Renaissance Hebrew Studies and Hermetic Philosophy: From Reuchlin to Paracelsus
Among the multitude of special names and attributes treated by the Kabbalah is the name of Christ, which is the synthetic receptacle of all virtues because it is the Name of the Messiah, that is, the name that encompasses the presence of Divine Unity.
Controversies about Reuchlin
Clearly, precisely because he was a promoter of this reform within the Catholic Church, Reuchlin too was persecuted and attacked by the converted Jew Johannes Pfefferkorn. He was a converted Jewish butcher who argued that Jews drew strength from their books and therefore to favor the conversion of Jews it would be better to burn all the books. In doing this, he asked Reuchlin for an opinion as an expert in the field to know how to proceed. Reuchlin initially temporized, then began an open battle. Pfefferkorn then accused him of heresy.
To Pfefferkorn's heresy attacks, Reuchlin responded with the "Letters from Luminous Men," a collection of letters from the greatest luminaries of the time such as Von Hutten and others who explained to the Dominicans behind Pfefferkorn the importance and legitimacy of using Hebrew and Reuchlin's position. Having these letters achieved no success, the same Luminous Men decided to abandon the game and wrote a satirical libel mocking the Dominican in question and exposing his position with the title "Letters from Obscure Men" - from here derives the term obscurantism attributed to Reuchlin's persecutor.
Finally Emperor Maximilian intervened, resolving the matter by ordering Reuchlin to give an answer to Pfefferkorn and end the matter there. Reuchlin then resolved the issue by dividing Hebrew books into 6 classes, declaring one as harmful to Christianity and the others as useful or inconsequential. And finally he requested from the emperor the establishment of two Hebrew chairs at the University for which Jews would have to possess their books.
Tritemio
A friend of Reuchlin and collaborator who instead managed not to be persecuted at all was Abbot Tritemio. Why wasn't he persecuted? For two good reasons: the first is that he was an ecclesiastic who promoted an incredible reform from within the Church, so when the monks of his monastery began to complain about the overly ascetic and monastic lifestyle imposed by the Abbot, he simply decided to leave them be and become a bishop without arousing excessive anger. The other reason he didn't get persecuted was that Tritemio essentially, unlike Reuchlin, wrote practically nothing and what he did write he encrypted so that no one could understand it without a proper key.
Everything arose from the fact that a letter of his to a friend was intercepted and published without his consent. In this letter Tritemio explained the nature of one of his books about to be published, consisting of 4 volumes. The first two were essentially Polygraphy, while the third and fourth books were of a different nature: "The fourth book contains many wonderful things, although purely natural: that is, I can express my thought to someone else while eating or sitting or walking, without any word, sign and many other things that cannot be discussed in public."
Seeing the hornets' nest stirred up by the publication of the letter and the accusations of magic directed at him even before the book's release, Tritemio decided not to publish the book, indeed to publish practically nothing and anyway to encrypt even the little he circulated among his inner circles. So practically while we know everything about Reuchlin, we know practically nothing about Abbot Tritemio.
In reality Tritemio was very active on many fronts and was an innovator in many distinct directions, so much so that he gave inspiration and was the spiritual inspirer of 3 of the greatest Renaissance magical philosophers: Agrippa, whom he knew personally, Paracelsus, who thanks him in one of his letters, and John Dee, who owes the foundations of his angelic divination practice to Tritemio.
Tritemio's strong point was an immoderate passion for study that accompanied him from the tender age of 17 when he ran away from home to go to the University of Heidelberg and join this literary society of which Reuchlin was also part. When Tritemio became the Abbot of Sponheim at 21, he decided to collect all possible books and set up an immense library for the time.
"Study leads to knowledge, but knowledge gives light to love, love to joviality, joviality to community, community to strength, strength to valor, valor to power and power works miracles. This is the only path to the realization of the magical objective, both divine and natural."
Among the various books he found a book of Tironian notes that allowed him to translate a series of manuscripts that had remained untranslated since the time of the Cistercians, therefore he found himself heir to so much knowledge that had definitely been lost at the time.
Paracelsus
How did Tritemio influence contemporary thought? As we have already said, Tritemio was an inspiration for three of the greatest European Renaissance thinkers who took some aspects of his doctrine from him. First of all Paracelsus, who in his letters declares he had among his teachers 4 bishops and an abbot: the abbot of Spanheim. It seems that in the early formative years an important role in Paracelsus's formation was played precisely by Tritemio.
Paracelsus is one of the greatest Renaissance thinkers, a very particular character who gave rise to a movement of medical alchemy or Iatromedicine, which was in some way one of the propellers and bases for the development of modern chemistry and modern medicine. The writing by Tritemio that most influenced Paracelsus was a commentary on the Emerald Tablet.
You saw last time this Hermetic writing that was the basis of infinite reflections and that enunciates this heuristic and cognitive principle called the Principle of Analogy. The Emerald Tablet indeed says: $$\text{"As above, so below, as above so below to make..."}$$