Johannes Pfefferkorn

Johannes Pfefferkorn was a German Catholic theologian and a convert from Judaism. It is believed that he was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and then moved to Cologne (Köln). He was imprisoned for committing a burglary and released in 1504. A year later, he and his family converted to Catholicism. Pfefferkorn became an assistant to the prior of the Dominicans at Cologne and published several libelous pamphlets that claimed that Jewish religious texts, especially the Talmud, preached hostility to Christianity and should therefore be banned. He was opposed by the humanist scholar Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522). The two of them engaged in a debate conducted via a series of pamphlets.