reuchlin studied Greek and became a follower of the Parisian realist Jean Heynlin. He went to Basel, Switzerland, to study with Heynlin in the mid-1470’s. There, he earned his master’s degree, lecturing, establishing the in-depth teaching of classical Latin at German schools, and providing the study of Aristotle in Greek. Through a mutual acquaintance, he became friends with a bookseller, Johann Amorbach, who published his Latin lexicon, Vocabularius Breviloquus.

Reuchlin left Basel to study Greek under George Hieronymus, and then supported himself mainly by copying manuscripts. Late in the decade, he went to Orleans, France, to study law, and then to Poiters. He went to Tubingen in the early fourteen eighties to teach, but instead he became interpreter to Count Eberhard of Wuttemberg on a trip to Italy. In the few months he traveled through Italy to Florence and Rome, he became friends with Italian scholars. Upon his return, the count made him permanent to his retinue.

He returned to Italy, and there established himself with Pico Della Mirandola, whose studies of Cabbalisitic doctrines he carried on some years later. He also became friends with the pope’s secretary, Jakob Questenberg, who came to his aid when he was charged during the Reform. In the early 1490’s, Reuchlin spent time at the embassy of the Emperor Fredrick at Linz, studying Hebrew with the emperor’s physician, Jakob ben Jehiel Loans. Ruechlin was by that time noteworthy for his book De Verbo Mirifico.

When the count died shortly after Reuchlin’s return to the embassy, he gladly accepted an invitation from Johann von Dalberg, a bishop at Worms. In the early 1500’s, he published his celebrated De rudimentis hebraicis, a Hebrew grammar and lexicon that won much acclaim for its scientific method of study and support of study of the Old Testament in its original Hebrew.

Per the Dominicans of Cologne, Emperor Maximillian ordered the Hebrew books destroyed as seditious; Reuchlin successfully defended and preserved the important works as the basis for early Christian doctrines and law. As a result, Reuchlin himself had procedures begun against him by the inquisitors, but an appeal to Pope Leo and the galvanizing of the liberal and humanist communities of Europe led to a papal commission acquitting him of heresy. Reuchlin remained a staunch Roman Catholic at all times. He died in the early 1520’s at Bad Liebenzell.