worthy and learned man, whom he followed to the vigorous
young university of Basel in 1474. AtBasel Reuchlin took
his master's degree (1477), and began to lecture with success,
teaching a more classical Latin than was then common in
German schools, and also explaining Aristotle in Greek. His
studies in this language had been continued at Basel under
Andronicus Contoblacas, and here too he formed the acquaintance
of the bookseller, Johann Amorbach, for whom he prepared
a Latin lexicon (Vocabularius Breviloquus, -1st ed., 147 5~76),
which did good service in its time and ran through many editions.
This first publication and Reuchlin's account of his teaching at
Basel in a letter to Cardinal Adrian (Adriano Castellesi) in
February 1518 show that he had already found the work which
in a larger sphere occupied his whole life. He was no original
genius, but a born teacher. But this work of teaching was not
to be done mainly from the professor's chair. Reuchlin soon
left Basel to seek further Greek training with George Hieronymus
at Paris, and to learn to write a fair Greek hand that he might
support himself 'by copying MSS. And now he felt that he
must choose a profession. His choice fell on law, and he was
thus led to the great school of Orleans (1478), and finally to
Poitiers, where he became licentiate in July 1481. From Poitiers
Reuchlin went in December 1481 to Tübingen with the intention
of becoming a teacher in the alniversity, but his friends
recommended him to Count Eberhard of Württemberg, who
was 'about to journey to Italy and required an interpreter.
Reuchlin was selected for this post, and in February 1482 left
Stuttgart for Florence and Rome. The journey lasted but a
few months, but it brought the German scholar into contact
with several learned Italians, especially at the Medicean Academy
in Florence; his Connexion with the count became permanent,
and after his return to Stuttgart he received important posts
at Eberhard's court. About this time he appears to have
married, but little is known of his married life. He left no
children; but in later years his sister's grandson Melanchthon
was almost as a son to him till the Reformation estranged them.
In 1490 he was again in Italy. Here he saw Pico della Mirandola,
to whose Cabbalistic doctrines he afterwards became heir, and
also made the friendship of the pope's secretary, Jakob Questenberg,
which was of service -to him in his later troubles. 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. He knew something
of this language before, but Loans's instruction laid the basis of
that thorough knowledge which he afterwards improved on his
third visit to Rome in 1498 by the instruction of Obadja Sforno
of Cesena. In 1494 his rising reputation had been greatly
enhanced by the publication of De Verbo M irijico.
In 1496 Eberhard of Württemberg died, and enemies of
Reuchlin had the ear of his successor, Duke Eberhard. He was
glad, therefore, hastily to follow the invitation of Johann von
Dalberg (1445-1503), 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. Though Reuchlin had no public
office as teacher, and even at Heidelberg was prevented from
lecturing, he was during a great part of his life the real centre
of all Greek teaching as well as of all Hebrew teaching in
Germany. To carry out this work he found it necessary to
provide a series of helps for beginners and others. He never
published a Greek grammar, though he had one in MS. for use
with his pupils, but he put out several little elementary Greek
books. Reuchlin, it may be noted, pronounced Greek as his
native teachers had taught him to do, i.e. in the modern Greek
fashion. This pronunciation, which he defends in Diczlogus de
Recta Lat. Graecique Serm. Pron. (1519), came to be known, in
contrast to that used by Erasmus, as the Reuchlinian.
At Heidelberg Reuchlin had many private pupils, among
whom Franz von Sickingen is the best known name. With the
monks he had never been liked; at Stuttgart also his great
enemy was the Augustinian Conrad Holzinger. On this man he
took a scholar's revenge in his first Latin comedy Sergius, a
satire on worthless monks and false relics.
Through Dalberg, Reuchlin came into contact with Philip, elector palatine of the Rhine, who employed him to direct the studies of his sons, and in 1498 gave him the mission to Rome which has been already noticed as fruitful for Reuchlin's progress in Hebrew. He 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. His friends had now again the upper hand, and knew Reuchlin's value. In 1500, or perhaps in 1502, he was given a very high judicial office in the Swabian League, which he held till 1 512, when he retired to a small estate near Stuttgart.
For many years Reuchlin had been increasingly absorbed in Hebrew studies, which had for him more than a mere philological] interest. Though he was always a good Catholic, and even took the habit of an Augustinian monk when he felt that his death was near, he was too thorough a humanist to be a blind follower of the church. He knew the abuses of monkish religion, and was interested in the reform of preaching as shown in his De Arte Predicandi (1503)-a book which became a sort of preacher's manual; but above all as a scholar he was eager that the Bible should be better known, and could not tie himself to the authority of the Vulgate. The key to the H ebraea veritas was the grammatical and exegetical tradition of the medieval rabbins, especially of David Kimhi, and when he had mastered this himself he was resolved to open it to others. In 1506 appeared his epoch-making De Rudimentis H ebraicis-grammar and lexicon-mainly after Kimhi, yet not a mere copy of one man's teaching. The edition was costly and sold slowly. One great difficulty was that the wars of Maximilian I. in Italy prevented Hebrew Bibles coming into Germany. But for this also Reuchlin found help by printing the Penitential Psalms with grammatical explanations (1512), and other helps followed from time to time. But his Greek studies had interested him in those fantastical and mystical systems of later times with which the Cabbala has no small affinity. Following Pico, he seemed to find in the Cabbala a profound theosophy which might be of the greatest service for the defence of Christianity and the reconciliation of science with the mysteries of faith-an unhappy delusion indeed, but one not surprising in that strange time of ferment. Reuchlin's mystico-cabbalistic ideas and objects were expounded in the De Verbo M irijico, and finally in the De Arie Cabbalistica (1517).
Unhappily many of his contemporaries thought that the first step to the conversion of the Jews was to take from them their books. This View had for its chief advocate the bigoted Johann Pfefferkorn (1469-1521), himself a baptized Hebrew. Pfefferkorn's plans were backed by the Dominicans of Cologne; and in 1509 he got from the emperor authority to confiscate all Jewish books directed against the Christian faith. Armed with this mandate, he visited Stuttgart and asked Reuchlin's help as a jurist and expert in putting it into execution. Reuchlin evaded the demand, mainly because the mandate lacked certain formalities, but he could not long remain neutral. The execution of Pfefferkorn's schemes led to difficulties and to a new appeal to Maximilian. In 1 510 Reuchlin was summoned in the name of the emperor to give his opinion on the suppression of the Jewish books. His answer is dated from Stuttgart, October 6, 1510; in it he divides the books into six classes-apart from the Bible which no one proposed to destroy-and, going through each class, he shows that the books openly insulting to Christianity are very few and viewed as worthless by most Jews themselves, while the others are either works necessary to the Jewish worship, which was licensed by papal as well as imperial law, or contain matter of value and scholarly interest which ought not to be sacrificed because they are connected with another faith than that of the Christians. He proposed that the emperor should decree that for ten years there be two Hebrew chairs at every German university for which the Jews should furnish books. The other experts proposed that all books