After receiving his doctorate in law from Tübingen University, Reuchlin proceeded to advance to the top of the German-Catholic ruling circles: as a justice on an appellate court, a judge at the Imperial Chamber Court at Speyer; one of the three judges of the Swabian League, and as an emissary to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Often times the cases he judged were derived from Catholic Canon Law. Reuchlin used his position as a powerful Catholic jurist to advance the legal status of Judaics to the level of citizen, which contradicted the via antiqua of the Church as embodied by Aquinas and medieval Popes Innocent III and Gregory IX, and other pontiffs, as well as councils and theologians.
From 1482 onward, his patrons were the Florentine Medici dynasts among whom was the Medici Pope Leo X. Reuchlin took Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Catholic Kabbalah to the next level of progression with his seminal works of rabbinic mysticism, De virbo mirifico of 1494 (which argued that all religions including Judaic Kabbalism and the paganism of Hermes share with Christianity fundamental, sublime truths), and De arte cabalistica (1517), his heinous book of black magic which he dedicated to Leo X, and which the pope accepted without disapproval of any kind.
Canonized as “St. Johannes Reuchlin” by Erasmus, Reuchlin is among the most important inheritors of the legacy pioneered by Ficino and Pico, as this legacy began to further reveal itself, as the Renaissance in Italy and Germany devolved further into the depths of Neoplatonic-Hermetic Kabbalism. All three men were Judaizing enemies of the ancient Catholic faith. Yet they had powerful patrons within the hierarchy of the Church of Rome. Reuchlin was a prime mover in the campaign for the improvement of the political and legal status of Judaic persons. 6He regarded the Scholastic/Thomistic inheritance as a “barbarous and uncultivated philosophy.” In Pico’s immediate wake, he further advanced the Kabbalah within the papacy and among practicing sorcerers: “Reuchlin…introduced the Kabbalah, which became very important in ceremonial magic.”7
In 1490 Reuchlin met for a second time in Italy with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Pico “confirmed for him that the study of Jewish Cabbala and Christian beliefs were directly related and could be integrated to an orthodox Christian philosophy.” 8
Reuchlin’s handlers consisted of Rabbi Joel of Rosheim, who referred to him as “one of the scholars of the nations who had helped to restore the (Oral) Torah to its proper place,” and Catholic Bishop Johannes von Dalberg, who brought him rare Kabbalistic manuscripts and encouraged his Judaizing mission, in return for which, in 1494, Reuchlin dedicated his inaugural Kabbalistic book, De verbo mirifico, to Bishop Dalberg.
At the behest of Rabbi Rosheim, in 1492 Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III conferred the title of “Count Palatine” on Reuchlin. In 1498 Reuchlin represented Elector Philip of Palatine before the papal court, where he successfully had a papal edict against Philip withdrawn. In a letter to Leo X in 1517, he wrote:
“I was the first to bring Greek studies back to Germany and the first to present and teach the art and study of the Hebrew language to the universal church.” Wilhelm Maurer asserts that Reuchlin’s sympathy for Judaism was intensified by his study of Pythagoras and Kabbalah. For Reuchlin the synthesis of Pythagoreanism, Platonism and Kabbalism reflected an integral Christian legacy.9
One of Reuchlin’s well-placed protectors was the German Catholic Jacob Questenberg, who was papal secretary in 1504 and head of the Secretariat for the College of Cardinals in 1514. Emperor Friedrich meanwhile, had been guided by Rabbi Jacob ben Jehiel Loans (1440-1493), who served as Reuchlin’s guide as well, in the last year of the life of the rabbi. Reuchlin addressed Rabbi Loans as “My lord, dear master Jacob…with deep longing I wish to see your blessed face to delight in the radiance of your bright countenance by hearing your most pure doctrine.”
Reuchlin “believed that the evangelical purity of faith that he sought was hidden in the Scriptures and Jewish Cabalistic philosophy…He never considered his research to be a deviation from orthodox belief, but a legitimate correction…he also believed they (“Jews”) possessed a secret wisdom, the esoteric philosophy of the Cabala. If they could be prevailed upon to divulge these teachings to Christians, it would benefit the initiated, and lead them to a deeper insight into the mysteries of their beliefs…He believed that by the publication of the Augenspiegel, he would generate sufficient support for his views among scholars and educated lay people that they would cause the (Catholic) authorities to reconsider their coercive measures. The publication…led to a moratorium on the destruction of Jewish books.” 10
Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel (“Eye Mirror”), submitted to the Imperial Council, consisted of four parts: two are related to preventing rabbinic books from being confiscated or destroyed. The third and fourth sections are attempts to refute Thomistic scholastics and the eminent and much-maligned (by modern “historians”) Judaic convert to Catholicism, Johann Pfefferkorn (ca. 1468-1522), author of Handt Spiegel (“Hand Mirror”). At considerable expense, according to Reuchlin himself (in his Defensio), one thousand copies were published by the renowned printer Thomas Anselm of Tübingen, and “could have been sold rather than given away, had it not been for interference in Frankfurt from a common priest” (“plebius sacerdos”).
The Cryptocracy was greatly inconvenienced by the monkey wrench that Pfefferkorn had tossed into the machinery of Judaization, which Catholics like Ficino, Pico and now Reuchlin were constructing inside the Church’s theological and philosophical superstructure. Augenspiegel was written to specifically counter Pfefferkorn. The opening paragraph reads:
“Doctor Johannes Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel. Judge of Civil Law of the Swabian League for His Imperial Majesty, the Archduke of Austria and the Electors and Princes; his truthful apologia against and contrary to the untruthful slanderous pamphlet previously published and distributed by a baptized Jew named Pfefferkorn.”
Thanks to scholarly and sincere Judaic converts like Pfefferkorn the usual dumbshow concerning the contents of the texts of the Babylonian Talmud and ancillary sacred rabbinic books could not so easily be misrepresented as benign. Consequently, in Reuchlin’s defense of the religion of Judaism’s holiest books, he was forced to begin by accepting the undeniable fact that they contain imprecations against, for example, Jesus and Mary. One would think that fact would be sufficient to ensure a heavy embargo on the Talmud, for example, but Reuchlin was a lawyer and court official with powerful backing from Uriel von Gemmingen, the Bishop of Mainz, and other Catholic prelates and princes, and it fell to him to undertake the absurd two-fold task of approving the distribution of blasphemy while disapproving of its contents. Reuchlin wrote:
“In this pamphlet you will find: a description of the case including an appropriate preface, declarations, and demands; advice on whether the Jewish books are to be burned; to the point brought up regarding sundry Jewish books and writings, you will find an answer to every point without exception in the counsel that follows. Throughout the counsel, at the outset, in the middle and at the end, all parts are evaluated concerning the underlying question of whether a book that intentionally sets out to mock, slander and blaspheme Our Lord Jesus, His holy mother, the saints, or our Christian doctrine, should be seized and burned, if it is willfully possessed by a Jewish individual. This is to be undertaken, however, with the understanding that if such writings are found blasphemous or heretical and are consequently forbidden to Jewish people, according to Christian doctrine, they therefore should be confiscated and burned.
“Concerning the peculiarity of the Talmud; that it is compiled from various and sundry books into one and is categorized into different sections; in which books of the Talmud, cited above, are blasphemy or heresy that are forbidden to Jews, according to Christian principles or laws, should be burned as advised hereafter…Apart from these writings, other books that are not officially condemned or forbidden by Christian doctrine, without regard to whether their contents are found useful or useless, good or bad, frivolous or foolish, should be permitted to remain a
nd left untouched as with the other extant erroneous texts; all of their other books to be treated similarly….Lastly, a truthful repudiation of the false claims by the baptized Jew made in the pamphlet cited as follows. To all and sundry in whichever most esteemed, honorable stand or degree they may be, who are seekers of truth and enemies of lies, disseminated verbally or in writing, which ought to be despised according to God’s laws, I, Johannes Reuchlin, doctor of imperial laws, beg you to give heed to the libelous act in which falsehood was poured out in secret schemes in a published, libelous and execrable pamphlet entitled Hand Mirror, by a baptized Jew named Pfefferkorn…and publicized by way of numerous copies at the last Frankfurt Spring Fair.”
Reuchlin was outraged that a “converted Jew,” someone he regarded as little better than a peasant, had dared to challenge his lofty intellectual and legal credentials as a member of the Catholic ruling class in the Holy Roman Empire. According to Reuchlin, Pfefferkorn personally paid a call on him at his home in Stuttgart in the late summer of 1509, thinking Reuchlin would aid him in his campaign and seeking to enlist him in it. Reuchlin supposedly gave Pfefferkorn a sheet of paper listing the “scholarly reasons” why he would not join with Pfefferkorn. These reasons were rejected and therein lies one root of their conflict.
Pfefferkorn and Reuchlin would also clash in April, 1511 at the imperial court of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian in Würtemberg. There the Emperor’s Catholic “experts” criticized and attacked Pfefferkorn, not Reuchlin. This was a departure from the favor Pfefferkorn had initially received in 1509 from Maximilian, who at that time conferred upon him the right to confiscate books throughout the Holy Roman Empire that blasphemed Jesus Christ or contradicted the Law of Moses in the Torah. The latter was a particularly enlightened mandate. Pfefferkorn’s license from the emperor to ensure the integrity of the Old Testament stood in contrast to the anti-Old Testament heresy of Marcion which was popular in Catholic circles in Europe in the early 16th century; even Erasmus was tainted by it. 11 But as we shall see, with the exception of the local Dominican Order in Germany, and some local Franciscans, the Church of Rome and Catholic rulers such as Emperor Maximilian, would toss Pfefferkorn to the wolves of Talmudic-Kabbalism.
Reuchlin is presented by Establishment historians as a fount of Renaissance humanist progressivism, yet in the pages of his Augenspiegel, Reuchlin’s venom was unlimited: he suggested that Pfefferkorn should be executed for disclosing official secrets, and insinuates that Pfefferkorn’s wife is a prostitute.12
Proceeding further in the introduction to his Augenspiegel, Reuchlin again raises the specter of executing Pfefferkorn for publishing a different pamphlet, “which calls on the subjects of the empire to create an insurrection against the authorities which is forbidden by imperial law and punished by hanging.” This pamphlet was Pfefferkorn’s 1509 jeremiad against usury, In diesem buchlein vindet yr ein entlichen furtrag wie die blinden Juden yr Ostern halten. The only “insurrection” Pfefferkorn was advocating was against Judaic bankers and shylocks, yet Reuchlin misrepresented his writing as stirring up a treasonous revolt against the Catholic kingdom itself.
After several pages of self-justification and accusations contra Pfefferkorn, Reuchlin proceeds to his lawyer’s brief for the Talmud under the title, “Counsel on Whether to Confiscate Suppress and Burn All the Books of the Jews,” which in itself is a con, since no one was advocating confiscating or burning the Old Testament.
He begins his argument with an unintentionally risible ecumenical statement that would not be out of place in the Catholic Church of the late 20th century: “Every person should be allowed to retain his old, inherited traditions, customs and possessions, even if he is a robber. Consequently Jews should be permitted to retain their synagogues, called ‘schools’ in peace and tranquility and should not be obstructed.”
The synagogue of robbers should be permitted, on the grounds that they are “old, inherited traditions”! Concerning the non-Biblical canonical rabbinic texts of Judaism, Reuchlin is equally phantasmagoric: “…only a very few (passages) will be found to contain mockery, slander or blasphemy against Our Lord God Jesus and His Venerable mother and against apostles and saints.” In indicating where these offensive statements will be found he uses a clever tactic and misdirects attention away from the Talmud by indicting the obscure Nizzahon and the non-rabbinic book, The Toledet Jesu. The latter, though among the most vicious of anti-Christian works, is not part of the rabbinic canon and therefore cannot be definitively laid at their door. What Reuchlin terms the Nizzahon is the Nizzahon Vetus, (“Old Book of Polemic”) a medieval (probably late 13th century) German-Ashkenazic repository of anti-Christian arguments for polemical purposes, which contains slurs typical of the Talmudic mentality, including the oft-stated one that the Blessed Virgin Mary was a “promiscuous woman.” However, unlike the Talmud or the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides, the Nizzahon Vetus is not a source of rabbinic halacha (law) and does not have canonical status in rabbinic Judaism.13 This datum affords Reuchlin the opportunity to discount these texts and the hatred behind them as apocryphal, and to continue with his sideshow by lending support to the comical Judaic claim that “Jews” themselves were in the habit of destroying the Nizzahon and Toledet Jesu: “I heard quite often from Jews with whom I had many discussions some time ago at the court of Frederick III…that such books were appropriated and destroyed by the Jews themselves and it has been forbidden to write these kinds of books…”
Reuchlin proceeds to the Talmud, a very different kettle of fish in his view: “I will commence by addressing the Talmud, a compilation of all of God’s laws. It was compiled 400 years after Christ’s birth…the nobly born and most learned Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola writes in the Apologia that the Talmud was compiled 150 years after Christ…Now it is likely that after the death of Our Lord Jesus the Jewish leaders saw that the Christians wanted to ‘keep a tight rein’…and in consequence these leaders came together in that time to preserve the old doctrines and confute the disputations of the heathens and converted Jews. Thus they collected in book form the opinions and expositions of their old masters and of their most gifted, profound, and erudite scholars. And, so as to preserve these great efforts and labors, which they and their forefathers had in composing and writing them, a work in which God Himself would take pleasure, they have commanded their own people to hold this book in great reverence. It is reasonable and understandable, consequently, that so as to keep their writings from being treated with contempt by their descendants, they were committed to writing down all that was applicable. This was done so that they could be better at defending themselves against the Gentiles and apostate Jews.”
Reuchlin gives himself away when he opines that “God himself would take pleasure” in the Talmud; this is consonant with the inordinate pride and self-praise which is common in the Babylonian Talmud, from which Reuchlin seems to have drunk deeply. We continue with his writing in the Augenspiegel: “I say that the Talmud must not be burned or repressed…It is common knowledge that there has to be superstition and error and that human reason cannot stop it, as St. Paul says in I Corinthians 11…And we do not term superstitious those who erroneously comment on the Sacred Scripture and maintain their view contrary to the Holy Ghost. It is said correctly that the Jews cannot be heretics since they never were believers in the Christian religion. Hence they cannot be classified as heretics and their disagreement termed heretical. Consequently, it is valuable to us to preserve the Talmud and maintain it.”
The Rabbinic Curse on Christians
In his Augenspiegel, “the esteemed Renaissance savant” Reuchlin lies flagrantly concerning the existence of the rabbinic curse on Christians which is contained in the Birkat Haminim Amidah prayer. Pfefferkorn had unmasked it in his 1509 pamphlet with the satirical title, Ich bin ain Buchlinn, der Juden veindt is mein namen (“I’m a little book, the Jew’s enemy is my name”). Reuchlin attempts to debunk Pfefferkorn’s accusation in that pompous tone of ind
ignant sanctimony which then (and now) is employed against those who are branded “anti-Semitic.” He produces this boldface lie about the Amidah: “…far from praying for the demise of Christianity, (rabbis) pray for its peace and harmony” (Reuchlin, Defensio, 1513).14 This denial is an insult to the intelligence of his readers.
We will quote Reuchlin’s falsified version of the rabbinic curse. Then we will explore at length the evidence for its existence and implementation in Judaism. We ask for your forbearance as we do so. Reuchlin is so considerable an icon of Renaissance humanism, that anything less than a comprehensive marshaling of the evidence would be insufficient to document the extent to which he was an unscrupulous liar and faker. We intend to leave no stone unturned in demonstrating the willingness of unscrupulous deceivers of the prestige and caliber of Johannes Reuchlin to perpetrate a hoax for the sake of upholding the reputation of Pharisaic Judiasm.
Reuchlin writes contra Pfefferkorn: “Recently a pamphlet was published hostile to the Jews, where reference was made to a prayer said to be incorporated in their prayer books which they are supposed to repeat against Christians…As a result grave charges have been brought against them, that they curse the Apostles, the whole Church and the Holy Roman Empire. In this way one could readily instigate so much hatred against the Jews on the part of the ignorant that they suffer the loss of life and limb. If, however, one examines it in the correct light one finds nothing against the baptized or the Apostles, Church or Empire.”
The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome Page 31