Pfefferkorn, Johann (1469–1522)

German polemicist. Converting from Judaism in 1504, he became notorious for his attacks on Jews, arguing for the confiscation of Jewish literature and for a vigorous programme of conversion aimed at Jewish communities. He is remembered in particular for his attack on the scholar Reuchlin in his tract Handspiegel wider und gegen die Juden 1511. This controversy prompted a group of humanists to publish Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum/Letters of Obscure Men, a defence of free and open scholarship.