REUCHLIN, JOHANN (1455-1522), German humanist and Hebraist, was born on Feb. 22, 1455, at Pforzheim in the Black Forest, where his father was an official of the Dominican monastery. The name was graecized by his Italian friends into Capnion. Reuchlin constantly writes himself Phorcensis. He learned Latin at the monastery school at Pforzheim, and spent a short time in 147o at the university of Freiburg. His fine voice gained him a place in the household of Charles I., margrave of Baden, and he was chosen to accompany to the university of Paris the young prince Frederick. In Paris he learned Greek, and he attached himself to the leader of the Paris realists, Jean Heynlin, or a Lapide (d. 1496), whom he followed to the vigorous young university of Basel in 1474. At Basel Reuchlin took his master's degree (1477), and began to lecture, teaching a more classical Latin than was then common in German schools, and also explain ing Aristotle in Greek. His Greek studies were continued at Basel under Andronicus Contoblacas, and he became acquainted with the bookseller, Johann Amorbach, for whom he prepared a Latin lexicon (Vocabularies Breviloquus, 1st. ed., 1475-76). Reuchlin soon left Basel to study under George Hieronymus at Paris. He then studied law at Orleans (1478), and at Poitiers, where he be came licentiate in July 1481. On his return to Germany he was engaged as interpreter by Count Eberhard of WUrttemberg, for a tour in Italy. They started for Florence and Rome in February 1482. His connection with the count became permanent, and after his return to Stuttgart he received important posts at Eberhard's court. About this time he appears to have married, but little is known of his married life. He left no children; but in later years his sister's grandson Melanchthon was almost as a son to him till the Reformation estranged them.
In 1490 he was again in Italy. Here he saw Pico della Miran dola, to whose Cabbalistic doctrines he afterwards became heir, and also made the friendship of the pope's secretary, Jakob Ques tenberg. On an embassy to the emperor Frederick at Linz in 1492, he began to read Hebrew with the emperor's Jewish physi cian Jakob ben Jehiel Loans. In 1494 his rising reputation had been greatly enhanced by the publication of De Verbo Mirifico.
lations from the Greek authors. He was during a great part of his life the real centre of all Greek teaching as well as of all Hebrew teaching in Germany. Reuchlin pronounced Greek as his native teachers had taught him to do, i.e., in the modern Greek fashion. This pronunciation, which he defends in Dialogus de Recta Lat. Graecique Serm. Pron. (1519), came to be known, in contrast to that used by Erasmus, as the Reuchlinian.
At Heidelberg Reuchlin had many private pupils, among whom Franz von Sickingen is the best known name. With the monks he had never been liked ; at Stuttgart also his great enemy was the Augustinian Conrad Holzinger. On this man he took a scholar's revenge in his first Latin comedy Sergius, a satire on worthless monks and false relics.
Through Dalberg, Reuchlin came into contact with Philip, elector palatine of the Rhine, who employed him to direct the studies of his sons, and in 1498 sent him on a mission to Rome. He came back laden with Hebrew books, and found when he reached Heidelberg that a change of government had opened the way for his return to Stuttgart, where his wife had remained all along. His friends had now again the upper hand, and knew Reuchlin's value. In 1500, or perhaps in 1502, he was given high judicial office in the Swabian League, which he held till 1512, when he retired to a small estate near Stuttgart.
For many years Reuchlin had been increasingly absorbed in Hebrew studies, which had for him more than a mere philological interest for as a good humanist he could not rest satisfied with the Vulgate text of the Old Testament. In 1506 appeared his epoch making De Rudimentis Hebraicis—grammar and lexicon—mainly after Kimhi, yet not a mere copy of one man's teaching. The edition was costly and sold slowly. One great difficulty was that the wars of Maximilian I. in Italy prevented Hebrew Bibles com ing into Germany. But for this also Reuchlin found help by print ing the Penitential Psalms with grammatical explanations (1512), and other helps followed from time to time. But his Greek studies had interested him in those fantastical and mystical systems of later times with which the Cabbala has no small affinity. Reuch lin's mystico-cabbalistic ideas and objects were expounded in the De Mirifico, and in the De Arte Cabbalistica (1517).