§ 120.4. =John Reuchlin=, born in A.D. 1455 at Pforzheim, went to the celebrated school at Schlettstadt in Alsace, studied at Freiburg, Paris, Basel, and Orleans, taught law in Tübingen, and travelled repeatedly in Italy with Eberhard the Bearded of Württemberg. After Eberhard’s death he went to the court of the Elector-palatine Philip, and along with D’Alberg [Dalberg] did much for the reputation of the University of Heidelberg. Afterwards he was for eleven years president of the Swabian court of justiciary at Tübingen. When in A.D. 1513 the seat of this court was removed to Augsburg he retired to Stuttgart, was called in A.D. 1519 by William of Bavaria to Ingolstadt as professor of Greek and Hebrew. On the outbreak of the plague at Ingolstadt in A.D. 1520, he accepted a call back to Tübingen, where he died in A.D. 1522. He never gave in his adhesion to the reforming ideas of Luther. He left unanswered a letter from the reformer in A.D. 1518. But as a promoter of every scientific endeavour, especially in connection with the study of the original text of the O.T., Reuchlin had won imperishable renown. He was well entitled to conclude his _Rudimenta linguæ Hebraicæ_ of A.D. 1506 with Horace’s words, _Stat monumentum aëre perennino_, for that book has been the basis of all Christian Hebrew philology.[356] He also discussed the difficult subject of Hebrew accents in a special treatise, _De Acc. et Orthogr. Hebr._ 11. iii, and the secret doctrines of the Jews in his _De arte Cabbalistica_. He offered to instruct any Jew who wished it in the doctrines of Christianity, and also to care for his temporal affairs. His attention to rabbinical studies involved him in a controversy which spread his fame over all Europe. A baptized Jew, Pfefferkorn, in Cologne in A.D. 1507 exhibited a neophyte’s zeal by writing bitter invectives against the Jews, and in A.D. 1509 called upon the Emperor Maximilian to have all rabbinical writings burnt because of the blasphemies against Christ which they contained. The emperor asked the opinion of the universities of Mainz, Cologne, Erfurt, and Heidelberg, as well as of Reuchlin and the Cologne inquisitor Hoogstraten. Erfurt and Heidelberg gave a qualified, Reuchlin an unqualified answer in opposition to the proposal. The openly abusive Jewish writings, _e.g._ the notorious _Toledoth Jeschu_, he would indeed condemn, but all other books, _e.g._ the Talmud, the Cabbala, the biblical glosses and commentaries, books of sermons, prayers, and sacred songs, as well as all philosophical, scientific, poetic, and satirical writings of the Jews, he was prepared unconditionally to defend. Pfefferkorn contended against him passionately in his “Handspiegel” of A.D. 1511, to which Reuchlin replied in his “Augenspiegel.” The theological faculty of Cologne, mostly Dominicans, pronounced forty-three