Apologetic

Trithemius Sui Ipsius Vindex

Trithemius, Vindicator of Himself · 1616first English

Trithemius Sui Ipsius Vindex — "Trithemius, Vindicator of Himself" — is the abbot's apologetic answer to the accusations of demonic magic that dogged his last decade. His Steganographia, circulated in manuscript from the late 1490s and reaching readers it was not meant to reach — Carolus Bovillus among them — had been read at face value as a manual of necromancy, and the charge clung to him; the Vindex, printed posthumously in 1616, gathers his own protestations of orthodoxy alongside the testimony of allies, insisting that the Steganographia is cryptography dressed as conjuration, not magic at all. It is the apologetic counterpart to the Steganographia (prdl-24395) and the Clavis Generalis Triplex (prdl-70281) elsewhere in this corpus.

Ingolstadii, 1616 · provisional reading text · Latin / English