The Case Against Johann Reuchlin : Social and Religious Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany

A re-examination of the case of Johann Reuchlin, one of the best-known controversies of the 16th century. CONTENTS 5 PREFACE Cultural Bias and Historiography 7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 13 CHRONOLOGY The Reuchlin Affair 15 PART A – THE REUCHLIN AFFAIR IN CONTEXT 19 CHAPTER 1. Pfefferkorn and the Battle against Judaism 19 CHAPTER 2. Reuchlin and the Scholastic Theologians 30 CHAPTER 3. Reuchlin and the Luther Affair 42 CHAPTER 4. Sixteenth-Century Interpretations of the Reuchlin Affair: Beliefs or Constructs? 45 CHAPTER 5. The Reuchlin Affair in Modern Historiography 52 Notes 57 PART B – TEXTS 69 DOCUMENT 1. The Enemy of the Jews 69 DOCUMENT 2. The Confession of the Jews 85 DOCUMENT 3. Report about the Books of the Jews 102 DOCUMENT 4. Defence against the Cologne Slanderers 114 DOCUMENT 5. Letters of Obscure Men 125 DOCUMENT 6. Reports on the Confiscation of Jewish Books in Frankfurt, 1509 144 DOCUMENT 7. Two Reports by the Faculty of Theology at Cologne 148 DOCUMENT 8. Willibald Pirckheimer's Defence of Reuchlin, 1517 152 DOCUMENT 9. Two Letters from Erasmus Concerning the Reuchlin Affair 157 DOCUMENT 10. The Dedicatory Letter of Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica, 1517 162 DOCUMENT 11. Jacob Hoogstraten, Information to the Reader, 1519 168 DOCUMENT 12. Hutten's Letters to Erasmus and Reuchlin, 1520/1 174 DOCUMENT 13. Two Comments by Luther on the Historical Context of the Reuchlin Affair 178 BIBLIOGRAPHY 181 INDEX 187

The case of Johann Reuchlin, one of the best-known controversies of the 16th century, has been interpreted in many ways: as a case of anti-Semitism, a controversy between humanists and scholastics, or a case foreshadowing the Reformation debate. The last interpretation was facilitated by Luther himself, who repeatedly linked his case with that of the biblical humanists Lefevre, Erasmus, and Reuchlin.

In this lively critical analysis, Erika Rummel describes how the second interpretation, which was promoted in the 19th century, was replaced after WWII by a new sensitivity toward the anti-Semitic elements of the affair. More recently, however, the favoured approach is a more nuanced interpretation, acknowledging that the controversy is informed by a combination of social and intellectual currents and reflects both anti-Semitism and academic strife. The section containing the analysis is followed by documents illustrating the case, some of them translated for the first time into English.