Johannes Trithemius, humanist of the late Middle Ages

"Quicquid in mundo scibile est, scire semper cupiebam ..." (Trithemius: Nepiachus)

In the year 1462, two years before the death of the important humanist and prelate of the church Nikolaus von Kues (Nicholas Cusanus), another important humanist scholar of the late middle ages named Johannes Trithemius was born in Trittenheim on the Mosel, just a few kilometers upriver from Kues. In 1482, after attending schools in Trier, Cologne, in the Netherlands and in Heidelberg, he entered the Benedictine monastery Sponheim in the Nahe valley. Shortly afterwards he was made Abbott. Under his influence, the monastery evolved into a center of humanistic scholarship. The library that he set up contained about 2000 volumes and was an exceptional scientific collection. He gained literary fame through his "De Scriptoribus ecclesiaticis", a reference work on church writers that is still used today. Some of his writings, though, are controversial. Among these are his history of Sponheim monastery and the origins of the Frankish people, where he used historically false information.

After a period of internal strife, Johann Trithemius left the monastery at Sponheim and continued his work at the Abbey of St. Jakob in Würzburg. The conditions there were hard and he died in 1516. Among his wide body of work are some rather dubious writings that dealt with cryptography, theories of cryptography, and alchemy including magical formulas and religious-psychological interpretations of nature (based upon Aristotle's idea of "prima materia"). It is exactly these works which have lately become popular among a wide public.

For further information:
Klaus Arnold, Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), Kommissionsverlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Würzburg 1991
Klaus Arnold, Johannes Trithemius: —Leben und Werk. In: R. Auernheimer und F. Baron (Hrsg), Bad Kreuznacher Symposien Bd. 1, S. 1-16; München, Profil Verlag, 1991
Michael Kuper, Johannes Trithemius —der schwarze Abt; Berlin, Clemens Zerling, 1998