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In early 1518 Martin Luther began pushing for professors in Greek and Hebrew, so the university at Wittenberg could study the classics and the Bible properly. The Greek professor at Leipzig, Petrus Mosellanus, let it be known he might be available. Luther but especially Spalatin, the trusted adviser of Frederick the Wise, began quietly promoting Mosellanus. Did Frederick the Wise accept this? No, he sought advice from Reuchlin, one of the great Hebrew (and Greek) scholars of the empire.
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Melanchthon by Lucas Cranachcourtesy johnhanscom
For Greek, Reuchlin recommended only one man: his own grandnephew, whom he had personally taught. Later, while Frederick the Wise was in Augsburg for the 1518 Reichstag, the staunch defender of Rome Johann Eck sought an audience with him six times. Frederick refused every time. Frederick did however see 20-year-old Philipp Melanchthon, Reuchlin’s grandnephew and his new professor of Greek.
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Melanchthon, similar to Spalatin in his retiring manner, was (also like Spalatin) soon completely won over by Martin Luther and his ideas. Melanchthon was complex. He was more savagely reformist than Luther but much milder in his public discourse. Unlike Luther, who wrote prolifically but with little framework, Melanchthon was less the writer and more the organizer. He organized the new theology into a coherent whole. In only three years he published his classic synthesis Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu hypotyposes theologicae (Wittenberg and Basel, 1521).
References: Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483-1521 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985); Irmgard Höß, Georg Spalatin: Ein Leben in der Zeit des Humanismus und der Reformation, 2nd edition 1989 (Weimar, 1956); and Theodore G. Tappert, ed., Table Talk, volume 54 in Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967).
Q. What would the Reformation have been like without Melanchthon?
Reuchlin must have been at this time himself a very controversial figure, considering his role in frustrating the Emperor Maximilian's planned confiscation of Hebrew books, which I believe the Emperor had intended to facilitate the conversion of Jews in the Holy Roman Empire. So one interesting question is to what extent the suspicion and mistrust with which many would have viewed Reuchlin would have extended to Melanchthon. Another is whether this put Frederick in any difficulties with Maximilian. And yet another, more generally, is what this might say about Frederick's own attitude towards non-Christian faiths. I wonder whether his pilgrimage to the Holy Land might have imparted a more cosmopolitan perspective (at least in the context of the late medieval world). I think it's interesting that the Jews were expelled from Saxony several times during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but if I recall correctly, not during the reigns of Frederick or his brother John.
ReplyDeleteThanks. You have posed many probing questions. As to Frederick and Jews both he and his brother Ernst, Archbishop of Magdeburg, expelled all Jews from their respective territories just before Frederick went on his Holy Trip in 1493. My reading of Ingetraut Ludolphy (p. 314) suggests to me that Ernst may have driven this. He claimed the Jews in his territory were troublemakers. He drove the Jews out of their Quarter, renaming it Mariendorf after the Virgin. This seems an act of revenge in that just about this time Jews were impolitic enough to suggest Mary was not a virgin because the Hebrew word in Isaiah that Christians translated virgin really meant only a maiden.
ReplyDeleteAs to Reuchlin, Frederick was writing letters supporting Reuchlin in 1513 but solely in the spirit of free scholarship. Prior to that was probably the first time Frederick really sought Martin Luther's opinion (through Spalatin about Reuchlin) and respected it.
Maximilian was a pragmatic adventurer of the highest order and disappointed Frederick many times. Although Maximilian and Frederick often opposed each other politically, as virtual cousins they almost adored each other. I believe that although Maximilian loved the arts he rarely cared much about religion or scholarship. Occasionally one of his inner circle would press an issue in the empire that Maximilian really didn't care about. The much feared Franz von Sickingen, egged on by his friend Ulrich von Hutten, took Reuchlin's side too. At the least, Reuchlin's persecutors in Cologne saw the possibility of Sickingen storming the city with thousands of knights and foot soldiers demanding tens of thousands of gulden for 'damages'. Sickingen relished these encounters and the opportunity to extort money. Maximilian must have realized the Reuchlin affair was a loser for him. He stood to gain nothing. In many ways the 'Reuchlin affair' was a small foreshadowing of the 'Luther affair'.
Thanks for your comments and questions.