Reuchlin, Johannes, called Capnion

REUCHLIN, Johannes, called Capnion. - German humanist, b. at Pforzheim on 22 February 1455, d. at Bad Liebenzell on 30 June 1522. He was the initiator of the study of Hebrew as an aid to biblical studies. He taught at Ingolstadt and at Tübingen. From 1502 to 1513 he was a triumvir of the Swabian League. He traveled a great deal (he was three times in Italy: 1482, '90, '98).

His Rudimenta hebraica (1506), followed by the De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae (1518), mark a milestone in the history of philology and of biblical exegesis. In the Dialogus de recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronunciatione (1519) he maintained, against Erasmus (v.), the Byzantine pronunciation of ancient Greek. He also occupied himself with mystical-theosophical questions and with Judaism (De verbo mirifico, 1494; De arte cabalistica, 1517).

When the Dominican J. Pfefferkorn, a converted Jew, proposed the destruction of nearly all Hebrew texts for the purpose of dispersing Judaism, R., as a member of the commission convoked by the emperor Maximilian (1510), gave the opposite opinion, unwittingly stirring up a ten-year controversy that divided Germany into two camps (that of the humanists and that of the theologians) and that reached as far as the Roman ecclesiastical tribunal (1520); this imposed silence on R. and the destruction of his Augenspiegel, published in 1511 against the accusations and calumnies leveled at him by Pfefferkorn. In the controversy, Erasmus also intervened in defense of R. and moreover, in the very year of his death, wrote a moving Apotheosis of him.

Desiderio Gatti