=3. The Dominicans.=--As stated in an earlier chapter, the work of the Congregation of the Index had, from the outset, been left very largely under the direction of the Dominicans. After the beginning of the 16th century, the Dominicans came into practical control of the censorship operations in Germany, excepting only in Vienna where the influence of the Jesuits prevailed. In 1510, under the direction of these Dominican censors, a strenuous attempt was made to suppress altogether the literature of the Jews. The influence of the censors was directed not merely against instruction in Hebrew in the university centres, but against the printing, for the use of the Jews themselves, of editions of the Jewish Scriptures, the Jewish commentaries, or of any works by Jewish writers. The fight led by Reuchlin in behalf of Hebrew literature was really a fight for the freedom of the press. Reuchlin, with the all-valuable aid of Erasmus, had in view more particularly the interests of scholarship, but the principles asserted by him and in the end successfully maintained, were those upon which depended the intellectual freedom of the people, of the more common folk as well as scholars. The fight of Reuchlin against the Dominicans led by Pfefferkorn was a hundred and thirty years in advance of the publication of Milton’s _Areopagitica_, but the arguments shaped by Reuchlin and by Erasmus were substantially identical with those presented so eloquently by Milton. In 1512, Reuchlin’s treatise entitled _Augenspiegel_ was prohibited by the emperor and this prohibition was confirmed in 1520 by the pope (Leo X). In 1515, _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_, a work which exerted an important influence in the Protestant contest, secured the honour of prohibition both from the emperor and from the pope.