History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)

by Heinrich Graetz

It was fortunate for the Jews that the honest, truthful Reuchlin, so enthusiastically prepossessed for Hebrew and Kabbalistic literature, was asked to give his opinion of Jewish literature. The Cologne Dominicans, who had proposed him, thereby frustrated their own design, and as a further effect made him the enemy of their hostile endeavors. As soon as Reuchlin received the emperor's command, he set to work to answer the question, "Whether it was godly, laudable, and advantageous to Christianity to burn the Jewish writings," whereby the Talmud especially was meant. His judgment was extremely favorable to the writings in question, nor did he miss the chance of bestowing sundry side blows on the vile instigator Pfefferkorn. Jewish literature, the mistress of his heart, was to be charged as a culprit, and should he fail to defend her with all the powers of his mind? Reuchlin's opinion is conceived in the pedantic, heavy, juridical style then prevailing, but does not lack ability. He started from the correct point of view, that, in answering the question, the Jewish writings were not to be treated in the aggregate as a homogeneous literature, but that, excluding the Bible, they were to be divided into six classes. The class of exegetic works, such as those by R. Solomon (Rashi), Ibn-Ezra, the Kimchis, Moses Gerundensis and Levi ben Gershon, far from being detrimental to Christianity, he declared to be indispensable to Christian theology, the most learned Christian commentators of the Old Testament having taken the best of their work from the Jews, as from fountains whence flow the real truth and understanding of the Holy Scriptures. If from the voluminous writings of Nicholas de Lyra, the best Christian exegetist, all borrowed from Rashi were to be excised, the part left, which he himself had composed, might be comprised in a few pages. He, indeed, considered it a disgrace that many doctors of divinity, from ignorance of Hebrew and Greek, interpreted the Scriptures wrongly. The class of Hebrew writings on philosophy, natural sciences and the liberal arts were in no way distinguished from what might be found in Greek, Latin, or German works. With regard to the Talmud, against which the chief accusation was laid, Reuchlin confessed his inability to understand it; but other learned Christians understood no more of it than they might learn from its accusers, including Pfefferkorn. He was acquainted with many who condemned the Talmud without understanding it. But could one write against mathematics without having knowledge thereof? He was, therefore, of opinion that the Talmud was not to be burnt, even if it were true that it contained libels on the founders of Christianity. "If the Talmud were deserving of such condemnation, our ancestors of many hundred years ago, whose zeal for Christianity was much greater than ours, would have burnt it. The baptized Jews, Peter Schwarz and Pfefferkorn, the only persons who insist on its being burnt, probably wish it for private reasons."

To defend Kabbalistic writings, and save them from being burnt, was easy enough. Reuchlin had but to point to occurrences at the papal court, scarcely two decades ago. The learned and eccentric Count Pico di Mirandola had aroused enthusiastic admiration for the Kabbala, maintaining that it contained the most solid foundation of the chief doctrines of Christianity. Sixtus IV had caused some of the Kabbalistic writings to be translated into Latin. Reuchlin concluded his opinion by advising that their books should not be taken from the Jews, nor burnt, but that at every German university two professors of Hebrew be appointed for ten years, who might also be asked to teach modern, or rabbinical Hebrew; and thus the Jews might be led by gentle means and by conviction to embrace Christianity.

Unquestionably, since Jews had been ill-used and persecuted by Christians, they had not found so friendly an advocate as Reuchlin, who declared himself in their favor in an official document, intended for the chancellor of the empire, and the emperor himself. Two points on which Reuchlin laid stress were especially important to Jews. The first was, that the Jews were citizens of the Holy Roman Empire, and were entitled to its full privileges and protection. This was the first stammering utterance of that liberating word of perfect equality, which required more than three centuries for its perfect enunciation and acknowledgment. The mediæval delusion, that the Jews, by Vespasian and Titus' conquest of Jerusalem, had become the bondmen of their successors, the Roman and German emperors, was hereby partly dispelled. The recognition that Jews also had rights, which the emperor and the state, the clergy and the laity must respect, was the first faint, trembling ray of light after a long, dark night. The second point, which Reuchlin emphasized more positively, was of equal importance: that the Jews must not be considered or treated as heretics. Since they stood without the church, and were not bound to hold the Christian faith, the ideas of heresy and unbelief—those terrifying and lethal anathemas of the Middle Ages—did not apply to them.

Of what use this judgment of Reuchlin was to the Jews, we discover by the decision of the faculties consulted—faculties to whom the Talmud, of course, was a book with seven seals. The Cologne Dominicans in a body, the theological faculty, the inquisitor Hoogstraten, and the gray-haired convert Victor von Karben, all mouthpieces of one mind, did not trouble themselves to prove that the Talmud was hostile to Christianity; they assumed it, and, therefore, quickly arrived at their decision, that the Talmudic writings, and all others, probably of the same stamp, were to be seized and burnt. But they went further; Hoogstraten, in particular, had the assurance to say that the Jews should be indicted. Experts were to extract and arrange heretical passages from the Talmud and other Jewish books; then the Jews were to be questioned whether or not they admitted the perniciousness of books containing such doctrines. If they admitted it, they could raise no objection to have them committed to the flames. If they obstinately persevered in treating such passages as portions of their creed, the emperor was to surrender them as convicted heretics for punishment to the Inquisition.

The faculty of the university of Mayence delivered a similar sentence, but went much further. They pronounced not only all Talmudic and rabbinical writings to be full of errors and heresy, but that even the Scriptures must have been contaminated and corrupted by them, especially in articles of faith, wherefore these were to be taken from the Jews, examined, and if their expectation was realized, the Jewish Bibles were to be thrown into the flames. This was a cunning device, because the Hebrew text of the Bible does not agree with the Latin Vulgate, the work of bunglers, used by the church. It was like arraigning an immaculate mother before her degenerate daughter, and telling her that if she did not adopt the vices of the latter, she did not deserve to exist. And it was a clever trick on the part of the Dominicans to get rid of the inconvenient Hebrew text, the "Hebrew truth," majestically shaking its head at the childish trifling of clerical interpretations. Had the theologians of Mayence and Cologne succeeded in enforcing their views, the Book received on Sinai, the words of the Prophets, the Psalms, monuments of a time of grace, would have been cast upon a blazing pyre, and a bastard, the corrupt Latin Vulgate, substituted for it. The Dominicans appear to have suspected that the plain sense of the words of the Bible would bring ruin upon them. Fortunately, the Cologne Dominicans themselves defeated their cunningly laid plan by an act of villainy.

Reuchlin had sent his opinion on Jewish literature in a sealed packet, and by a sworn messenger, to Archbishop Uriel, assuming that, being an official secret, it would be opened and read only by the archbishop and the emperor. But Pfefferkorn, who believed himself to be on the eve of avenging himself on the Jews, had it open in his hand even before the emperor had read it. How this occurred has never been cleared up. Reuchlin in plain words denounced the Cologne priests as unscrupulous seal-breakers. We ought almost to be grateful to them for having dragged an affair, originally enveloped in official secrecy, into publicity, thereby calling in another tribunal, and turning the peril of the Jews into a peril to the church. They had grown desperate over Reuchlin's opinion, because his voice had great weight with the emperor and his advisers. Therefore, the Dominicans, armed at all points, set to work to publish a refutation of Reuchlin's defense of the Jews and their books. It was written in German to render the cause popular, and incense the multitude so as to render it impossible for the emperor to listen to Reuchlin.

This libel, entitled "Handspiegel," spread abroad in thousands of copies, on a man so highly placed and honored, a judge of the Suabian League, a scholar of eminence, naturally caused a great sensation. Since the invention of printing it was the first furious attack on a dignitary, and being written in German, every one could understand it. Reuchlin's numerous friends were indignant at the insolence of a baptized Jew, who pretended to be more sound in faith than a born Christian in good standing. The Cologne Dominicans had permitted themselves to be guided by their envenomed hatred rather than by prudence. Reuchlin was compelled to take steps against such attacks, by which his honor was too deeply wounded for silence. He hastened to the emperor, and complained of Pfefferkorn, the rancorous calumniator, the ostensible author of the "Handspiegel." The emperor, by words and gestures, betrayed his indignation, and quieted the excited Reuchlin by the promise that the matter should be inquired into by the bishop of Augsburg. But amidst the press of business, in the confusion of Italian quarrels, the emperor forgot Reuchlin, the mortification he had suffered, and the redress promised him. The Frankfort autumn Fair was approaching, at which Pfefferkorn intended to offer for sale the remainder of the copies, and nothing had been done for or by Reuchlin.

Thus Reuchlin was compelled to make the Talmud a personal question, to appeal to public opinion, and thereby render the matter one of almost universal interest. He prepared a defensive and offensive reply to the "Handspiegel" for the Frankfort Fair. At the end of August, or beginning of September, 1511, his controversial pamphlet, entitled "Augenspiegel" (or Spectacles, a pair of spectacles being represented on the title-page), which has acquired historical celebrity, made its appearance. He designed to reveal to the German public the villainy of Pfefferkorn and his coadjutors, but unconsciously he revealed the defects of the Christianity of his time. It was a pamphlet which, we may say without exaggeration, was equivalent to a great action. It was directed against Pfefferkorn, and by implication against the Cologne Dominicans, the patrons and instigators of his calumnies. It relates in plain, honest language the progress of the whole affair: how the baptized "Jew" had made every effort to prove the Talmud dangerous, desiring to have it burnt, and had meant to turn Reuchlin to account in the matter. He publishes the missives of the emperor and of the archbishop addressed to him, and also his "Opinion." He reports how Pfefferkorn by dishonest means obtained possession of the "Opinion," and misused it to concoct a libel, containing no less than thirty-four untruths about him (Reuchlin). The tone of the "Augenspiegel" expresses the just indignation of a man of honor against a villain who has set a trap for him.

What roused the indignation of Reuchlin most was the charge that he had been bribed to write his defense of the Talmud. With honest anger he protested that at no time during his whole existence had he received from Jews, or on their behalf, a single penny, or any other reward. No less hurt was Reuchlin at the contempt expressed for his Hebrew scholarship, especially at the accusation that he had not himself composed his Hebrew grammar. His defense of the Jews is dignified. The scoundrel Pfefferkorn had reproached him with having learnt Hebrew from Jews, with whom, then, he must have had intercourse in defiance of the canon law. Thereupon Reuchlin says: "The baptized Jew writes that Divine law forbids our holding communion with Jews; this is not true. Every Christian may go to law with them, buy of or make presents to them. Cases may occur where Christians inherit legacies together with Jews. It is allowed to converse with and learn from them, as Saint Jerome and Nicholas de Lyra did. And lastly, a Christian should love a Jew as his neighbor; all this is founded on the law."

It may be imagined what excitement was created by Reuchlin's "Augenspiegel," written in German, when it appeared at the Frankfort Fair, the meeting-place of hundreds of thousands, at a time when there was no public press, and everyone readily lent his ear to a scandalous tale. To find that so distinguished a man as Reuchlin would set an accuser of the Jews in the pillory as a calumniator and liar, was something so new and surprising as to make readers rub their eyes, and ask themselves whether they had not hitherto been dozing. The Jews greedily bought a book in which for the first time a man of honor entered the lists on their behalf, and with powerful voice stigmatized the charges against them as calumnies. They rejoiced at having found a champion, and thanked God that He had not forsaken them in their tribulation. Who would find fault with them for laboring in the promulgation of Reuchlin's pamphlet? But by preaching against it in their pulpits, and by prohibiting its sale as far as they could, bigoted priests of the stamp of the Cologne Dominicans did most to disseminate it. From all directions, in learned and unlearned circles, congratulations were sent to Reuchlin, with expressions of satisfaction that he had so boldly and firmly settled the impudent Pfefferkorn and his abettors.