Steganographia (Secret Writing), by Johannes Trithemius, 1500
www.esotericarchives.com/tritheim/stegano.htm
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Steganographia (Secret Writing), by Johannes Trithemius. 1500.
This digital edition Copyright © 1997 by Joseph H. Peterson. All rights reserved.
This is Trithemius' most notorious work. On the surface it is a system of angel magic, but within is a highly sophisticated system of cryptography. It claims to contain a synthesis of the science of knowledge, the art of memory, magic, an accelerated language learning system, and a method of sending messages without symbols or messenger. In private circulation, the Steganographia brought such a reaction of fear that he decided it should never be published. He reportedly destroyed the more extreme portions (presumably instructions for prophecy/divination) but it continued to circulate in mss form and was eventually published posthumously in 1606.
The edition I (James J. O'Donnell) have used is:
1579. Trithemius, Steganographie: Ars per occultam Scripturam
animi sui voluntatem absentibus aperiendi certu, 4to, Darmst. 1621. (Written 1500. First printed edition: Frankfurt, 1606.)
------------------------------
Location: London, British Library, printed books
Shelf mark: 819 e 14
Author: J. Tritheim
Title: Steganographia: Hoc est: Ars per occultam, etc.
Place and date of publication: 1621
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faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/avatars/
by James J. O'Donnell
This page offers supplementary materials to illustrate and continue the discussion initiated by Avatars of the Word, published in June 1998 by Harvard University Press: Table of Contents. A Spanish translation was published in 2000. The full text is now available in the ACLS History E-Book project for subscribing participants.
In March 1999, I (James J. O'Donnell) appeared at a Cambridge Forum and delivered a talk "From Papyrus to Cyberspace", followed by commentary and discussion (one-hour program, available here in RealAudio).
Jerome idealized: the late antique polemicist and translator rehistoricized as Renaissance cardinal.
Plato's Phaedrus, in Jowett's 19th century translation.
The totemic power of Alexandria as image of the perfect library:
The Alexandria Digital Library at UC-Santa Barbara
Late Antique resources:
Augustine
Cassiodorus
Cosmas Indicopleustes -- the only real flat-earther in history?
"Worlds of Late Antiquity", syllabus to a wide-ranging undergraduate course.
"Internet Medieval Sourcebook"
Johannes Trithemius on secret forms of writing
Marshall McLuhan:
Who Was Marshall McLuhan?
The "Cathach", O'Donnell family good luck charm, with or without a book inside.
A.E. Housman, "A Shropshire Lad"
Kipling's Stalky & Co
Matthias Corvinus: an illuminated manuscript from his library
Mark Hopkins on a bench: I allude to this old saw in the book, and afterwards wrote more expansively on the theme in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"New Views of Medieval Europe": pictures from a 1962 National Geographic article discussed in the book.
---
In: FOUR - A Rediscovery of the 'Tetragonus mundus' - Marten KUILMAN (1996/2011). Falcon Press, Heemstede. ISBN 978-90-814420-1-5
(Fig. 127) - Johannes Trithemius (1462 - 1516) is one of the great explorers of the mind. He did not set sail to foreign continents, but tried to find new territories in the human mind with a similar optimism and in the same spirit as the sailors, who headed for the faraway places of the earth. A portrait of Hans Burgkmair from Augsburg around 1510.
The life of the Benedictine friar and abbot Johannes Trithemius (1462 - 1516; fig. 127) can be classified as ‘pivotal’. He was an intriguing and colorful figure, who embodied the spirit of his time. This friend and teacher of Henri Cornelius Agrippa 'charted the arduous route to Heaven along a very narrow and perilous course between two opposing ‘monsters’. The first monster, the Scylla, is a languorous and deliberative state still known by its half-Greek name of acedia (distress of heart, lethargy), and the second monster at the opposite pole, the Charybdis, excessive and indiscreet zeal' (BRANN, 1981; p. 117; BRANN, 1999).
Trithemius was a passionate reformer, teacher, book collector and history-writer. He described, in his 'De Origine Gentis Francorum (1514), a history of the Franks from 439 BC to 841 AD, partly on fictitious evidence (KUELBS & SONKOWSKY, 1987). 'He appears by hindsight to have been a transitional or 'Janus-like' figure', said BORCHARDT (1972) in his article on Trithemius.
His greatest reputation was due to a curious book called the 'Steganographia', published in 1606, but earlier circulating as a manuscript. 'The technical side of this science is very complex, involving pages and pages of elaborate calculations, both astrological and in connection with the numerical values of the angel-names', said Frances YATES (1964, p. 145).
Yates reckoned that Giordano Bruno's preference for the figure thirty was to trace back to Trithemius' 'Steganographia'. In that situation Bruno would have seen a manuscript. YATES (1966, p. 208) pointed to an abstract of this work later made for Bruno, where a list of thirty-one spirits was changed into thirty. Wayne SHUMAKER (1982) emphasized the cryptographic intentions of the 'Steganographia' rather than the demonic mysticism for which it became reputed.
Trithemius is one of the great explorers of the mind in a time, which coincided with the discoveries in the geographical field. Both were generated by an urge to go into extremes, to reach hitherto unknown boundaries. Names like Ficino, Pico della Mirandella, Bruno, Reuchlin, Agrippa and Fludd are just as important as those of Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magelhaen, although the latter are often more celebrated because of the visible evidence of their discoveries.
Steganographia (Secret Writing), by Johannes Trithemius, 1500
www.esotericarchives.com/tritheim/stegano.htm
---
Steganographia (Secret Writing), by Johannes Trithemius. 1500.
This digital edition Copyright © 1997 by Joseph H. Peterson. All rights reserved.
This is Trithemius' most notorious work. On the surface it is a system of angel magic, but within is a highly sophisticated system of cryptography. It claims to contain a synthesis of the science of knowledge, the art of memory, magic, an accelerated language learning system, and a method of sending messages without symbols or messenger. In private circulation, the Steganographia brought such a reaction of fear that he decided it should never be published. He reportedly destroyed the more extreme portions (presumably instructions for prophecy/divination) but it continued to circulate in mss form and was eventually published posthumously in 1606.
The edition I (James J. O'Donnell) have used is:
1579. Trithemius, Steganographie: Ars per occultam Scripturam
animi sui voluntatem absentibus aperiendi certu, 4to, Darmst. 1621. (Written 1500. First printed edition: Frankfurt, 1606.)
------------------------------
Location: London, British Library, printed books
Shelf mark: 819 e 14
Author: J. Tritheim
Title: Steganographia: Hoc est: Ars per occultam, etc.
Place and date of publication: 1621
---
faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/avatars/
by James J. O'Donnell
This page offers supplementary materials to illustrate and continue the discussion initiated by Avatars of the Word, published in June 1998 by Harvard University Press: Table of Contents. A Spanish translation was published in 2000. The full text is now available in the ACLS History E-Book project for subscribing participants.
In March 1999, I (James J. O'Donnell) appeared at a Cambridge Forum and delivered a talk "From Papyrus to Cyberspace", followed by commentary and discussion (one-hour program, available here in RealAudio).
Jerome idealized: the late antique polemicist and translator rehistoricized as Renaissance cardinal.
Plato's Phaedrus, in Jowett's 19th century translation.
The totemic power of Alexandria as image of the perfect library:
The Alexandria Digital Library at UC-Santa Barbara
Late Antique resources:
Augustine
Cassiodorus
Cosmas Indicopleustes -- the only real flat-earther in history?
"Worlds of Late Antiquity", syllabus to a wide-ranging undergraduate course.
"Internet Medieval Sourcebook"
Johannes Trithemius on secret forms of writing
Marshall McLuhan:
Who Was Marshall McLuhan?
The "Cathach", O'Donnell family good luck charm, with or without a book inside.
A.E. Housman, "A Shropshire Lad"
Kipling's Stalky & Co
Matthias Corvinus: an illuminated manuscript from his library
Mark Hopkins on a bench: I allude to this old saw in the book, and afterwards wrote more expansively on the theme in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"New Views of Medieval Europe": pictures from a 1962 National Geographic article discussed in the book.
---
In: FOUR - A Rediscovery of the 'Tetragonus mundus' - Marten KUILMAN (1996/2011). Falcon Press, Heemstede. ISBN 978-90-814420-1-5
(Fig. 127) - Johannes Trithemius (1462 - 1516) is one of the great explorers of the mind. He did not set sail to foreign continents, but tried to find new territories in the human mind with a similar optimism and in the same spirit as the sailors, who headed for the faraway places of the earth. A portrait of Hans Burgkmair from Augsburg around 1510.
The life of the Benedictine friar and abbot Johannes Trithemius (1462 - 1516; fig. 127) can be classified as ‘pivotal’. He was an intriguing and colorful figure, who embodied the spirit of his time. This friend and teacher of Henri Cornelius Agrippa 'charted the arduous route to Heaven along a very narrow and perilous course between two opposing ‘monsters’. The first monster, the Scylla, is a languorous and deliberative state still known by its half-Greek name of acedia (distress of heart, lethargy), and the second monster at the opposite pole, the Charybdis, excessive and indiscreet zeal' (BRANN, 1981; p. 117; BRANN, 1999).
Trithemius was a passionate reformer, teacher, book collector and history-writer. He described, in his 'De Origine Gentis Francorum (1514), a history of the Franks from 439 BC to 841 AD, partly on fictitious evidence (KUELBS & SONKOWSKY, 1987). 'He appears by hindsight to have been a transitional or 'Janus-like' figure', said BORCHARDT (1972) in his article on Trithemius.
His greatest reputation was due to a curious book called the 'Steganographia', published in 1606, but earlier circulating as a manuscript. 'The technical side of this science is very complex, involving pages and pages of elaborate calculations, both astrological and in connection with the numerical values of the angel-names', said Frances YATES (1964, p. 145).
Yates reckoned that Giordano Bruno's preference for the figure thirty was to trace back to Trithemius' 'Steganographia'. In that situation Bruno would have seen a manuscript. YATES (1966, p. 208) pointed to an abstract of this work later made for Bruno, where a list of thirty-one spirits was changed into thirty. Wayne SHUMAKER (1982) emphasized the cryptographic intentions of the 'Steganographia' rather than the demonic mysticism for which it became reputed.
Trithemius is one of the great explorers of the mind in a time, which coincided with the discoveries in the geographical field. Both were generated by an urge to go into extremes, to reach hitherto unknown boundaries. Names like Ficino, Pico della Mirandella, Bruno, Reuchlin, Agrippa and Fludd are just as important as those of Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magelhaen, although the latter are often more celebrated because of the visible evidence of their discoveries.