Devotional
3 texts · 3 editions
Contemplative and ascetic works — divine love, the vanity of human life, conversion of the mind to God.
Works in Devotional
De Vanitate et Miseria Humanae Vitae
On the Vanity and Misery of Human Life · 1495first English
De Vanitate et Miseria Humanae Vitae — "On the Vanity and Misery of Human Life" — is Trithemius's contribution to the contemptus mundi tradition, the medieval meditation on the transience and wretchedness of earthly existence descending from Innocent III's De Miseria Humanae Conditionis. It belongs to the devotional-contemplative strand of his output, alongside De Operatione Divini Amoris and De Vera Conversione Mentis ad Deum, and it rehearses the familiar themes — death, judgement, the emptiness of honours and riches — in the sober monastic register of his shorter treatises.
Mainz, 1495 · provisional reading text · Latin / English
De Operatione Divini Amoris
On the Working of Divine Love · 1497first English
De Operatione Divini Amoris — "On the Working of Divine Love" — is one of Trithemius's devotional-contemplative works, treating the action of divine love in the soul. It belongs with the inward, affective side of his output rather than the polemical reform tracts or the cryptographic books, and stands near his other contemplative pieces in the corpus — De Vera Conversione Mentis ad Deum and De Vanitate et Miseria Humanae Vitae. Where the reform writings address the discipline of the cloister, this one turns to the inner motion of charity that the discipline is meant to serve.
Mainz, 1497 · provisional reading text · Latin / English
De Vera Conversione Mentis ad Deum
On the True Conversion of the Mind to God · 1500first English
De Vera Conversione Mentis ad Deum — "On the True Conversion of the Mind to God" — is one of Trithemius's devotional-contemplative treatises, on the soul's genuine turning toward God as opposed to a merely outward religious life. It sits with the inward, affective side of his work — De Operatione Divini Amoris, De Vanitate et Miseria Humanae Vitae — rather than the reform tracts or the cryptographic books, and it treats conversion as an interior act of the will and intellect rather than a change of habit or observance.
Mainz, 1500 · provisional reading text · Latin / English