Reuchlin, JOHANN, also known by his Græcised name of Capnio, humanist and one of the first promoters of Hebrew studies in Germany, was born at Pforzheim in the Black Forest, 28th December 1455. He received his earliest education at Schlettstadt, and in 1473 was appointed travelling companion to Prince Friedrich of Baden. In this capacity he visited Paris, where he studied Greek under Hermonymus of Sparta, besides assiduously practising the composition of Latin. Two years later Reuchlin went to Basel, where he continued his study of Greek, and wrote his Latin dictionary, Vocabularius Breviloquus (1476). In the same year he paid a second visit to France, studied law at Orleans (1478) and at Poitiers, then, returning to Germany (1481), set up as lecturer at Tübingen. In 1482 and again in 1490 he was in Italy on the business of Duke Eberhard; in 1492 we find him studying Hebrew under a learned Jew, Jacob Jehiel Loans, the imperial physician. In 1496 Reuchlin went to Heidelberg, where he became the main promoter of Greek studies in Germany, though not a public lecturer. In 1498 he was sent to Rome by Philip the Elector-palatine, and applied himself more vigorously than ever to the study of Hebrew and Greek. Reuchlin returned to Stuttgart in 1499, and in 1500 obtained a judicial appointment. In 1506 appeared his Rudimenta Linguae Hebraicæ. His Hebraic studies, which embraced the postbiblical Jewish literature, were drawing him into bitter strife with learned Jews, Jewish proselytes, and the Dominicans, and directly and powerfully helping on the Reformation. It was in 1510 that Johann Pfefferkorn, a Jewish proselyte, in the true spirit of a renegade, called upon princes and subjects to persecute the religion of his fathers, and especially urged the emperor to burn or confiscate all Jewish books except the Bible. Reuchlin remonstrated, maintaining that no Jewish books should be destroyed except those directly written against Christianity. This tolerant attitude drew upon Reuchlin the enmity of the Dominicans, and particularly the inquisitor, Jakob von Hoogstraten. These enemies of Reuchlin held possession of the universities of Paris, Louvain, Erfurt, and Mainz; but all the distinguished and independent thinkers in Germany were on the side of the brave and humane scholar. Among the Reuchlinists we may especially mention the names of Ulrich von Hutten (q.v.) and Franz von Sickingen (q.v.); and to this controversy we owe the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum (q.v.). A quarrel broke out between Ulrich Duke of Württemberg and the Swabian League, in the course of which Reuchlin became a prisoner of Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria, who, however, in 1520 appointed him professor at the university of Ingolstadt. In 1522 the plague broke out at Ingolstadt, and Reuchlin taught once more for a term at Tübingen, but soon after fell sick and died at Liebenzell, near Hirschau, on the 30th of June.
Reuchlin edited various Greek texts, published a Greek grammar, a whole series of polemical pamphlets, and a satirical drama (against the Obscurantists), and in De Verbo Mirifico and De Arte Cabbalistica shows a theosophico-cabbalistic tendency. See Lives by Barham (Lond. 1843), Geiger (1871), Horowitz (1877), and a work on him by Holstein (1888).