JOHANNES

TRITHEMIUS (1462–1516)  , German historian and divine, was born at Trittenheim on the Moselle, on the 1st of February 1462 . His name was originally " von Heidenberg," but according to the fashion of the times he adopted the name of his birthplace . After an unhappy childhood, he studied at Heidelberg, and at the age of twenty entered the Benedictine monastery of Sponheim near Kreuznach, of which, in 1485, he became abbot . He established an excellent library, and through his strict discipline and consummate scholarship soon raised the monastery to an educational institution of a high order . In 1506 he resigned, and was appointed soon after abbot of the monastery of St Jakob at Wurzburg; and in this city he died on the 13th of December 1516 . Trithemius was, though an accomplished scholar, untrustworthy as a chronicler, and his Annales hirsaugienses (1514), Amides de origine Francorum, as well as his Chronologia mystica (1516) are, on this account, of doubtful value . More reliance can, however, be placed on his De scriploribus ecclesiasticis (1494) and the Catalogus illustrium virorum Germaniae (1491) . He also wrote a fanatical book against sorcery, Antipalus maleficiorum (15o8) . See Silbernagel, J . Trithemius (1868; 2nd ed., 1885); Schneegans . Abt Joh . Trithemius and Kloster Sponheim (1882) ; and F .

X . Wegele, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie .