Johannes Pfefferkorn - Battle of Pamphlets

Battle of Pamphlets

The ensuing battle of pamphlets between Pfefferkorn and Reuchlin reflected the struggle between the Dominicans and the humanists. Thus informed of Reuchlin's vote Pfefferkorn was greatly excited, and answered with Handspiegel (Mainz, 1511), in which he attacked Reuchlin unmercifully. Reuchlin complained to the Emperor Maximilian, and answered Pfefferkorn's attack with his Augenspiegel, against which Pfefferkorn published his Brandspiegel. In June 1513, both parties were silenced by the emperor. Pfefferkorn however published in 1514 a new polemic, Sturmglock, against both the Jews and Reuchlin. During the controversy between Reuchlin and the theologians of Cologne, Pfefferkorn was assailed in the Epistolæ obscurorum virorum by the young Humanists who espoused Reuchlin's cause. He replied with Beschirmung, or Defensio J. Pepericorni contra famosas et criminales obscurorum virorum epistolas (Cologne, 1516), Streitbüchlein (1517). In 1520, Pope Leo X declared Reuchlin guilty with a condemnation of Augenspiegel, and Pfefferkorn wrote as an expression of his triumph Ein mitleidliche Klag (Cologne, 1521).

Diarmaid MacCulloch writes in his book The Reformation: A History (2003) that Desiderius Erasmus was another opponent of Pfefferkorn, on the grounds that he was a converted Jew and therefore could not be trusted.