Johannes Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica. Hagenau,
Thomas Anshelm, 1517

First edition of De arte cabalistica. When Gershom Scholem accepted the Reuchlin prize in 1969, he said that were he to believe in gilgul or metempsychosis, he might perhaps imagine himself to be a reincarnation of Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), the first non-Jew thoroughly to have studied the world and the language of Judaism and to have introduced the scholarly study of Judaism in Europe.

Reuchlin, who was born in Pforzheim, Germany, had become acquainted with Pico during his second Italian sojourn of 1490-1493 and had caught the latter's enthusiasm for the Hebrew Kabbalah. He began learning Hebrew upon his return to Rome and collect kabbalistic and magical Hebrew books. De verbo mirifico was the first book in Latin devoted to the Kabbalah and also contained a defence of Pico's Conclusiones; at the time (1494) Reuchlin still possessed only a rudimentary knowledge of the subject; De arte cabalistica (1517), a 'classic' of the Christian Kabbalah, is much more objective and sympathethic towards its subject.