If Giovanni Pico della Mirandola opened the way to Christian Kabbalah, it was a German jurist who gave it a systematic form and paid the price in court. Johannes Reuchlin is remembered for two reasons: because he wrote the first comprehensive treatises on Kabbalah in Latin by a Christian, and because, in an age of fierce hostility towards Jews, he publicly opposed the confiscation and destruction of their books.
A jurist in love with languages
Reuchlin was born in Pforzheim in 1455. He studied at Freiburg, Paris, Basel and Orléans, where he trained as a jurist, but his real passion was ancient languages. He learned Greek when few in Germany knew it and compiled a Latin dictionary. He worked as a counsellor at the court of the Duke of Württemberg and as a judge.
His journeys to Italy were decisive. In Florence, in 1490, he met Pico della Mirandola and came to know the circle of the Platonic Academy. From Pico he received the idea that Jewish Kabbalah preserved a most ancient wisdom, in harmony with Platonism and capable of confirming Christian truths. In the following years he studied Hebrew with Jewish teachers, including the physician Jacob ben Jehiel Loans, and later in Rome with Obadiah Sforno.
The wonder-working name
In 1494 he published the De verbo mirifico, "On the Wonder-Working Word". It is a dialogue between an Epicurean philosopher, a Jew and a Christian, who discuss the power of divine names.
Its central thesis is ingenious: the Tetragrammaton YHVH, the name of God that Jewish tradition does not pronounce, would have been made pronounceable by inserting the letter shin in the middle, forming YHSVH, interpreted as the name of Jesus. This "Pentagrammaton" became for centuries a symbol of Christian Kabbalah and appears in many Renaissance texts and talismans.
The first grammar and the major treatise
In 1506 Reuchlin published the De rudimentis hebraicis, a grammar and lexicon of Hebrew that allowed generations of Christian scholars to read the Old Testament in the original language. It was a philological contribution of great value, independent of his Kabbalistic theories.
In 1517 came the De arte cabalistica, dedicated to Pope Leo X. Once again it is a dialogue, this time between a Muslim, a Pythagorean and a Jewish Kabbalist, Simon. It sets out:
- the ten sefirot and their order;
- the methods of interpreting letters, such as gematria (numerical value), notarikon (acrostics) and temurah (permutations);
- the fifty gates of understanding and the thirty-two paths of wisdom;
- the affinity between Kabbalah and the philosophy of Pythagoras.
The book was read throughout Europe and became a source for Cornelius Agrippa and the Christian Kabbalists of the sixteenth century.
The dispute over Jewish books
In 1509 Johannes Pfefferkorn, a Jew who had converted to Christianity, obtained from Emperor Maximilian I a mandate to confiscate Jewish books considered hostile to the Christian faith. The emperor sought opinions from universities and experts. Reuchlin was the only one consulted to come out largely against destruction: he argued that the Talmud, Kabbalah and biblical commentaries should be preserved and studied, and that Jews, as citizens of the Empire, had a right to their own books.
A fierce controversy followed. Pfefferkorn attacked Reuchlin in a pamphlet; Reuchlin replied in 1511 with the Augenspiegel ("Eye-Glass"). The Dominicans of Cologne, with the inquisitor Jacob van Hoogstraten, opened heresy proceedings against him, which went all the way to Rome.
The humanists took Reuchlin's side. The Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515-1517), satirical letters attributed to imaginary ignorant theologians, ridiculed his opponents with great success. The case closed only in 1520, when Leo X condemned the Augenspiegel, without however striking at Reuchlin personally.
The last years
In his last years Reuchlin taught Greek and Hebrew at Ingolstadt and Tübingen. He was the great-uncle of Philip Melanchthon, Luther's collaborator, but always remained within the Catholic Church. He died in 1522.
A historical judgement
Reuchlin's Kabbalah is a Christian Kabbalah: it reads Jewish sources to find confirmation of the Christian faith, and in that sense it does not render them in their original meaning. But his work had two undeniable historical merits: it made the study of Hebrew a humanist discipline, and it defended, against the violence of its time, the right of a minority to keep its own books.
In short
- Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) was a German jurist, Hellenist and Hebraist.
- His meeting with Pico sparked his interest in Kabbalah, developed in the De verbo mirifico (1494).
- The De arte cabalistica (1517) was the first systematic treatise of Christian Kabbalah in Latin.
- He opposed the destruction of Jewish books and faced a long trial as a result.
