t Lefevre and Colet had done for the New Testament, John Reuchlin
did for the Old. After studying in France and Italy, where he learned
to know Pico della Mirandola, he settled at Stuttgart and devoted his
life to the study of Hebrew. His _De Rudimentis Hebraicis_, [Sidenote:
1506] a grammar and dictionary of this language, performed a great
service for scholarship. In the late Jewish work, the _Cabbala_, he
believed he had discovered a source of mystic wisdom. The extravagance
of his interpretations of Scriptual passages, based on this, not only
rendered much of his work nugatory, but got him into a great deal of
trouble. The converted Jew, John Pfefferkorn, proposed, in a series of
pamphlets, that Jews should be forbidden to practise usury, should be
compelled to hear sermons and to deliver up all their Hebrew books to
be burnt, except the Old Testament. When Reuchlin's aid in this pious
project was requested it was refused in a memorial dated October 6,
1510, pointing out the great value of much Hebrew literature. The
Dominicans of Cologne, headed by their inquisitor, James Hochstraten,
made this the ground for a charge of heresy. The case was appealed to
Rome, and the trial, lasting six years, excited the interest of all
Europe. In Germany it was argued with much heat in a host of {55}
pamphlets, all the monks and obscurantists taking the side of the
inquisitors and all the humanists, save one, Ortuin Gratius of Cologne,
taking the part of the scholar. The latter received many warm
expressions of admiration and support from the leading writers of the
time, and published them in two volumes, the first in 1514, under the
title _Letters of Eminent Men_. It was this that suggested to the
humanist, Crotus Bubeanus, the title of his satire published
anonymously, _The Letters of Obscure Men_. In form it is a series of
epistles from monks and hedge-priests to Ortuin Gratius. [Sidenote:
_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_]

Writing in the most barbarous Latin, they express their admiration for
his attack on Reuchlin and the cause of learning, gossip about their
drinking-bouts and pot-house amours, expose their ignorance and
gullibility, and ask absurd questions, as, whether it is a mortal sin
to salute a Jew, and whether the worms eaten with beans and cheese
should be considered meat or fish, lawful or not in Lent, and at what
stage of development a chick in the egg becomes meat and therefore
prohibited on Fridays.