26 Facts About Johann Reuchlin

Johann Reuchlin was born at Pforzheim in the Black Forest in 1455, where his father was an official of the Dominican monastery.

Johann Reuchlin remained fond of his home town; he constantly calls himself Phorcensis, and in the De Verbo he ascribes to Pforzheim his inclination towards literature.

At Basel Johann Reuchlin took his master's degree, and began to lecture with success, teaching a more classical Latin than was then common in German schools, and explaining Aristotle in Greek.

Johann Reuchlin was a born teacher, and this work was not to be done mainly from the professor's chair.

Johann Reuchlin left no children, but in later years, his sister's grandson Philipp Melanchthon was like a son to him until the Reformation estranged them.

Again in 1492 he was employed on an embassy to the emperor Frederick at Linz, and here he began to read Hebrew with the emperor's Jewish physician Jakob ben Jehiel Loans, whose instruction laid the basis of that thorough knowledge which Johann Reuchlin afterward improved on his third visit to Rome in 1498 by the instruction of Obadja Sforno of Cesena.

In 1496, Duke Eberhard I of Wurttemberg died, and enemies of Johann Reuchlin had the ear of his successor, Duke Heinrich of Wurttemberg.

Johann Reuchlin was glad, therefore, hastily to follow the invitation of Johann von Dalberg, the scholarly bishop of Worms, and flee to Heidelberg, which was then the seat of the Rhenish Society In this court of letters Reuchlin's appointed function was to make translations from the Greek authors, in which his reading was already extremely wide.

Johann Reuchlin never published a Greek grammar, but he had one in manuscript for use with his pupils, and published several little elementary Greek books.

At Heidelberg, Johann Reuchlin had many private pupils, among whom Franz von Sickingen is the best-known name.

Johann Reuchlin came back laden with Hebrew books and found when he reached Heidelberg that a change of government had opened the way for his return to Stuttgart, where his wife had remained all along.

Johann Reuchlin's friends had now again the upper hand and knew Reuchlin's value.

For many years Johann Reuchlin had been increasingly absorbed in Hebrew studies, which had for him more than a mere philological interest.

Armed with this mandate, he visited Stuttgart and asked Johann Reuchlin's help as a jurist and expert in putting it into execution.

Johann Reuchlin evaded the demand, mainly because the mandate lacked certain formalities, but he could no longer remain neutral.

In 1510, Johann Reuchlin was appointed by Emperor Maximilian to a commission that was convened to review the matter.

Johann Reuchlin proposed that the emperor should decree that for ten years there should be two Hebrew chairs at every German university, for which the Jews should furnish books.

Pfefferkorn circulated at the Frankfurt Fair of 1511 a gross libel declaring that Johann Reuchlin had been bribed.

Johann Reuchlin defended himself in a pamphlet titled Augenspiegel, which the theologians at the University of Cologne attempted to suppress.

In 1513, Johann Reuchlin was summoned before a court of the inquisition.

Johann Reuchlin was willing to receive corrections in theology, which was not his subject, but he could not unsay what he had said; and as his enemies tried to press him into a corner, he met them with open defiance in a Defensio contra Calumniatores.

The Johann Reuchlin affair caused a wide rift in the church and eventually the case came before the papal court in Rome.

The contest ended, however; public interest had grown cold, absorbed entirely by the Lutheran question, and Johann Reuchlin had no reason to fear new attacks.

Johann Reuchlin did not long enjoy his victory over his accusers in peace.

Johann Reuchlin taught Greek and Hebrew there for a year.

Johann Reuchlin died in Stuttgart and is buried at St Leonhard church.