Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 2005 ART Albrecht Dürer: The Search for the Beautiful In a Time of Trials by Bonnie James the Inquisition, Reuchlin had been with works including the Talmud and the inspired by the fresh winds blowing mystical Kabbala, soon lead him into con- from south of the Alps in Renais- flict with the Inquisition, its Inquisitor sance Italy. He was associated with General Jacob Hochstraten, and his fanati- the networks of the religious reform cal acolyte, Pfefferkorn. movement, the Brothers of the Com- When defending himself for having mon Life, whose commitment he found errors in the Vulgate of Jerome, shared to discovering the truth from Reuchlin declared, “Though I honor Jerome original sources. He had travelled to as a holy angel . .Ihonor truth more.” Italy several times, including to Flo- In arguing against burning the Jewish rence, where he spent time studying books, Reuchlin ridiculed those who issued Blauel/Gnamm—ARTOTHEK at the Platonic Academy with Mar- the order without being able to read the Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait as Christ,” 1500. silio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, works they condemned: “If someone wished and others. It was the passionate to write against the mathematicians, and belief of these intellectuals that were himself ignorant in simple arithmetic Foreword: knowledge, especially of the Classics, must or mathematics, he would be made a The Reuchlin Affair be open to all. laughingstock,” he wrote in the “Recom- Moreover, as Christians, their commit- mendation.” He said that, if some were The year was 1510. Germany was on the ment was to read the Scriptures, including offended by the Talmud, “that is their own eve of the Protestant Reformation and the the Old Testament, in their original lan- fault, and not the fault of the book! Goats seemingly endless wars of religion which guages—that this could only strenghthen graze on bitter weeds and make sweet milk followed it. The Habsburg Emperor Maxi- their faith. And Reuchlin believed that of it, and from the selfsame flower do milian I, goaded by a zealous Jewish con- knowledge of the Jewish writings would honey bees derive their sweet honey, and vert, Johannes Pfefferkorn, himself under also improve the Christians’ power to con- spiders their deadly poison. This is not the the control of the Inquisition’s Dominican vert the Jews. Order of Cologne, ordered Jewish books Ironically, those who called for destruc- confiscated throughout the realm. More tion of the Jewish books, had themselves than 2,000 volumes were seized in the vari- never read them! Since the time of St. ous German cities. The Jews, aided by Jerome (c. A.D. 340-420), who had trans- Christian humanist supporters, petitioned late the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Maximilian to reconsider, and the Emperor Greek Scriptures, the Church had relied on established a council to look into the matter his Latin Bible (the Vulgate), and few, and advise him. over the next thousand years, had thought it Among the members chosen for the necessary to revisit the matter. council was the noted jurist and scholar Until Reuchlin, who was determined to Johannes Reuchlin [SEE Figure 1], a Classi- learn Hebrew. The opportunity arose cal humanist, and one of very few Chris- when, in the critical year 1492, he was sent tians who had mastered the Hebrew lan- by his patron the Elector Eberhard of guage, along with Latin and Greek. Reuch- Württemberg to the Emperor on legal lin’s opinion was published under the title, business, and there met Frederick III’s Jew- “Recommendation Whether To Confiscate, ish physician, Jacob Jehiel Loans. Loans Destroy, and Burn All Jewish Books.” became his Hebrew tutor. Reuchlin’s Although he lived under the shadow of knowledge of Hebrew, and his familiarity FIGURE 1. Johannes Reuchlin (1445-1521). 79 © 2005 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. Jews to rent their books to Christians, until copies of the Hebrew texts could be pro- duced. “I assure you that not one of the Latins can expound the Old Testament, unless he first becomes proficient in the lan- guage in which it was written,” Reuchlin wrote. “For the mediator between God and man was language, as we read in the Pen- tateuch; but not any language, only Hebrew, through which God wished his secrets to be known to man.” Reuchlin prevailed, and the confiscat- ed books were returned to their owners. However, with the publication and wider circulation of his “Recommenda- tion” in 1511, Reuchlin came under sus- picion by the Holy Office. He was labelled a heretic, and worse. In 1514, Reuchlin’s most bitter enemy, Cologne’s FIGURE 2. Philip Melancthon, engraving by Dürer, 1526. Inscription: “Dürer was Inquisitor General Hochstraten, ordered FIGURE 3. Erasmus of Rotterdam, engraving able to picture the features of the living his writings to be burned at the stake. By by Dürer, 1526. Inscription: “His writings Philip, but his skilled hand was unable to 1520, the Pope himself, the Venetian cat’s present a better picture of the man than this picture his mind.” paw Leo X, condemned Reuchlin’s portrait.” works. It is likely that only his death two years later saved Reuchlin, still loyal to fault of the blossom or the flower, but the Church at Rome, from the flames. John Colet and Thomas More; in Italy, rather the characteristic and nature of those Among those who came to Reuchlin’s Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. creatures that feed on them.” Reflecting his defense were the leading religious reformers The historian Heinrich Graetz would Christian humanist outlook, Reuchlin and Classical scholars of Europe, represent- later write of the “Reuchlin Affair,” in his wrote, “The Jew is as worthy in the eyes of ing diverse and often bitterly opposing view- seminal “History of the Jews” (published in our Lord God even as am I.” points: in Germany, his nephew and student, the 1870’s): “We can boldly assert that the Reuchlin urged that his fellow Christians, the theologian Melanchthon [SEE Figure 2]; war for and against the Talmud aroused instead of burning books, engage the Jews in the man who spearheaded the Protestant German consciousness and created a public reasoned discourse, and in that way, win Reformation and break with Rome, Martin opinion, without which the Reformation, them over to what he regarded as the true Luther; the most prominent Christian as well as other efforts, would have died at faith. He proposed that German universities humanist intellectual in Europe, Erasmus of the hour of their birth, or perhaps would hire lecturers to teach Hebrew. He also urged Rotterdam [SEE Figure 3]; in England, never have been born at all.” s the 1400’s, the century of the tion and Catholic Counter-Reformation, philosophical, scientific, and humanist “Golden Renaissance,” drew to these labels tend to obscure the true ideas of Fifteenth-century Italy to Aa close, Europe was plunged nature of the upheaval that took place. Northern Europe, and thus help to set in into a profound crisis, from which it did The extended social-cultural-political motion a new phase of the Renaissance. not begin to emerge until the middle of devastation that overcame Europe was And, at the end of these 150 years, the the Seventeenth century. Beginning the intended outcome of Venice’s mur- Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606- with the 1492 expulsion of the Jews derous war against the Renaissance. 1669) would give voice through his art to from Spain, at the order of the Grand What the Venetian oligarchy did not the principle of Westphalia: that human Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, and know, was how it would end—with the relations must be based on “the advan- ending with the 1648 Peace of West- emergence, albeit long-delayed, of the tage of the other.” Notably, both artists phalia, which brought an end to the sovereign nation-state, established on would rely on the medium of the Thirty Years’ War—the final phase of the principle of the sacredness of each print—woodcuts, etchings, and engrav- this prolonged nightmare—the period individual human life. ings—to disseminate these ideas to the was characterized by the destruction At the start of this turbulent historical widest possible audience. and depopulation of entire regions period, an artist emerged in Nuremberg, Through his hundreds of revolution- across Europe. While this era is often Germany, named Albrecht Dürer (1471- ary prints, Dürer both chronicled and referred to as the Protestant Reforma- 1528), who would bring the Classical transformed his time, such that today, 80 when one thinks about those years, the were later educated in the schools of the tion of the children of the poor, was an images he created are the visual Brotherhood were Nicolaus of Cusa and expression of their commitment to the metaphors that come to mind. The Erasmus of Rotterdam. Groote’s work principle of the common good—an idea power of these images was reaffirmed in was carried on and expanded by Thomas expounded directly by Brotherhood stu- a superb exhibition this past fall at the à Kempis (1380-1471), born in a small dent Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa (1401- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Rich- town near present-day Düsseldorf in 1464) in his Concordantia Catholica, mond, where 83 of the master’s greatest Germany. Kempis’s widely read book, where he argued that the legitimacy of woodcuts, etchings, and engravings The Imitation of Christ, called on his stu- government derives from the consent of were on display.