Foremost among the exponents of this older Humanism, which dates from the middle of the fifteenth century, were Nicholas of Cusa and his disciples, Rudolph Agricola, Alexander Hegius, and Jacob Wimpheling.

But the new Humanism and the new Renaissance movement generally throughout Northern Europe centred chiefly in two personalities, Johannes Reuchlin and Desiderius Erasmus.

Reuchlin was the founder of the new Hebrew learning, which up till then had been exclusively confined to the synagogue.

It was he who unlocked the mysteries of the Kabbala to the Gentile world.

But though it is for his introduction of Hebrew study that Reuchlin is best known to posterity, yet his services in the diffusion and popularization of classical culture were enormous.
The dispute of Reuchlin with the ecclesiastical authorities at Cologne excited literary Germany from end to end.