The University soon attracted many students as the humanists Geiler von Kaysersberg, Johann Reuchlin or Jakob Wimpfeling.

Reuchlin was selected for this post, and in February 1482 left Stuttgart for Florence and Rome.

Although suspected of a leaning toward Protestantism, Reuchlin never left the Roman Catholic Church.

At Basel 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 explaining Aristotle in Greek.

It was Reuchlin who suggested the change from Schwartzerdt ( literally black earth ), into the Greek equivalent Melanchthon ( Μελάγχθων ).

His first publications were an edition of Terence ( 1516 ) and his Greek grammar ( 1518 ), but he had written previously the preface to the Epistolae clarorum virorum of Reuchlin ( 1514 ).

Johann Reuchlin ( sometimes Johannes ) ( 29 January 1455 – 30 June 1522 ) was a German humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew.

Though Reuchlin had no public office as teacher, he was for much of his life the real centre of all Greek and Hebrew teaching in Germany.

Reuchlin, it may be noted, pronounced Greek as his native teachers had taught him to do, i. e. in the modern Greek fashion.

Johann Reuchlin ( 1455 – 1522 ) was a German humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew who opposed efforts by Johannes Pfefferkorn, backed by the Dominicans of Cologne, to confiscate all religious texts from the Jews as a first step towards their forcible conversion to the Catholic religion.

The polarization of the scholarly community in Germany over the Reuchlin ( 1455 – 1522 ) affair, attacked by the elite clergy for his study of Hebrew and Jewish texts, brought Luther fully in line with the humanist educational reforms who favored academic freedom.

Two biting satires, one by Œcolampadius and the other by Willibald Pirckheimer, stung him to a fury which would be satisfied with nothing less than the public burning of the entire literature in the market-place at Ingolstadt, an act from which he was restrained by his colleague Reuchlin.

From Poitiers Reuchlin went in December 1481 to Tübingen with the intention of becoming a teacher in the university, but his friends recommended him to Count Eberhard of Württemberg, who was about to journey to Italy and required an interpreter.

Through Dalberg, Reuchlin came into contact with Philip, Count 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.

But for this also Reuchlin found help by printing the Penitential Psalms with grammatical explanations ( 1512 ), and other helps followed from time to time.

The letters that have survived show that he was in correspondence with Peter Schott, Johann Bergmann von Olpe, Emperor Maximilian, Thomas Murner, Konrad Peutinger, Willibald Pirckheimer, Johannes Reuchlin, Beatus Rhenanus, Jakob Wimpfeling and Ulrich Zasius.

He conducted a lively correspondence with leading humanists-for example, Johannes Reuchlin, for whom he made an Equatorium and wrote horoscopes.

He was prominently associated with the distinguished men of the time ( Johann Reuchlin, Konrad Peutinger, Ulrich von Hutten, Konrad Mutianus ), and took part in the political, religious and literary quarrels of the period, finally declaring in favor of Luther and the Reformation for the rest of his life.

He acquired knowledge of Hebrew after studying with the German humanist Johannes Reuchlin in Ingolstadt, knowledge of which would prove useful to him when he later became an inhabitant of Zurich, a stronghold of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland.

# Fire from the Sky-Thanks to Continental Drift and Alfred Wegener's passion for mirages, magic images from the sister of King Arthur, whose chivalry supposedly triggers the medieval courtly love answer to adultery, which were in turn inspired by the free love ideas of the mystical Cathars, who lived next to the mystical cabalists who were fascinated with mystic numbers that spark Pico of Mirandola's ineterest in Hebrew, which then brings trouble for Johann Reuchlin, not helped by his nephew, the Protestant Melanchthon, who had a feud with Osiander, who rewrites the work of Copernicus.

He learned the letters from the transcription of a few verses in the Star of the Messiah of Petrus Niger, and, with a subsequent hint or two from Johannes Reuchlin, who also lent him the grammar of Moses Kimhi, made his way through the Bible for himself with the help of Jerome's Latin.

The title is a reference to Reuchlin's 1514 book Epistolae clarorum virorum ( English: Letters of famous / bright men ) which provided a collection of letters to Reuchlin on scholarly and intellectual matters from eminent German humanists such as Ulrich von Hutten, Johann Crotus, Konrad Mutian, Helius Eobanus Hessus, and others, to show that his position in the controversy with the monks was approved by the learned.

Among his correspondents are the musician and choirmaster of Antwerp, Jacobus Barbirianus ( Barbireau ), Alexander Hegius, rector of the Latin school at Deventer ( of Erasmian fame ), and the humanist scholar and later famed student of Hebrew, Johannes Reuchlin.

Under the influence of men like Reuchlin and Erasmus he became convinced that true Christianity was something different from scholastic theology as it was taught at the university.

Johann Reuchlin was born at Pforzheim in the Black Forest in 1455, where his father was an official of the Dominican monastery.

Pfefferkorn circulated at the Frankfurt Fair of 1511 a gross libel ( Handspiegel wider und gegen die Juden ) declaring that Reuchlin had been bribed.

Reuchlin defended himself in a pamphlet titled Augenspiegel ( 1511 ), which the theologians at the University of Cologne attempted to suppress.

Reuchlin died in Stuttgart, and is buried at St. Leonhard church.

There his learning won for him a prominent place among scholars ; and when Reuchlin was at Rome ( 1498-1500 ) and desired to perfect his knowledge of Hebrew literature, Cardinal Domenico Grimani advised him to apply to Obadiah.

One of his pupils at Florence was the famous Johann Reuchlin.

Johann Reuchlin was the most important aspect of world culture teaching within Germany at this time.

Even Paris ( August 1514 ) condemned the Augenspiegel, and called on Reuchlin to recant.

From Rome, Wessel returned to Paris and speedily became a famous teacher, gathering round him a band of enthusiastic young students, among whom was Reuchlin.

Pico de la Mirandola ( d. 1494 ) was the first to collect Hebrew manuscripts, and Reuchlin was the first to write a modern grammar of the Hebrew language ( 1506 ).

Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum was written in support of Hutten's mentor, the prominent theologian Johannes Reuchlin, who was engaged in a struggle to prevent the confiscation of Hebrew texts.

They support the German Humanist scholar Johann Reuchlin and they mock the doctrines and modes of living of the scholastics and monks, mainly by pretending to be letters from fanatic Christian theologians discussing whether all Jewish books should be burned as un-Christian or not.

According to the fashion of the time, his name was graecized by his Italian friends into Capnion ( Καπνίων ), a nickname which Reuchlin used as a sort of transparent mask when he introduced himself as an interlocutor in the De Verbo Mirifico.

Unlike some other " thinkers " of this time, Reuchlin submerged himself into this, even creating a guide to preaching within the Hebrew faith.

Beside such revived currents from late Antiquity, a second major source of esoteric speculation is the Kabbalah, which was lifted out of its Jewish context and adapted to a Christian framework by people such as Johannes Reuchlin.

Alongside this, there was also a rise in interest in a form of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah, which was spread across the continent by Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, " The enthusiasm felt for the Zohar was shared by many Christian scholars, such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Johann Reuchlin, Aegidius of Viterbo, etc., all of whom believed that the book contained proofs of the truth of Christianity.

He was influenced by his great-uncle Johann Reuchlin, brother of his maternal grandmother, a representative humanist.

Loans's instruction laid the basis of that thorough knowledge which Reuchlin afterwards improved on his third visit to Rome in 1498 by the instruction of Obadja Sforno of Cesena.

In 1510 Reuchlin was appointed by Emperor Maximilian to a commission which was convened to review the matter.

The contest ended, however ; public interest had grown cold, absorbed entirely by the Lutheran question, and Reuchlin had no reason to fear new attacks.

* The Book of Revelation, as we know it, contains a horoscope that is dated to 25 September-10 October 1486 compiled by cabbalist Johannes Reuchlin.

He got on so well that he was not only a useful helper to Reuchlin but anticipated Reuchlin's manuals by composing in 1501 the first Hebrew grammar in a European tongue.