Abstract
Johannes Trithemius was an abbot from the Benedictine monastery of Sponheim, and later the monastery of Würzburg. During his studies in Heidelberg, he was involved in learned humanistic societies, and later he applied the ideal of humanistic eloquence in his works. Trithemius built large libraries and wrote a number of mystical, monastic, historic, and biographic writings. He became famous especially due to his book Steganographia which dealt with cryptography on the basis of natural magic and astrology working with angelic mediations. Though Steganographia remained in manuscript form, it influenced occult sciences in the sixteenth century and cryptography. Trithemius was also accused of necromancy and demonic magic.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Primary Literature
Trithemius, Johannes. 1518. Polygraphiae Libri VI. Basileae: M. Furter.
Trithemius, Johannes. 1605. Steganographia, hoc est, ars per occultam scripturam animi sui voluntatem absentibus aperiendi certa. Frankfurt am Main: ex officina typographica Matthiae Beckeri, sumptibus Joannis Berneri.
Secondary Literature
Arnold, Klaus. 1991. Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516). Würzburg: Ferdinand Schöningh.
Baron, Frank. 1991. Trithemius und Faustus: Begegnungen in Geschichte und Sage. In Johannes Trithemius: Humanismus und Magie im Vorreformatorischen Deutschland, ed. Richard Auernheimer and Frank Baron, 38–57. München: Profil.
Brann, Noel L. 1981. The Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516): The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism. Leiden: Brill.
Brann, Noel L. 1999. Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Cccult Studies in Early Modern Europe. Albany: SUNY Press.
Brann, Noel L. 2006. Trithemius, Johannes. In Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter Hanegraaf, 1135–1139. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Grafton, Anthony. 2006. Johannes Trithemius: Magie, Geschichte und Phantasie. In Erzählende Vernunft, ed. Sebastian Lalla, Anja Hallacker, and Günter Frank. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Müller-Jahncke, Wolf-Dieter. 1991. Johannes Trithemius und Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim. In Johannes Trithemius: Humanismus und Magie im Vorreformatorischen Deutschland, ed. Richard Auernheimer and Frank Baron, 29–37. München: Profil.
Walker, D.P. 1975. Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Zambelli, Paola. 2007. White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Nejeschleba, T. (2017). Trithemius, Johannes. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_570-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_570-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities