Johannes Reuchlin

Johannes Reuchlin (born the February 22nd 1455 with Pforzheim; † the June 30th 1522 with Stuttgart, also written: Johann Reichlin ), hellenized in Kapnion (“smoked”, by allusion to its name, connected with German rauchen of the same direction), or Capnio (by Érasme), is a philosopher and German theologist. Convinced, against the common opinion of its contemporaries, that the Hebrew , language of the Bible, had a spiritual value, in particular by the means of the Kabbale, it was the first hébraïste German not-Jew (see Christian Kabbale).

The academic

Reuchlin was born in Pforzheim from a marguillier. At the 15 years age, whereas he had attended only the elementary school and the class of Latin of the Dominican cloister Saint-Etienne of Pforzheim, he was registered in 1470 with the Albert-Louis university of Freiburg-in-Brisgau, and studied there the Grammaire, the Philosophie and the Rhétorique.

Graduate Maître be arts, it undertook in 1477 its first work academic.

He studied the old Greek with the Université of Orleans, started to study the Droit there and obtained his license with Poitiers. He became in 1481 secretary and ducal adviser at the court of Eberhard V of Wurtemberg (Eberhard the Bearded one).

He accompanied the duke Eberhard V by Wurtemberg in Rome from February to April 1482. To this occasion it could submit to the pope Sixte IV his project of organization of the university of Tübingen, that Eberhard had founded in 1477. The readings and the meetings which it made at the time of this voyage between Rome and Florence, where it met inter alia Ange Politien, had on him a decisive influence.

It was annobli in 1492 by the emperor Frederic III. The assassination of Hans von Hutten by Ulrich of Wurtemberg pushed it to leave Stuttgart. It found asylum with Heidelberg at Philippe, the chancellor of the voter of Palatinat, in the bishop of Worms Johann von Dalberg and at the court of the Elector Palatine. At the time of a third voyage in Italy in 1498 where it was used as interpreter to the Philippe chancellor, it could get works in Hebrew and Greek and became acquainted with Alde Manuce. Of return to Stuttgart, it is established as prosecutor and judge of the court of Souabe. Ruined, he flees the war and the plague in 1520 with Ingolstadt, where Johannes Gussubelius recruited it like first professor of Greek and Hebrew. He returned to Tübingen in 1521, and took party against the reform of the Church of Luther. Starting from 1516 it lived as brother convers about the Augustins then was solved finally with being ordered priest.

Works

With Érasme, Johannes Reuchlin is regarded as the Humaniste par excellence. Influenced by its elder Dutch Rudolph Agricola, it was essential like the representative of the German Néo-platonisme. It made known the mystical and theological bases oracles chaldéens and Kabbale (in its treaties “ Of verbo mirifico ” of 1494 and “ Of arte cabbalistica ” of 1517), and also at Zoroastre and Pythagore.

Poet néo-Latin, it transposed poetry of the dialog to the theater and for this reason he is the promoter of the new German theater and the traditional theater. He made represent in Heidelberg in 1496/97 his plays entitled “ Satire Sergius ” and “ Scaenica Progymnasmata (Henno )”, that the poet Hans Sachs altered in spectacles of Carnaval. Reuchlin announces by its parts the topics of the Commedia dell' arte.

Its translations, its writings and its personal standpoint supported the study of the old Greek. By its defense of Hebrew as a language of culture and not only language of a minority, it revivified the study of the Old Testament. From this point of view, its Hebrew course “ Of rudimentis hebraicis ” made date.

Hostility of the Dominican ones

Johannes Pfefferkorn, a Jewish butcher of Cologne converted to Catholicism, published in 1505 under the name of “Strohmann brother, Dominican of Cologne” several lampoons anti-semites and required of the emperor Maximilien Ier a mandate for the seizure and the Autodafé of all the writings of the Jews. He asked for also the prohibition of all the Hebrew books. the archbishop of Mainz Uriel von Gemmingen charged in 1510 Reuchlin with examining which influence the Jewish literature had had on Christianity. That led Reuchlin to enter in conflict, in interposed writings, with Pfefferkorn, from which was born an opposition wild and durable between the two men, during which Reuchlin métaphoriquement defended its standpoint against the destruction of the Jewish books in one entitled book Augenspiegel 1511. The quarrel culminated with the Lettres of the obscure men (1515-1517) written starting from the lampoons of Pfefferkorn by the polemist Ulrich von Hutten but taken again on their account by the Dominican ones of Cologne. Though the clerks of the Holy roman Empire, in their majority, leant mainly for Reuchlin, this last however had to arise to Rome in front of the Enquiry like suspect of heresy.

Not only the Ve council of Lateran (1512-1517) gave an opinion in favor of the thesis of Reuchlin, not being able anything to find in the Talmud which is contrary with the Christianisme, but the pope Leon X judged even contradiction between Talmud and Christianity a heresy. The ulterior motive of sovereign pontiff was undoubtedly that, if it did not cross short to the action of the Dominican ones, it could not be pressed any more on the Jewish books to affirm the historical supremacy of Catholicism by registering it in the continuity of the former beliefs.

In 1520 the pope prohibits finally the republication of the Lettres of the obscure men , probably because Luther, with its standpoint, started to cause a current against-reformer in the Vatican.

Posterity

Sincere admiror of Reuchlin, Érasme worried about the passion (harmful according to him) of the German scholar for the Jewish books, and observed a careful silence at the time of the lawsuit of the Enquiry. Petri of remorse after the death of Reuchlin, it wrote in his honor one of his conferences , the apotheosis of Kapnion .

Since 1955, the town of Pforzheim allots every two years the Reuchlin price to reward best humanistic work. Its birthplace preserved the house of his/her parents (the Reuchlinhaus ), the maconnic cabin Reuchlin and perpetuates its memory through the college “Reuchlin-Gymnasium”. There is also in Ingolstadt, where he was professor, a Reuchlin college.

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