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So strong, indeed, was the belief in the mysteries of the Cabala, that Reuchlin, the restorer of Hebrew learning in Germany, and Pico di Mirandola, the greatest of Italian savants, accepted them; and not only Pope Leo X. himself, but even statesmen and warriors received with delight Reuchlin's cabalistic treatise, "De Verbo Mirifico," on the mystic word "Schemhamphorash" that hidden name of God, which whosoever can pronounce aright is, for the moment, lord of nature and of all daemons.
But even the best joke of the witty knight would have failed to produce its effect on the listening waiter just now; for the gentlemen outside were again discussing the Reuchlin controversy, and in doing so uttered such odious words about the Cologne theologians, whom Dietel knew as godly gentlemen who consumed an ample supply of food, that he grew hot and cold by turns.
The dispute of Reuchlin with the ecclesiastical authorities at Cologne excited literary Germany from end to end. It was the first general skirmish of the new and the old spirit in Central and Northern Europe. But the man who was destined to become the personification of the Humanist movement, us the new learning was called, was Erasmus.
Foremost among the exponents of this older Humanism, which dates from the middle of the fifteenth century, were Nicholas of Cusa and his disciples, Rudolph Agricola, Alexander Hegius, and Jacob Wimpheling. But the new Humanism and the new Renaissance movement generally throughout Northern Europe centred chiefly in two personalities, Johannes Reuchlin and Desiderius Erasmus.
In 1496 we hear of another visit to it; when Dalberg, who was a prince of humanists, led thither Reuchlin and a party of friends on a voyage of discovery.
He gave Ellenbog every assistance in his studies, allowed him to write hither and thither for books, made continual efforts to procure him first a Hebrew and then a Greek Bible, wrote to Reuchlin to find him a converted Jew as Hebrew teacher, and in 1516 built him a new library; for which Ellenbog writes to a friend asking for verses to put under the paintings of the Doctors of the Church, which are to adorn the walls.
Mosaide has re-established it, which Atrabis, Philo, Avicenne, Raymond Lully, P. de la Mirandola, Reuchlin, Henry More and Robert Flydd have been unable to do. Mosaide knows the number of the gold which corresponds to Jehovah in the world of spirits, and you must agree, gentlemen, that that is of infinite consequence."
It opposed Humanism, and was the stronghold of the method of teaching which the new generation knew as 'Sophistry. It opposed Reuchlin, and was preparing to oppose Luther, and to urge against its own most distinguished pupils the law of penal fire.
Nay, after he had taken his seat, he ordered the landlord, as if he were the master, to see that this and that thing in the kitchen was not forgotten. Unwelcome as his presence doubtless was to his table companions, as sympathizers with Reuchlin and other innovators, well as he doubtless remembered their scornful attacks upon his Latin he was a man to maintain his place.
Teachers of Hebrew, founders of Hebrew type Reuchlin in Germany, Aleander in Paris, Von Hutten as a pamphleteer, and Erasmus as a humanist contribute each a definite momentum.
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