No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Johannes Trithemius: Magie, Geschichte und Phantasie
... Trithemius was the author of numerous mystical and monastic writings, in which he follows Jean Gerson and Nicholas of Cusa in advocating the idea of learned piety in monastic life (Brann 1999). Trithemius also wrote a number of historical writings, containing fantastic fictional stories, and cultivated a genre of bibliographical literature (Grafton 2006). In all his writings, the list of them is given by Klaus Arnold (Arnold 1991), Trithemius develops the humanistic ideal of eloquence of text. ...
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 contribution reconstructs the reflection on witches of Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), a German Benedictine who took up the pen on several occasions to declare against the spread of witchcraft and the need to solve this problem. The method adopted is to understand Trithemius’ thought from the analysis of his own works, specifically the Antipalus maleficiorum (1505–1508), the Liber octo quaestionum (1515) and what can be known of the De daemonibus (1507–1514). What will emerge will be an articulate reflection, which re-proposes the doctrine of the Malleus maleficarum (1486) enriched with original elements often drawn from popular superstitions. Thus, Trithemius proposes artifices to be immune from witches (e.g., apotropaic amulets) and provides specific indications on how to cure evil spells (exorcism), extending the dissertation to broader issues, such as the gender question, the relationship between witches and children (e.g., sacrifices, proselytes, victims) and developments in exorcism practice.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.