Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/509

Rh R E U R E U 491 few and viewed as worthless by most Jews themselves, while the others are either works necessary to the Jewish worship, which was licensed by papal as well as imperial law, or contain matter of value and scholarly interest which ought not to be sacrificed because they are con- nected with another faith than that of the Christians. Instead of destroying a whole literature, which was what Pfefferkoru proposed, he proposed that the emperor should decree that for ten years there be two Hebrew chairs at every German university for which the Jews should furnish books. The other experts and all the universities consulted, except Heidelberg, proposed that all books except Bibles should be taken from the Jews to be investi- gated by a commission ; and, as the emperor still hesitated, the bigots threw on Reuchlin the whole blame of their ill success. Pfefferkorn circulated at the Frankfort fair of 1511 a gross libel (the Handspiegel} declaring that Reuchlin had been bribed; and Reuchlin, burning with the indigation of a man of unsullied integrity, retorted as warmly in the Augensjrieyel (1511). His adversary's next move was to declare the Auc/enspiegel a dangerous book ; the Cologne faculty, with their clean the grand inquisitor Hochstraten, took up this cry, and, encouraged perhaps by some signs of timidity in letters from Reuchlin to two of the Cologne theologians, they called on him to recant not a few dangerous utterances and misapplications of Scripture. Reuchlin was timid, but he was honesty itself. He was willing to receive corrections in theology, which was not his subject, but he could not unsay what he had said ; and as his enemies tried to press him into a corner he at length turned and met them with open defiance in a Defensio contra Calumniatores, 1513. The universities were now appealed to for opinions, and were all against Reuchlin. Even Paris (August 1514) condemned the Augenspiegel, and called on Reuchlin to recant. Meantime a formal process had begun at Mainz before the grand inquisitor, but Reuchlin by an appeal succeeded in trans- ferring the question to Rome. It is needless to follow the long windings of ecclesiastical process ; judgment was not finally given till July 1516 ; and then, though the decision was really for Reuchlin, the trial was simply quashed. The result had cost Reuchlin years of trouble and no small part of his modest fortune, but it was worth the sacrifice. For far above the direct importance of the issue was the great stirring of public opinion which had gone forward. All who loved learning and progress were banded together as they had never been before against the bigots and the stupid universities ; and all humanists felt that the victory was theirs. And if the obscurantists escaped easily at Rome, with only a half condemnation, they received a crushing blow in Germany. No party could survive the ridicule that Avas poured on them in the Epistolse, Obscurorum Virorum. Reuchlin did not long enjoy his victory in peace. In 1519 Stuttgart was visited by famine, civil war, and pestilence. FrOm November of this year to the spring of 1521 the veteran statesman, whom the universal respect felt for his scholarship could not secure against the dangers involved in his political relations, sought refuge in Ingolstadt and taught there for a, year as professor of Greek and Hebrew. It was forty-one years since at Poitiers he had last spoken from a public chair; but the old man of sixty-five had not lost his gift of teaching, and hundreds of scholars crowded round him. This gleam of autumn sunshine was again broken by the plague ; but now he was called to Tubingen and again spent the winter of 1521-22 teaching in his own system- atic solid way. But he was now in shaken health ; in the spring he found it necessary to visit the baths of Liebenzell, and here he was seized with jaundice, of which he died 30th June 1522, leaving in the history of the new learning a name only second to that of his younger contemporary Erasmus. The authorities for Reuchlin's life are enumerated in L. Geiger, Johann lieuchlin, 1871, which is the standard biography. The controversy about the books of the Jews is well sketched by Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten. Some interesting details about Eeuchlin are given in the autobiography of PELLICANUS (q.v.), which was not published when Geiger's book appeared. (W. R. S.) REUNION, formerly BOURBON, an island in the Indian Ocean, belonging to France and considered one of her more important colonies. St Denis, the capital, stands on the north side in 20 51' S. lat. and 53 9' E. long. Physi- cally it may be described as the southmost subaerial summit of the great submarine ridge which, running north-east by Mauritius, Albatross Island, &c., and curving round by the Seychelles, connects with the platform of Mada- gascar at its north-eastern extremity. The great submarine valley which is thus enclosed between Madagascar and the Mascarene-Seychelles ridge has a depth of from 2000 to 2400 fathoms. In a straight line Reunion lies 115 miles from the east coast of Madagascar ; and Mauritius, with which it communicates by optic signalling since 1882, is 115 miles to the north-east. The island has an area of 721,314 acres or 1127 square miles. It is usual to regard it as divided into a windward and a leeward district by a line, practically the watershed, running in the direction of the greater axis. The whole island is the result of a Island of Reunion. double volcanic action. First there arose from the sea a mountain whose summit is approximately represented by Piton des Neiges (10,069 feet), and at a later date another crater opened towards the east, which, piling up the mountain mass of Le Volcan, turned what was till then a circle into an ellipse 44 miles by 3-1. In the older upheaval the most striking features are now three areas of subsidence the cirques of Salazie, Riviere des Galets, and Cilaos which lie north-west and south of the Piton des Neiges and form the gathering grounds respectively of the Riviere du Mat, the Riviere des Galets, and the Riviere de St Etienne. The first, which may be taken as typical, is surrounded by high almost perpendicular walls of basaltic lava, and its surface is rendered irregular by hills and hillocks of debris fallen from the heights. Towards the south lies the vast stratum of rocks (150 to 200 feet deep) which, on the 26th November 1875, suddenly sweeping down from the Piton des Neiges and the Gros Morne, buried the little village of Grand Sable and nearly a hundred of its in- habitants. A considerable piece of ground, with its trees,