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Updated: May 10, 2025
At last, a little before Luther's public appearance, a conflict occurred between the "poets," as the humanists were fond of calling themselves, and the "barbarians," as they called the theologians and monkish writers. An eminent Hebrew scholar, Reuchlin, had become involved in a bitter controversy with the Dominican professors of the University of Cologne.
Now ng is bad enough, but gn seems a worse barbarism. Milton read the vowels, as might have been expected from one living after Reuchlin, who introduced the Italian pronunciation to Christian students in Europe, in the "Portuguese" manner, even to the point of making little, if any, distinction between the Zere and the Sheva.
Against them and against the Dominican Order in particular, Sickingen now declared his open enmity, and his sympathy with the 'good old doctor Reuchlin. In spite of delay and resistance, they were forced to pay the sum demanded. Meanwhile, no doubt under the influence of his friend Crotus, Hutten's eyes were opened about the monk Luther.
Just as in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus they insisted on binding Christianity to Thomas Aquinas, so in the time of Vesalius such men gave all efforts to linking Christianity to Galen. The cry has been the same in all ages.
'You have shown yourself fearful in the affair of Reuchlin; now in that of Luther you do your utmost to convince his adversaries that you are altogether averse from it, though we know better. Do not disown us.
It is useless to speculate as to what the Reformation might have become in his hands; but it certainly could never have become what we rejoice to know it was, while the probabilities are that we would now be fighting the battles which Luther fought for us three and a half centuries ago. Reuchlin was a learned and able man, and deeply conscious of the need of reform.
Wilibald Pirckheimer and Lienhard Groland also frequently forgot the fresh salmon and young partridges, which were served in succession, to share this brilliant novelty. The Abbot of St. AEgidius, too, showed his pleasure in the fortunate discovery, and did not grow quieter until the conversation turned upon the polemical writing which Reuchlin had just finished.
Reuchlin helped with the Hebrew and Greek, and spent two months in Amorbach's house in the summer of 1510 to bring matters forward.
Another Dominican, James van Hoogstraten, prior at Cologne, who had already figured as the prime zealot in the affair about Reuchlin, which he was still prosecuting, now demanded, in his preface to a pamphlet on that subject, that Luther should be sent to the stake as a dangerous heretic.
So those who had defended Reuchlin were now ready to support Luther, to whom they wrote encouraging letters. Luther's works were published by Erasmus' printer at Basel, and sent to Italy, France, England, and Spain. But Erasmus, the mighty sovereign of the men of letters, refused to take sides in the controversy. He asserted that he had not read more than a dozen pages of Luther's writings.
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