Johannes Trithemius

Johann Heidenberg , more known under its name Latinized Johannes Trithemius or under its name francized Jean Trithème , born the 1462 and died the December 13rd 1516 in the monastery of Würzburg, is a German abbot at the origin of several discoveries in Cryptologie. The name of Trithème comes from its birthplace, Trittenheim in Germany.

Biography

Of an insatiable curiosity, he studied very young person with Trêves and then at the university of Heidelberg. In 1480, it created with some students an initiatory company, the Celtic Brotherhood ( Sodalitas celtica ). One winter, while returning visit with his/her mother in her village in 1482, surprised by a snowstorm, it took refuge in the Abbaye Bénédictin S of Sponheim close to Bad Kreuznach. It decided there to remain and to be made monk. He pronounced his wishes on November 21st 1482 and became abbot in 1483. Trithème launched out then in an ambitious project: to renovate the abbey, which was in a lamentable state, there to found the discipline and to make a place of studies of it. The abbey had been badly directed during many years, the buildings fell in ruin and the monks were idle most of the time. Trithème undertook restorations, reorganized the life of the abbey and obliged the monks with a regular work. Thanks to Trithème, the library of the abbey passed from less than 50 manuscripts to more than 2000, in particular in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Re-elected in all the Germanic one, it attracted many scholars.

He wrote works of theology and works historical on the eminent members of his kind, while impassioning himself for astrology, the magic and sciences hermetic. Towards 1498, it worked on its steganography, seemingly an art of crypter the messages. Following indiscretions, and as it used strange signs in its steganography, one believed that it composed a black book of magic and it had to return accounts. However, neither its faith, nor its orthodoxy could be taken at fault. During a visit which it returned in Heidelberg to the Count Palatine of the Rhine Philippe in 1505, its monks, who did not support the austerity of his discipline, seized occasion to revolt by burning its magic library.

Its reputation of magician and the conflicts with the members of the abbey led to his resignation in 1506. It accepted the offer of the bishop of Würzburg, Lorenz von Bibra (bishop of 1495 to 1519), which placed it like abbot of the Schottenkloster (Scottish monastery) of the Abbey Saint-Jacob de Würzburg, where it remained until the end of its life. It resumed its secret work and its lesson there, but with much more prudence. It made believe that it would not complete its steganography and it wrote its Polygraphie , which was altogether the continuation. It also continued to deepen the Kabbale and to study the magic by protecting its work by means of its methods of encoding. It had an immense knowledge, but its immoderate taste of the mysteries and the fantastic one were worth enemies, but also protections to him. It disconcerted, because on a side he was the author of works of piety, theology and religious history, but of another its hermetic steganography and its other works gave him a reputation of magician.

Among its disciples is Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and it had a strong influence on Paracelse

Cryptology

Its most known work is Steganographia ( Stéganographie ), made up in the neighborhoods of 1499 and published in Frankfurt in 1606. This work in three volumes is presented in the form of a treaty of angelology of inspiration kabbalist, with explanations to communicate on long distances with the spirits. The true contents, concerning cryptography, are in fact dissimulated by a process steganographic. In 1606, the method to decipher the first two works is published. The third volume was regarded for a long time as a work of magic, but the incantations also dissimulated contents on cryptology.

In Germany at the 17th century, many authors claimed that he was the inventor of the Carré of Vigenère. Such a table is in its work Polygraphiae ( Polygraphy ), appeared in 1518. It is the first time that this method, the Chiffre of Trithémius, appears.

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