Johannes Reuchlin: Band III: 1514–1517

The continuation of the lawsuit regarding the ›Augenspiegel‹ was the ever present background for the 90 letters in this volume. When Reuchlin won his case at the episcopal court of Speyer in the spring of 1514, Cologne theologians called upon the highest judicial body for questions of faith: the Holy See in Rome. Reuchlin’s close contacts to influential cardinals of the Roman Curia such as Egidio da Viterbo, Domenico Grimani or Adriano Castellesi are documented by the correspondence during these years as are the efforts made concerning the involvement of Pope Leo X himself. The correspondence with men such as Erasmus of Rotterdam or Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples illustrates the broad support given to Reuchlin at that time by the humanist avant-garde. The letters written by Hermann von dem Busche, Johannes Crotus Rubeanus and Ulrich von Hutten lead directly to the authors of possibly the most famous of all modern Latin satires: the ›Epistolae obscurorum virorum‹, published anonymously in two parts in 1515 and 1517.