A Flood of Books and Schools
In literature too, as in art and life, Germany of this period had its own zeal. Literacy spread. A flood of books poured over Germany from sixteen publishers in Basel, twelve in Augsburg, twenty-one in Cologne and twenty-four in Nuremberg. Anton Koberger alone employed twenty-four presses and a hundred workers. The book trade at the crowded commercial fairs of Frankfurt, Salzburg, Nördlingen and Ulm counted as one of the main branches of commerce. A German of the time says that today everyone wants to read and write; another reports that there is no end to the new books being written. In the cities the number of schools grew, and every town provided scholarships for poor but talented students. In this half century nine new universities were founded, and the universities of Vienna, Heidelberg and Erfurt opened their arms to the new learning. Literary academies arose in Strasbourg, Augsburg, Basel, Vienna, Nuremberg and Mainz.
Wealthy citizens such as Peutinger, Pirckheimer and the emperor Maximilian himself opened their libraries, art collections and purses to eager scholars. Great churchmen such as Johann von Dalberg, bishop of Worms, and Albrecht of Brandenburg, archbishop of Mainz, were among the enlightened patrons of learning, poetry and art.
Humanism Turned Toward the Bible
The German Church, under the guidance of the popes, welcomed the Renaissance, but laid its emphasis on the study of the sacred texts and the writings of the Church Fathers from the standpoint of language. The Latin Vulgate was printed twenty-six times in Germany between 1453 and 1500; before Luther's translation there were twenty German translations of the Bible. The circulation of the New Testament among the people prepared them for Luther's fight over the contrast between the "four Gospels" and the later Church; and the reading of the Old Testament played a part in the renewed Judaizing of Christianity that is one of the features of the Protestant movement.
At the beginning, and after its support of Luther, the humanist movement had more effect on theology than the Italian movement did. Germany, unlike Italy, had no classical past; it did not enjoy the advantage of having been conquered and educated by the Roman Empire; it had no direct link with the non-Christian ancient world; and its scholarship in this period seldom went beyond research in the writings of the Church Fathers. Its Renaissance was in truth more a revival of early Christianity than a rebirth of Greek and Roman literature and philosophy. The German Renaissance was drowned in the Reformation.
Agricola, Wimpfeling and Trithemius
All the same, German humanism took its model from Italy. Poggio Bracciolini, Aeneas Sylvius and other Italian humanists came to Germany and brought the seed of the movement to this land; German students, pilgrims, clergy, merchants and politicians went to Italy and, on returning, carried the pollen of the Renaissance back to Germany even without wishing to. Rudolf Agricola, son of a priest, a Dutchman, studied much at Erfurt, Cologne and Louvain, then spent seven more years in Italy on Latin and Greek, and returned to teach at Groningen, Heidelberg and Worms. His age marveled at his rare qualities: modesty, simplicity, honor, piety and purity. He wrote a Latin worthy of Cicero's pen and predicted that before long Germany would look no less Latin than Latium. In truth, in the next generation, Holland, Agricola's birthplace, gave the world an Erasmus, a Latinist who would have found life easy even in the Rome of Tacitus and Quintilian. On his journey to Rome Agricola caught a fever from which he died at Heidelberg at forty-two (1485).
Jakob Wimpfeling, whose temper was as sharp and rough as his Latin was soft and polished, rivaled Agricola in influence though not in popularity. This "German teacher," determined to raise Germany to Italy's rank in education and literature, drew up plans for a system of public schools and formed learned societies, and at the same time foresaw that the intellectual progress of mankind, if not accompanied by moral progress, is very dangerous. He asked: what is the use of all our learning if our character and conduct are not equally noble; or the fruit of all our efforts if we are not pious and God-fearing; or the profit of all our knowledge if we do not love our neighbor; or the benefit of all our wisdom if we are not humble?
The last of these genuine humanists was Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, who wrote in 1496, despite his office, that the time of building monasteries is over and the time of tearing them down has come. Celtis, another humanist of the age, describes him as abstaining from drink and loathing animal foods, living, like our ancestors before physicians brewed special potions for gout and fever, on vegetables, eggs and milk. In his short life he became a master of all learning: skilled in Latin, Greek and Hebrew and their literatures, he corresponded with Erasmus, Maximilian, the imperial electors and other celebrities of the time; the common people of that age explained his achievements only by the theory that he possessed mysterious supernatural powers. At any rate he died at fifty-four (1516).
Celtis and His Circle
Conrad Celtis was the most ardent and active humanist in Germany. Like a hurried politician whose business is delivering political letters, he went from city to city; he studied in Italy, Poland and Hungary, and taught at Cologne, Heidelberg, Cracow, Prague, Mainz, Vienna, Ingolstadt, Padua and Nuremberg. He discovered precious forgotten manuscripts, such as the plays of Hroswitha, and old maps like those he gave to Peutinger, which bear his name. Wherever he went he gathered students around him and instilled his zeal for poetry, classical literature and German antiquities. In the book's date, which is probably a slip for 1487, the emperor Frederick III crowned him poet laureate of Germany at Nuremberg. Celtis founded at Mainz the influential and flourishing Rhenish Literary Society (1491). This society included scholars, theologians, philosophers, physicians, historians, poets and jurists, such as the eminent lawyer Ulrich Zasius, and scholars like Pirckheimer, Trithemius, Reuchlin and Wimpfeling. In Vienna, with money given by Maximilian, he set up an academy of poetry (1501), nominally part of the university, in which teachers and students lived together. In the course of his studies Celtis had apparently lost his religious faith, and he voiced questions such as whether the soul will live after death and whether there really is a God. On his travels he grew attached to many women, though none of these attachments led to marriage. (The book quotes a gay remark of his on this subject, which is omitted here.)
The Immoral Doubt and the Quiet One
In the last decades before Luther this immoral skepticism became common among German humanists. Eobanus Hessus wrote, in fluent and polished Latin, the Heroides Christianae (1514), in imitation of Ovid, more like him in treating improper matters than in form; in it he included love letters from Mary Magdalene to Jesus and from the Virgin Mary to God the Father, and to match his deeds to his words he arranged for himself, like Cellini, a loose life; in drinking he outdid all drinkers, and to empty a bucket of beer at a draught was nothing to him.
But Conrad Mutianus Rufus succeeded in making a friendly compromise between skepticism and religion. After studying at Deventer, Erfurt and in Italy, he settled for a modest church post at Gotha and wrote on his door: "House of Peace." He gathered admirable pupils around him and taught them to hold the judgments of philosophers above those of priests, but warned them that they must hide their doubts about Christian doctrine from the common people, following the rites and customs of the Church with dignity. He said that by faith we mean not agreement between what we say and the truth, but agreement with a belief that was established about divine matters by force and for gain. He rejected the saying of Mass for the dead as useless, found fasting disagreeable and confession a heavy task. He held that the Bible contains many legends, like the story of Jonah and Job, and that Christ perhaps did not die on the cross; that Greeks and Romans, in so far as they lived honorably, were Christians without knowing it and would certainly go to heaven. Rites and observances should not be judged by their literal and literary side but by their moral effects; if they strengthen the social order and individual virtue, they should be accepted without question. Mutianus demanded a pure life of his pupils, and in his last years swore that he would devote his studies to piety and learn from poets, philosophers or historians nothing but what is useful to the advance of Christianity. Having lived on the consolations of philosophy, he died with the blessings of the Church (1526).
Reuchlin and the Hebrew Books
The anger and hatred that the skepticism of the recent humanists had naturally roused among believers piled up and fell all at once on the gentlest and mildest scholar of the age. Johann Reuchlin, following medieval custom and thanks to his knowledge of Latin, the language of instruction in western Europe, drew learning from several centers. He studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew and law with great ardor at the grammar school of his native town and at the universities of Freiburg, Paris, Basel, Orleans and Poitiers, and in Linz, Milan, Florence and Rome. Following the German humanists, he gave his name a Latin form. At twenty he compiled a Latin dictionary that was reprinted several times. In Rome John Argyropoulos gave him a difficult passage of Thucydides to translate; Reuchlin rendered it so offhand that the old Greek exclaimed in amazement that Greece has fled beyond the Alps. This eager student let no rabbi pass without learning a Hebrew word from him. Mutianus claims to have heard that Reuchlin gave a Jewish scholar ten gold coins to explain a Hebrew phrase, but this can be only the pleasant dream of a humanist. Pico della Mirandola encouraged Reuchlin to learn the Kabbalah. Reuchlin compared Jerome's translation with the Hebrew original of the Old Testament and found many errors in the work that theologians commonly counted a faultless authority. At thirty-eight (1493) he was appointed professor of Hebrew at Heidelberg. His Hebrew dictionary and grammar set the study of the Hebrew language and the Old Testament on a firm scholarly foundation and strongly influenced the effect of the Jewish Bible on Protestant thought. Gradually his admiration for Hebrew language and literature overshadowed his interest in the classics of Greece and Rome. He wrote that Hebrew is a pure, concise and exact language, the language by which God spoke to man and in which man spoke face to face with angels. In all his research he kept the integrity of his own faith, and though he gave it a tinge of mysticism, in all his writings and teaching he sincerely bowed to the authority of the Church.
A strange combination of events made him the hero of the German Renaissance. In 1508 Johannes Pfefferkorn, a Jewish rabbi, in the book's phrase, who had become a priest, published a book called the Mirror of the Jews, in which he denounced the policy of persecuting Jews and cleared them of the fabricated, false crimes people attributed to them; but he asked them to give up usury and belief in the Talmud and to convert to Christianity. With the support of the Dominican friars of Cologne he submitted to the emperor a letter proposing that all Hebrew books except the Old Testament be destroyed. Maximilian ordered that all Jewish literary works that bore in any way on Christianity be handed to Pfefferkorn and examined by the universities of Erfurt, Cologne, Mainz and Heidelberg, by Jakob van Hoogstraten, head of the Inquisition at Cologne, and by Reuchlin because of his skill in Hebrew language and learning. All but Reuchlin voted that the books should be seized and burned. Reuchlin's single minority opinion is a landmark in the history of religious freedom and toleration. He divided the Jewish books into seven classes: one class was those that mock Christianity harshly and should be burned; but the rest, including the Talmud, should be kept, if only for their usefulness to scholarship. Furthermore the Jews, both as subjects of the empire and because they are not bound by Christian obligations, have the right to freedom of thought. In private letters Reuchlin had called Pfefferkorn an "ass" who knows nothing properly of the books whose destruction he proposed.
Pfefferkorn answered these compliments with a Hand Mirror and attacked Reuchlin as a tool and bribe-taker of the Jews. Reuchlin answered Pfefferkorn's clods with stones in his Eyeglass, and this raised a storm of anger among the people. The theological faculty of Cologne complained that Reuchlin's book made the Jews too happy and asked him to withdraw it. Maximilian forbade its sale. Reuchlin appealed to Pope Leo X; the pope referred the question to a group of advisers, who declared the book harmless. Leo suspended the suit but assured the humanists around him that no harm would come to Reuchlin. Meanwhile Pfefferkorn and his allies among the Dominicans accused Reuchlin before the Cologne Inquisition of unbelief and treason to the Christian faith; the archbishop of Cologne intervened and referred the case to Rome; Rome placed the hearing in the hands of the court of the bishop of Speyer, and that court acquitted Reuchlin. The Dominicans in their turn appealed to Rome, and the faculties of Cologne, Erfurt, Mainz, Louvain and Paris ordered Reuchlin's books burned.
The Letters of Obscure Men
One remarkable event that clearly shows the growth and vigor of German cultural life at this time was the number of great and famous men who rose to defend Reuchlin: Erasmus, Pirckheimer, Peutinger, Oecolampadius of Basel, Fisher, bishop of Rochester, Ulrich von Hutten, Mutianus, Eobanus, Hess, Luther, Melanchthon and even a number of eminent churchmen who, as in Italy, favored the humanists. The imperial electors, the princes and fifty-three German cities declared their support for Reuchlin. The letters of his defenders were collected and printed as Letters of Famous Men (1514). In 1515 the humanists launched the crushing book Letters of Obscure Men to Master Ortwin Gratius, professor of literature at the University of Cologne. This book is one of the great satires in the history of literature. It had such success that in 1516 another edition appeared with many additions, and the next year a sequel was printed. The authors presented themselves as devout monks, admirers of Gratius and enemies of Reuchlin, and introduced themselves under strange names such as Nicolaus Caprimulgius ("goat-milker"), Johannes Pelzer (tanner), Simon Wurst (sausage-maker) and Conradus Unckebunck.
In deliberately faulty Latin written in imitation of the monks' style, they complained of the nonsense the "poets" (meaning the German humanists) had heaped on them; they eagerly asked for news of Reuchlin's case; and in the same breath they exposed the foolish ignorance and the coarseness of their own morals and ideas, framed ridiculous questions in the guise of serious scholastic questions, cited Scripture in excuse of blameworthy acts, and made indirect fun of confession, the sale of indulgences, the worship of relics and the authority of the popes. The literary world of Germany could not tell who wrote this book; only later was it learned that many of the letters of the first edition were written by Crotus Rubeanus of Erfurt, a pupil of Mutianus, and the rest by Ulrich von Hutten. Pope Leo X, whose anger was roused, forbade the reading and possession of the book and condemned Reuchlin, though he spared him the costs of the Speyer trial (1520). Reuchlin, then sixty-five, tired and worn out, gave up the struggle, took refuge in obscurity, and was lost in the dazzling glare of the religious movement.
Why Humanism Faded
In this great and unceasing conflict German humanism also became unsupported. On one side most of the universities set themselves against it; on the other the religious reformers, engaged in a deadly battle and strengthening their movement by a religious faith built on personal salvation in the other world, had little time to study the ancient civilization of Greece and Rome or to improve man's life in this world. The German humanists themselves prepared the ground for this defeat by not passing from Greek literature to Greek philosophy, by wandering in clumsy quarrels and disputes, and by a kind of mysticism far lower than Eckhart's.
They left no great work behind; the grammars and dictionaries that Reuchlin hoped would be "a monument more lasting than bronze" were soon obsolete and forgotten. Yet who knows whether, if the humanists had not freed the mind of the German people to some degree from the terror of the papal partisans, Luther would have dared to bring his David-like blows down on Tetzel? The followers of Reuchlin and Mutianus formed a strong and active minority at Erfurt, where Luther studied for four years, and the greatest German poet of the age, who drew his inspiration from the humanist movement, became an ardent herald of the Reformation.