The Case against Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany (review)

In a 1998 review essay, Erika Rummel applauded the number of recent 'works echoing the Renaissance humanist's call Ad fontes!' She concluded that 'by facilitating access to sources, the books provide a seedbed for future research.' Rummel's modest volume on the Reuchlin affair is just such a work.

Rummel describes the Reuchlin case as 'an object lesson in cultural diversity,' one which 'opens a window on the degree of dissent present in sixteenth-century society.' She builds her case by identifying the three ways in which contemporaries of Reuchlin interpreted the affair, noting that 'protagonists agreed on the facts but not on their meaning.'

First, she discusses the anti-Semitic overtones surrounding the debate between 'orthodox Christians' and so-called 'Judaizers.' The focus of this debate was the issue of Jewish books: should they all - except for the Old Testament - be destroyed because they are dangerous and blasphemous; or should they be preserved because 'none of the writings of the Jews has been rejected or condemned, either by secular or by ecclesiastical authorities'?

Next, Rummel looks at the humanist-scholastic debate over the significance of the Jewish books as historical sources. As she points out, Reuchlin's own perception of the case was that it represented 'the latest in a long series of confrontations between humanists and theologians.' Within this context, some of the best-known polemical tracts concerning the affair were produced, including Letters of Famous Men and Letters of Obscure Men (translated excerpts of which are included in the document section of this book).

Finally, Rummel notes that the participation of many humanists in the debate helped develop what she terms a 'third construct,' in which Reuchlin was linked to Luther, and in which the Reuchlin affair became, most significantly, a 'pre-Reformation controversy.' Rummel devotes chapters to each of the three sixteenth-century interpretations of the affair; she then examines the degree to which each of these interpretations may have been spontaneous or consciously constructed. Her final chapter in the first section of the book is a brief overview of the modern historiographical take on Reuchlin.

The second and longer section of the book is a collection of relevant documents that represent various sixteenth-century views of the event. Rummel includes works by Johann Pfefferkorn, Johann Reuchlin, Willibald Pirckheimer, Erasmus, Jacob Hoogstraten, Ulrich von Hutten, and Martin Luther, among others. She provides useful headnotes for each document, and, as she points out, 'many of the texts ... have been translated into English here for the first time.' In addition, her annotations, while perhaps elementary for the specialist, are numerous and detailed. Once again, her desire to help 'facilitate access to sources' is apparent. Particularly beneficial to upper-level undergraduates and beginning graduate students, The Case against Johann Reuchlin provides a challenging historiographical discussion as well as lucid translations of documents written by the various players in the drama. In her preface, Rummel laments 'the problem of writing about discourse without participating in it.' She expresses hope that her book will 'provide an antidote to the subjectivity inherent in any mediating narrative by supplying the texts on which the narrative is based.' She has done a commendable job of fulfilling this purpose.