With his unconventional philosophical tracts, his translations from the Hebrew, and his work on Christian kabbala, the neophyte Paulus Ritius (d. 1541), a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Johannes Reuchlin, became one of the most important mediators of Italian Renaissance philosophy in Germany. His attempts to combine the natural philosophy of Aristotle and Averroës with Christianity brought him in conflict with the German universities and culminated in public disputes with the leading Catholic theologians of the day. His fate as an academic outcast was sealed when he undertook to reconcile Catholics and Protestants. The study is an appreciation of Ritius' significance for the history of ideas in the early modern age.