Johannes Trithemius - Life and Work
© Klaus Arnold, 1985 & 1991
Translation from the original German with
kind permission of the author, Frater Acher 2018
On the 1st of February 1462 Johann Trithemius was born in Trittenheim at the river Mosel, on the 13th of December 1516 he died in Würzburg am Main. It seems there is no immediate reason to recall the life and work of this man.
During his life-time, however, the Humanist and historian Trithemius was at least as appreciated as his fellow countryman Nikolaus of Kues; and known he was throughout his life as abbas Sponheimensis, as the abbot the Benedictine monastery Sponheim close to the city of Kreuznach.
The 19th century still had the following words engraved on his stone monument at the Mosel-bridge in Trittenheim: ‘Johann Trithemius was an ornament of the German people, one of the great amongst the scholars of his time.’ Yet meanwhile times have changed and it seems more important to keep the most exceptional exponents of the German Humanism from vanishing into oblivion: In the most recent general overview by Eckhard Bernstein German Humanism, published 1983, Johann Trithemius finds mentioning in only two side-notes as the abbot of Sponheim as well as the author of a bibliography catalogue; Nikolaus of Kues is not mentioned at all.
We want to take our approach of an approximation in several steps. We want to introduce Trithemius as a someone born in the Mosel-region, as a monk and abbot of Sponheim, as a scholarly Humanist and author, as a magician, and not last as a human being.
‘Everything I have despised for the sake of Christ... I am no longer your son; have forever devoted my life to God; worry no longer about me...’ such writes in 1506, during another turning point in his life and in a rather stylused letter, the already highly esteemed abbot and scholar to his mother, who still lived in Trittenheim at the Mosel (and certainly was not capable of reading the language of the letter addressed to her).
His home, the village of his birth and youth, he had left for more than two decades at this point. In Trittenheim he had been born in the night of the 1st of February 1462 - roughly half an hour before midnight, as he pretended to know exactly - as the child of a family of insignificant vintners. His parents - Johannes de Monte gentili, which translates into German as Heidenberg or Heidenberger, and Elisabeth aus Longuich (or Longuicher) - were poor, however and what he used to emphasize, no serfs.
Rising due to ones’ skills and education from the simple conditions of a farmer’s family to the height of scholarship or even power and property, was something that was possible during all times; towards the end of the Middle Ages however it happened strikingly often. The majority of the German Humanists originated from poorer conditions or peasantry. The flourishing of community schools and universities marked a general upsurge of education in the 15th and 16th century. As an example one could point to the German exemplary Humanist Konrad Celtis, who belonged to the closest friends of Trithemius and had been born down to the day three years before the latter in Wipfel am Main.
Both of them are placed into a century of cognitive awakening, yet also of enduring political, social and ecclesiastical crisis. Since the late medieval time of the plague, the endangerment of each individual life as well as the stark need for reforms of the governmental and clerical institutions had become most obvious. These dynamics found their expression in the monastic renewal movements and in an heightened level of folk-piety, yet also in the persecution of heretics, peasant-revolts up to their tipping point in the shape of the Protestant Reformation and the rise of the common man in urban and rural environments in of the 16th century.
Still the forthcoming commotions could only be surmised from small movements; yet no one recognized them more carefully than Johann Trithemius. Countless of his speeches scourge the licentiousness of the monks just as much as of the secular clergy, he urges to turn back, portrays the general belief in miracles of his time - without being entirely free of it himself - provides report as a detailed observer of the pilgrimages to the ‘Pauker von Niklashausen’ and of the revolte of the Bundschuh movement at the Upper Rhine. Despite all his warnings to reform and reverse, the abbot still remained an advocate of the ancient tradition, of the Benedictine monasticism, of the Roman Church and the imperial majesty. He was spared the need to take a firm position towards all the changes disrupting the status quo, due to his death on the eve of the Reformation.
Trittenheim was positioned in the far periphery of the political and ecclesiastical centres. It’s administrative ambit encompassed parts of Kur-Trier, the dukedom Manderscheid as well as the abbey St.Matthias in Trier. The vintners lived in this region according to the firmly established order of rulership of manors and judges, according to the constancy of hard work in the vineyards and meadows, where only the return of the seasons and public holidays offered variety from the uniformity of everyday life. The news which reached people in such regions was limited and covered at best the message of a new pope, emperor or high lord, the appearance of preachers of repentance or of the failure of reform councils.
And despite all this, a boundlessly love for the sciences awoke in this village boy. At the age of only one year Hans Heidenberger had lost his father; from the second marriage, which the mother only entered seven years later with the Johannes Zell (or Zeller) only a stepbrother survived who always held a cordial relationship with the first-born. His stepfather Trithemius describes as a ruffian, he tried to expel the desire for knowledge from the boy with harsh words and strokes. However, the boy was inspired by an amor litterarum, a love, a desire for all knowledge. He described it with the words: ‘Yet it was impossible for me to quench my desire as I had intended to; because life is short and the mind is weak.’
Only late, as a fiveteen-year old, and with the help of a neighbour and the village priest, he learns to read and write. Despite the fact that this had fulfilled one of his heart’s desire, he still leaves the village, seemingly in order to escape from his stepfather as well as to perfect his education in the urban centers of the time. Throughout his life he held on to the memory of his childhood village in the form of his name: Trittenheim and from 1486 onwards: Johann Trithemius.
Little do we learn about the studies in the high schools of Trier and Cologne (?) as well as Heidelberg during subsequent years. They concluded with a surprising step; the most essential turning point in the life of the young man, who up to this point seemed destined for a scientific career:
It was towards the end of January 1482, shortly before the end of his 20th year, when the student in the company of a friend was on the return journey from Heidelberg to his home. On their way through the Hunsrück upon the insistence of his friend they visited the monastery of Sponheim. Shortly after their departure on the next morning, close to the neighbouring village of Bockenau the companions got caught in a strong snow drift. Advancing further had become impossible. 'We have to turn around', he said ominously to his companion, 'but you will see, I will stay...'
And he did stay. He remained a monk for the remaining 34 years of his life. Only eighteen months later Trithemius had already been elected to be the abbot of the monastery, just ten months after he had given the monastic vow. Such quick ascent speaks to the hopes that focussed on this young member of the convent - and which turned out to be justified in the end - as well as to the desolate condition of the monastic community at the time.
The monastery of Sponheim, founded in the 12th century by the earl of the same name west of the village of Kreuznach and soon handed over to the archdiocese of Mainz, just like many other convents experience a significant economic decline in the late Middle Ages, which was coupled to the dissolution of monastic discipline. The abbot of Trittenheim described this process in his monastery-chronicle and reported of the derision of the peasants: 'In monasterio Sponheim sunt duo abbates, et monachus unus, cuius altera pars conventus est.' -- 'In the monastery of Sponheim there are two abbots and one monk, of whom one part also represents the convent.' In 1466 an abbot had to resign from the abbey, leaving behind 2.500 gulden of debt, 'obeying the hardship and because there was nothing left to live from.'
Even after Sponheim had affiliated itself with the Rhenish reform movement of the Bursfeld Congregation, poverty still ruled and abbots had to resign early; they surrendered to the economic hardship and the hostile attitude of the remaining monks, who were no longer willing to acquiesce to monastic discipline. That also the new abbot would ultimately fail was not something that had been obvious from the beginning: The subsequent years stood under the banner of the economic consolidation of the monastery and the maintenance and renovation of its physical buildings. Evidence thereof are the coat of arms of the man born at the river Moselle on the sacramental shrine of the abbey of Sponheim from 1487 as well as the surviving written records in the general archive in Karlsruhe. The grape as the personal symbol of Trithemius, a reminiscence to his birthplace, can also be found on the cover page of the Polygraphia and on his tomb in Würzburg. By his own hand Trithemius arranged and wrote the land tenure and earning capacity and brought down on paper the rights of the cloister and its peasants (Hintersassen) as well as its annual reporting.
Next to this he eagerly progressed his own education, dedicated himself to theological studies as well as the Benedictine monastic rule of life. It's goal he saw in the abbot's duty to serve the monks in their spiritual and - as the young abbot understood it - also their intellectual training. Trithemius saw it as desirable to enable all kinds of educational opportunities to his monks. That is how Sponheim due to his effort turned into an 'academy' which was open not only to the monks but also to interested laymen, and which ultimately became the home of famous humanistic scholars.
Frequently admittedly the abbot himself remained far away from the cloister, worked for the benefit of the Benedictine reform congregation which had emerged from Bursfeld and to which Sponheim belonged since 1470. Trithemius devoted his entire energy to the interests of this monastic movement of renewal. Often we find his name amongst the participants of the annual gatherings (Generalkapitel, lat. capitulum abbatum) of the Bursfeld congregation, and more than once he was the secretary or co-president of these conventions. A dozen addresses he gave on such occasions to the congregated German Benedictine abbots; speeches that focussed on the monastic life, its demise and renewal through the reform of Bursfeld, and often times appeared in print already within the same year. These orations show the abbot as a gifted speaker, an author of remarkable erudition and a perfected knowledge of Latin, inspired by an all embracing piety. Next to and unaffected by his intense travels as visitor to other convents, a large literary body began to emerge, made up of sermons, monastic admonitions, letters, liturgic instructions, biographies of Saints and exegetic writings.
Such efficacy in word and deed, dedicated to the reformation of the Benedictine order, however did not manage to entirely exhaust the strength nor intellectual interest of the abbot. His fame amongst contemporaries - and as a lover and collector of books until today - rested most firmly on the completeness and rarity of the library which he assembled in Sponheim and opened up willingly to scholars who would often spend days and months in the monastery. Just like no foreigner in the beginning of 19th century German would have missed to visit Goethe in Weimar, so it belonged to the good manners of the scholars of the late 15th century to have been at least once in the remote cloister of Sponheim in the Hunsrück region. Merely 48 volumes Trithemius had found in the abbey when he took his position; more than 2000 he left behind upon his leaving. Today the majority of them, just like the related library catalogues, have been lost; only a fraction of them survived scattered across the globe; the largest remaining inventory with half a hundred codices has survived in the inheritance of Trithemius, now in the University library of Würzburg and still displaying the ancient covers and shelf marks.
Trithemius had been a bibliophile, in fact book-obsessed collector. Manuscripts, that he had once spotted, he was able to describe in detail still decades later or to refer to their specific place of location. Whenever on his trips he encountered a codex or rare print, he used all possible means to buy or trade it. Borrowed manuscripts were eagerly copied in the scriptorium of Sponheim. The abbot also wrote himself; roughly twenty volumes in his pin sharp hand have survived amongst the large European libraries.
In a dedicated small work De laude scriptorum (In praise of scribes), he defended the importance of the manual writing process, of the necessity to still copy book by hand even in the era of Gutenberg's book printing inventions. And with the intention to increase its reach, he handed the book to print still in the year of 1494. Of the love of the ancients to the book, we read in it, of their care and attention during the process of writing texts and of the transience of the printed product: 'For the print is a papery thing and all too soon depleted...' In contrast to this only vellum was of duration, which because of this should be especially used for the holy scriptures as well as the ancient classics.
The young abbot's craving for education had not been satisfied by the university studies which he had started at best. What he had brought to the cloister was his knowledge of Latin, which he used exclusively in his own writings and of which he acquired perfect mastership in reading and writing, mainly by eagerly immersing himself in the classical as well as Christian authors. The educational ideal of the Humanists of the Renaissance however was trilingualism, the mastery of Greek and Hebrew next to Latin. As teachers in the former two languages Trithemius had two famous and amicable scholars of the first generation of Humanists: the first poeta laureatusnorth of the Alps, Konrad Celtis and later on the scholar of Greek and Hebrew, Johann Reuchlin. Of the linguistic competence of the prelate we still find evidence today, not at least in a bricked up lintel in the former working apartment of Sponheim, in Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, in ownership entries in prints and translations, as well as in the remaining correspondences of more than 250 letters, interspersed with citations in both languages.
Through a constant influx of visitors, both learned and thirsty for education, as well as through the far reaching correspondence of its abbot with almost all important contemporaries, including emperors and popes, the cloister of Sponheim, located in a remote angle of Germany, turned into a center of vivid intellectual exchange. Trithemius was a member of the Rhenish society of scholars, of the sodalitas litteraria Rhenana, which had gathered in Heidelberg around Celtis and Johann von Dalberg, the bishop of Worms who had been educated in Italy, and which returned from a visit at Sponheim under the impression that everything there had been Greek: the abbot, the monks, even the dogs; as well as the stones and books, the cloister seems to be located right in the middle of the Ionian land. The Greek dog was a historic reality in fact: His name was Eris and the abbot had trained him certain tricks which the dog would perform upon commands given in Greek or Hebrew; Celtis and another travelling poet even dedicated an epigram to the animal.
The terms of the Renaissance or of a Humanist are normally associated with an ideal of a purely secular mindset, orientated towards antiquity. Without a shadow of a doubt, Johann Trithemius was a Humanist; first and foremost, however, he was a monk and eager to reform his cloister Sponheim into a scholarly academy. For this first generation of Humanists the term 'monastery-humanism' (Klosterhumanismus) has been coined and thus emphasised the particular importance of the religious community as part of the spreading of humanistic ideals.
The representatives of the new spirit, who adhered to a religious renewal without being part of the clergy or monkshood themselves, have been rightfully called christian Humanists. They converged in their reverence for the Holy Family, for the Holy Anna, Joseph, the Mother of God Maria, her Immaculate Conception, coupled with a wide-spread folk-piety around the year 1500. The abbot of Sponheim also stepped forward with a work to the praise of the Holy Anna, which was printed in Mainz in 1494 and next to mainly positive echo provoked the opposing opinion of the Dominican Wigand Wirt of Frankfurt. During the ensuing literary feud, centring on the question of the immaculate conception of Maria, which was only elevated to a dogma in 1871, Trithemius was supported by his circle of friends which by now had reached significant proportions.
The fame of the abbot of Sponheim, however, mainly stemmed from another work that equally was first published in 1494: the first literary history and bibliography of world literature, a much used and in the growing flood of printed works necessary reference work. De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis Trithemius called his catalogue of almost a thousand authors and their works. He reworked the book several times and complemented it by use of the growing inventory of the Sponheim library as well as newly acquired information. The focal point of this literary history - and this is characteristic of the mentality of its authors - is formed by Benedictine authors on the one hand and authors of the German language area on the other. Consequentially the Benedictine devoted separate editions to both groups later on: his catalogue of 1495 'Catalogue of Famous German Authors' and his bio-bibliography 'De viris illustribus ordinis sancti Benedicti'.
If contemporaries rightfully held the literary historian Trithemius in high esteem, his character sketch as a historian remains on shaky ground until today. Posthumous fame - and critical echo - originate from the historic works which during his life-time and long after were only available as manuscripts. Most of them belong to the later years which the abbot spent in Würzburg, where he also finished the chronic of the monastery of Sponheim which he had still begun residing in his first cloister. In the Chronicon Spomheimense, as part of its founding history, records first appear that could be understood as well-meaning forgeries in the interest of his cloister. Equally in the early history of his Annales Hirsaugienses - a double volume on the history of the Abbey of Hirsau in the Black Forest as well as the German empire, which to this day has not been fully recognised in its historic value - its author fills in an exiguous frame of the cloister's early history with records of a flourishing - and obviously freely invented - monastic life. As historic informant of an alleged cultural height during Carolingian and Ottonic time served a fictitious author Meginfried, who, once introduced, also appears as witness in other historic works of Trithemius.
Much more questionable than such naive attempts appears the entanglement in astrological construction of history - the Chronologia mystica - as well as in genealogical speculations over the origin of the Francs in his Compendium. Crucial in this case were pressing questions by Emperor Maximilian, the enigmatic figure of the last knight, who the abbot attempted to serve all too coquettishly and vaingloriously. And again Trithemius took refuge with the products of his phantasy: If the monk Meginfried had come first, now the fictive chroniclers Hunibald and Wastald were his sources of information.
How did the Benedictine abbot who was so faithful to the Church, how did the commendable literary historian turn into the forger of history Trithemius? How can a theological and monastical author, whose work comprises ten volumes in folio format, take refuge to such dubious constructs and then hold on to them steadfastly despite an already doubting environment? The explanation can only be searched for in another crucial incision in his life: If the decision to become a monk had been the first significant turn in his life, so the expulsion from his cloister through an alliance between his own insubordinate monks with the local lord hit the widely esteemed and famous abbot of Sponheim at the height of his fame. The consequence was a fracture in the personality of the now 43 year old. After months of migratory life, among them a longer stay at the court of Brandenburg in Berlin, in October 1506 Trithemius withdrew to the insignificant abbey St.Jacob in the former Scottish cloister in Würzburg. This abbey turned into his retreat for the following ten years. Ceaselessly did he complain in letters of these days about a fate that had forced to him to abandon the cloister Sponheim as well as his famous library.
However, his fame did not change; his reputation as an author endured and his friends and benefactors stood by him. In particular this is true for Emperor Maximilian, in whose circle of Humanists Trithemius was a member. Maximilian was mainly interested in the history of the house Habsburg, besides this however hoped to get many more answers from the learned abbot with regards to questions that emerged from his belief in miracles and his general curiosity. That was why Trithemius in his Octo quaestiones had to answer the question about the existence of witches and demons and answered and confirmed it positively fully aligned to the spirit of the time and the recently printed Malleus maleficarum.
In hindsight of an enlightened time, his believe in witches, which still found expression in two more treaties, just as his historic forgeries cast a shadow over his otherwise integer personality. Yet such criticism, just like the excesses of the witch hunts to which the abbot's statements had contributed not insignificantly, belong to a later time.
Looking upon his portrait by the master HB - the artists Hans Burgkmair as well as Hans Brosamer both used this signature - nothing hints at the Benedictine abbot's reputation amongst contemporaries as a magician. A rumor which he certainly did not counter decisively; yet one which quite in the opposite seemed to help him gain the esteem of benefactors such as the Emperor or the elector Joachim of Brandenburg. And this was the reason why when he almost, and only almost, encountered Dr. Faust in Gelnhausen - a fact that to this day leads to an unjustified amount of publicity with regards to the person of Trithemius - he perceived him as a competitor for magical reputation.
Until today Trithemius' reputation to be a magician stems from two specific works, which indeed contain some secrecy yet certainly nothing diabolical. Speculations over the content of Polygraphia (German: Vielschrift, English: Much-Scripture) and Steganographia (German: Geheimschrift, English: Cryptograph) were stirred by dark insinuations of the author himself, his secretive behaviour and the double cryptography of its content by means of at least partly cabalistic terms. In reality both treatises deal with quite feasible cryptographic approaches, specifically with instructions on how to encrypt messages.
Without the shadow of a doubt these cryptographic studies are by far the most original works of the abbot, which point and took effect far beyond his own time. From the 16th century until the First World War Trithemius' coding-system, with its double cipher making cracking the code by statistic means impossible, were actively leveraged in the diplomatic and military realm.
On 13th of December 1516 Johann Trithemius, aged 54, deceased in his cloister in Würzburg. His last resting place he found in the local church, his tomb, today located in the Neumünsterkirche in Würzburg, was created by the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider.
Despite suffering from repeated illnesses in his last years, he remained full of literary plans and until the very end tirelessly engaged in the service of his order as well as in his own literary projects. Students and successors, biographers and admirers of his mainly emerged from within the Benedictine order, to which he had dedicated all of his energy throughout his life.
Lasting value beyond the boundaries of his own time have the abbot's achievements as monastic author, book-collector, friend of the Humanists, literary historian and historian, as well as as the first theorist of cryptography. Consistently his contemporaries of the monastic life as well as of his personal encounters describe him as a man of cheerful character and unquestionable integrity. If we were to recognise just one of his many ideals as role modelling, first and foremost this would have to be his independent thirst for knowledge. His perception was not the one of Enlightenment 'Knowledge is Power'. - 'Knowledge' Trithemius recognised, 'Knowledge is Love.'