Note 23 — III.

1455–1522. Not only did Mirandola make the Kabbalah known to the Christians in Italy, but he was the means of introducing it into Germany through John Reuchlin, the father of the German Reformation. This eminent scholar,—who is also called by the Greek name Capnion (καπνίον), or Capnio, which is a translation of his German name Reuchlin, i.e. smoke, in accordance with the fashion of the time; just as Gerard, signifying amiable, assumed the name of Desiderius Erasmus, and Schwartzerth, denoting black earth, took the name of Melanchthon,—was born at Phorzheim December 28, 1455. At the age of seventeen he was called to the court of Baden, and received among the court singers in consequence of his beautiful voice. His brilliant attainments soon attracted notice, and he was sent (1473) with the young Margrave Frederick, eldest son of Charles II, afterwards bishop of Utrecht, to the celebrated high school of Paris. Here he acquired, from Hermonymus of Sparta and other fugitive Greek literati, who went to Paris after the taking of Constantinople (1453), that remarkable knowledge of Greek which enabled him so largely to amass the Attic lore and rendered him so famous through Europe. He went to Basle in 1474, delivered lectures on the Latin language and the classics, and had among his hearers nobles of high rank both from France and Germany. He went to Tübingen in 1481, where his fame secured for him the friendship of Eberhard the Bearded, who made him his private secretary and privy councillor, and as such this prince took Reuchlin with him to Rome in 1482, where he made that splendid Latin oration before the Pope and the cardinals, which elicited from his Holiness the declaration that Reuchlin deserved to be placed among the best orators of France and Italy. From Rome Eberhard took him to Florence, and it was here that Reuchlin became acquainted with the celebrated Mirandola and with the Kabbalah. But as he was appointed licentiate and assessor of the supreme court in Stuttgard, the new residence of Eberhard, on his return in 1484, and as the order of Dominicans elected him as their proctor in the whole of Germany, Reuchlin had not time to enter at once upon the study of Hebrew and Aramaic, which are the key to the Kabbalah, and he had reluctantly to wait till 1492, when he accompanied Eberhard to the imperial court at Ling. Here he became acquainted with R. Jacob b. Jechiel Loanz, a learned Hebrew, and court physician of Frederick III, from whom he learned Hebrew.23 Whereupon Reuchlin at once betook himself to the study of the Kabbalah, and within two years of his beginning to learn the language in which it is written, his first Kabbalistic treatise, entitled De Verbo Mirifico (Basle, 1494), appeared. This treatise is of the greatest rarity, and the following analysis of it is given by Franck. It is in the form of a dialogue between an Epicurean philosopher named Sidonius, a Jew named Baruch, and the author, who is introduced by his Greek name Capnio, and consists of three books, according to the number of speakers.