to say that the influence under which
they fell was wholly pernicious, for, just as certain Jews appear to
have acquired some real medical skill, so also they appear to have
possessed some real knowledge of natural science, inherited perhaps from
the ancient traditions of the East or derived from the writings of
Hippocrates, Galen, and other of the great Greek physicians and as yet
unknown to Europe. Thus Eliphas Levi relates that the Rabbi Jechiel, a
Cabalistic Jew protected by St. Louis, possessed the secret of
ever-burning lamps,[242] claimed later by the Rosicrucians, which
suggests the possibility that some kind of luminous gas or electric
light may have been known to the Jews. In alchemy they were the
acknowledged leaders; the most noted alchemist of the fourteenth
century, Nicholas Flamel, discovered the secret of the art from the book
of "Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer, and
Philosopher," and this actual book is said to have passed later into the
possession of Cardinal Richelieu.[243]

It was likewise from a Florentine Jew, Alemanus or Datylus, that Pico
della Mirandola, the fifteenth-century mystic, received instructions in
the Cabala[244] and imagined that he had discovered in it the doctrines
of Christianity. This delighted Pope Sixtus IV, who thereupon ordered
Cabalistic writings to be translated into Latin for the use of divinity
students. At the same time the Cabala was introduced into Germany by
Reuchlin, who had learnt Hebrew from the Rabbi Jacob b. Jechiel Loans,
court physician to Frederick III, and in 1494 published a Cabalistic
treatise _De Verbo Mirifico_, showing that all wisdom and true
philosophy are derived from the Hebrews. Considerable alarm appears,
however, to have been created by the spread of Rabbinical literature,
and in 1509 a Jew converted to Christianity, named Pfefferkorn,
persuaded the Emperor Maximilian I to burn all Jewish books except the
Old Testament. Reuchlin, consulted on this matter, advised only the
destruction of the Toledot Yeshu and of the Sepher Nizzachon by the
Rabbi Lipmann, because these works "were full of blasphemies against
Christ and against the Christian religion," but urged the preservation
of the rest. In this defence of Jewish literature he was supported by
the Duke of Bavaria, who appointed him professor at Ingoldstadt, but was
strongly condemned by the Dominicans of Cologne. In reply to their
attacks Reuchlin launched his defence _De Art