Erasmus and Reuchlin: The Jews and their Language

Ron, Nathan

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_9

Nathan Ron²

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Abstract

The positioning of the two greatest intellectuals north of the Alps against each other, in this chapter, may generate some injustice to Erasmus since Reuchlin was unique in his sympathetic approach to the Jews and to their literary and cultural heritage. However, such a spotlight can facilitate a distinctive observation of Erasmus and a sharper comprehension of his prejudices concerning the Jews, their language and books—as much as to convince us to appreciate, with greater vigor, the outstanding intellectual and defender of the Jews that Reuchlin was. Thus, it should also disprove Oberman’s judgment of Reuchlin as an anti-Jewish thinker who advocated the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, or else their expulsion.

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Notes

1.
Guy G. Stroumsa, “From Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism in Early Christianity,” In Maurice R. Hayoun, Ora Limor, Guy G. Stroumsa (eds.), Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 20.
2.
On antisemitism and the forms it took throughout history (selected researches): Robert S. Wistrich (ed.), Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia (London: Routledge, 2013); idem, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010); idem, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1994); Shmuel Almog (ed.), Antisemitism Through the Ages, trans. Nathan H. Reisner (New York: Pergamon Press, 1988).
3.
As the Catholic Church itself found it necessary to make clear and to introduce significant changes in its doctrine regarding “others,” Jews in particular. This was expressed in the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, of the Second Vatican Council, published in 1965.
4.
See Chap. 8 n. 7.
5.
See Chap. 8.
6.
Shimon Markish, Erasmus and the Jews, trans. Anthony Ollcot (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 20–21.
7.
See Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 127–140.
8.
David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013), 3.
9.
David Nirenberg, “Response to Comments on Review of ‘Anti–Judaism: The Western Tradition,’” Jewish History 28 (2014): 209.
10.
On Erasmus and the Jews, see Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 121–166 (Part III).
11.
Daniel O’Callaghan (ed. and trans.), The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books in Sixteenth-century Germany: Johannes Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel (Leiden; Boston: Brill 2013), 85; Franz Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522): A Theological Biography (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 38.
12.
For Erasmus and the Hebrew language, see CWE 41, 432–433 and n. 34 (The New Testament Scholarship of Erasmus: Methodus); Joanna Weinberg, “Wee** over Erasmus in Hebrew and Latin,” in Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Elchanan Reiner, Adam Shear (eds.), Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press and Cincinnati: Hebrew Union Press, 2014), 146; Theodor Dunkelgrün, “The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe,” in Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 7, The Early Modern World, 1500–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 316–348 (esp. 316–322).
13.
Dunkelgrün, ibid., 321.
14.
CWE 3, 109; Ep 335: 303–307: “Inter quos est eximius ille vir, loannes Reuchlinus Phorcensis, trium linguarum Graecae, Latinae et Hebraicae pene ex aequo peritus; ad haec in nullo doctrinae genere non ita versatus vt cum primis certare possit. Vnde merito virum hunc ceu phoenicem et vnicum suum decus tota suspicit ac veneratur Germania.”
15.
ASD I-3 267–273; CWE 39, 244–255; Dunkelgrün, “The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe,” 316–317.
16.
CoE, III, 147–150; Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 862–864.
17.
Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism, 24–31; Idem, The Impact of the Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 87–94. See also Thomas Kaufmann, “Einige Beobachtungen zum Judenbild deutscher Humanisten in den ersten beiden Jahrzehnten des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Dorothea Wendebourg, Andreas Stegmann u. Martin Ohst (eds.), Protestantismus, Antijudaismus, Antisemtismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 60–65. For a refutation of this judgement, see Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism,” 91 n. 7; Idem, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 11–12 n. 38.
18.
Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin, 87, 92–93.
19.
Daniel O’Callaghan, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 85, 88–89.
20.
Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 4–5; 95–98; 122–154; O’Callaghan, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 82–85.
21.
CWE 5, 347–348; Ep 798: 19–25: “Video gentem eam frigidissimis fabulis plenam nihil fere nisi fumos quosdam obiicere; Talmud, Cabalam, Tetragrammaton, Portas Lucis, inania nomina. Scoto malim infectum Christum quam istis neniis. Italia multos habet Iudaeos, Hispania vix habet Christianos. Vereor ne hac occasione pestis iam olim oppressa caput erigat.” See also Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books, 179; Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 863.
22.
Johannes Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 1477–1505, ed. Stefan Rhein, Matthias Dall’Astra, and Gerard Dörner (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog 1999), letter no. 110; Erika Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” in Stephen G. Burnett and Dean Phillip Bell (eds.) Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Leiden, Boston: Brill: 2006), 4–5.
23.
Johannes Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 1: 1477–1505, ed. Matthias Dall’Asta and Gerald Dörner, (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999), letter no. 105.
24.
David H. Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism: Johannes Reuchlin and the Discovery of Hebrew,” Arthuriana 19 (2009): 82.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Ibid., 110–112; 201, 203; Oberman, The Impact of the Reformation, 92.
27.
Posset, Respect for the Jews, 26 n.14; Reuchlin’s library had a few Yiddish items, such as Hebrew-Yiddish glossaries of the Hebrew Bible (Codices Reuchlin 8–9) and a Yiddish translation of Job, Proverbs, Psalms and a literary text for the feast of Purim (Codex Reuchlin 13). From the possession of these books alone one cannot assume that he actually read them. But Maniculae (signs of “little hands”), and a few other marginalia in Latin and in Hebrew that are probably Reuchlin’s and are found in Codex Reuchlin 8 [Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 201–202, 209–210, 214] could indicate that he read and understood the Yiddish—assuming that these maniculae are actually from his own hand (they could have been entered by a previous owner). So far, there are no studies on Reuchlin and Yiddish. It is not too farfetched to assume that he was familiar with fifteenth/sixteenth century Yiddish, which might not be all that removed from Early New High German.
28.
Kaufmann, “Einige Beobachtungen,” 82.
29.
CWE, 5, 181; Ep 701: 35–38: “Malim ego incolumi nouo testament vel totum Vetus aboleri quam Christianorum pacem ob Iudeorum pacem rescindi.” See Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books, 3, 7.
30.
CWE, 5, 348; Ep 798: 25–27: “Atque vtinam Christianorum ecclesia non tantum tribueret Veteri Testamento! quod, cum pro tempore datum vmbris constet, Christianis litteris pene antefertur.” See Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books, 179.
31.
Johannes Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 4: 1518–1522, ed. Matthias Dall’Asta and Gerald Dörner (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2013), letter no. 391, p. 354. I am indebted to Dr. Franz Posset for drawing my attention to this letter (My translation of the letter to English was revised in cooperation with Dr. Posset).
32.
In a letter to his brother. Cited in Franz Posset, Respect for the Jews. Foreword by Yaacov Deutch. Collected Works 4 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 46.
33.
Posset, Respect for the Jews, 91, and 92, 201–210. See also O’Callaghan, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 2.
34.
On the Pfefferkorn-Reuchlin affair: CoE, I, 146–149; Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism, 25–37; idem, The Impact of the Reformation, 103, 157–160; Erika Rummel, The Humanist-scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995), 87–89; idem, The Case against Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 52–53; Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books; Maria Diemling, “Historical Introduction,” in Johannes Pfefferkorn, The Jews’ Mirror (Der Juden Spiegel), trans. Ruth I. Cape (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011), 7–32; Avner Shamir, Christian Conceptions of Jewish Books: The Pfefferkorn Affair (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2011); O’Callaghan, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 49–69, 91–96.
35.
For the report (translated to English): Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin, 86–97. See also CoE, III, 146.
36.
Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 152 n. 19.
37.
CWE 2, 87; Ep 181: 34–38: “Itaque iam triennium ferme literae Graecae me totum possident, neque mihi videor operam omnino lusisse. Coeperam et Hebraicas attingere, verum peregrinitate sermonis deterritus, simul quod nec aetas nec ingenium hominis pluribus rebus pariter sufficit, destiti.”
38.
Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß, “Jewish Life and Books Under Scrutiny: Ethnography, Polemics, and Converts,” in Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß (eds.), Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 17.
39.
CWE 41, 432–433 (The New Testament Scholarship of Erasmus: Methodus).
40.
ASD I-4, 32 (De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronunciatione dialogus); CWE 26, 389 (The Right Way of Speaking Latin and Greek: A Dialogue).
41.
Weinberg, “Wee** over Erasmus in Hebrew and Latin,” 146.
42.
CWE 3, 200; Ep 373: 72–76: “Hac igitur in parte, cum primum hoc opus aederemus, nonnihil adiuti sumus opera subsidiaria viri non solum pietate verum etiam trium peritia linguarum eminentis, hoc est veri theologi, loannis Oecolampadii Vinimontani; quod ipse in litteris Haebraicis nondum eo processeram vt mihi iudicandi sumerem autoritatem.”
43.
As evident in a series of letters, see CWE 41, 773; Weinberg, “Wee** over Erasmus in Hebrew and Latin,” 146 n. 7.
44.
Originally published as part of Doctor Johannsen Reuchlins Augenspiegel (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1511).
45.
Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin, 17, 94.
46.
Johannes Reuchlin, Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books, translated, edited with a foreword by Peter Wortsman (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000), 80.
47.
Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” p. 20.
48.
Posset, Respect for the Jews, 42.
49.
Johannes Reuchlin, Sämtliche Werke vol. 4-1[1505–1513], ed. Widu-Wolfgang Ehlers et al. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999), 344: 19–22; Posset, Respect for the Jews, 42. See also Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin, 102.
50.
CWE 27 306; ASD IV-2, 80 (A Complaint of Peace): “florent leges nusquam illibatior religio, nec commercio Judaeorum corrupta, velut apud Italos, nec Turcarum vel Maranorum vicina infecta.” See also Ep 549 11–13; Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 131–132, 141–145.
51.
Posset, Respect for the Jews, 46, n. 27.
52.
According to a handwritten note in Margaritha’s Hebrew Psalter (Leipzig, 1533) which testifies to it. See Weinberg, “Wee** over Erasmus in Hebrew and Latin,” 148.
53.
On Witzel’s scholarship and Hebraism, see: Posset, Respect for the Jews, 100–109.
54.
Posset, ibid., ch. 4, 97–108 (Latin text and English translation by Franz Posset).
55.
Ibid., 125–126.
56.
Ibid., 143.
57.
Ibid., 151.
58.
Ibid., 159.
59.
Ibid., 193.
60.
Recommendation whether to Confiscate…, 50; Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” 11.
61.
For Josel of Rosheim and Sefer ha-miknah, see: Chava Fraenke-Goldschmidt, Adam Shear (eds.), and Naomi Schendowich (trans.), The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim: Leader of Jewry in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Elisheva Carlebach, “Between History and Myth: The Regensburg Expulsion in Josel of Rosheim’s Sefer ha-miknah in Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron and David N Myers (eds.), Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (Hanover, NH: The University Press of New England, 1998), 40–53.
62.
Citations from Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 9–10, 866.
63.
Ibid., 10, 866–867.
64.
Ibid., 27.
65.
Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” 13.

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Ron, N. (2021). Erasmus and Reuchlin: The Jews and their Language. In: Erasmus. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_9

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_9
Published: 28 July 2021
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