Notably, the German polymath, physician, legal scholar, soldier, theologian, and occult writer Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) and the Swiss physician, alchemist, and astrologer Paracelsus (1493–1541) were among his pupils. It was damaged in the firebombing of 1945, and subsequently restored by the workshop of Theodor Spiegel. In 1825, the tombstone was moved to the Neumünster church, next to the cathedral. Trithemius was buried in this abbey's church a tombstone by the famous Tilman Riemenschneider was erected in his honor. The relationship recovered after Julius's death though. Trithemius seemed to have a fall out with Maximilian regarding their differences when the emperor wanted to organize a separate ecclesiastical council in 1511, in slight of Pope Julius II. He remained there until the end of his life. Increasing differences with the convent led to his resignation in 1506, when he decided to take up the offer of the Bishop of Würzburg, Lorenz von Bibra (bishop from 1495 to 1519), to become the abbot of St. James's Abbey, the Schottenkloster in Würzburg. His efforts did not meet with praise, and his reputation as a magician did not further his acceptance. In his time, the abbey library increased from around fifty items to more than two thousand. In Sponheim, he set out to transform the abbey from a neglected and undisciplined place into a centre of learning. In the process though, Trithemius became a famous builder of libraries, which he created in Sponheim and Würzburg. Others opine that Meginfrid was not strictly forgery but the combination of wishful thinking with faulty memory. For his research on monasteries, he utilized “Meginfrid,” an imagined early chronicler of Fulda and Meginfrid's nonexistent treatise De temporibus gratiae to substantiate Trithemius's ideal of monastic piety and erudition, which were supposed to be the same values shared by the monks of the ninth century. While his colleagues like Jakob Mennel and Ladislaus Suntheim often inserted invented ancestors in their works, Trithemius invented entire sources, such as Hunibald, supposedly a Scythian historian.
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His forgery regarding the connection between the Franks and the Trojans was part of a larger project to establish a link between the current dynasty of Austria with ancient heroes. His work was distinguished by mastery of the Latin language and eloquent phrasing, yet it was soon discovered that he inserted several fictional passages into his works.Įven during Trithemius's lifetime, several critics pointed out the invented sources he used. Trithemius wrote extensively as a historian, starting with a chronicle of Sponheim and culminating in a two-volume work on the history of Hirsau Abbey. Trithemius also supervised the visits of the Congregation's abbeys. He often served as featured speaker and chapter secretary at the Bursfelde Congregation's annual chapter from 1492 to 1503, the annual meeting of reform-minded abbots.
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He decided to stay and was elected abbot in 1483, at the age of twenty-one. Travelling from the university to his home town in 1482, he was surprised by a snowstorm and took refuge in the Benedictine abbey of Sponheim near Bad Kreuznach.
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He studied at the University of Heidelberg. When he was 17 years old he escaped from his home and wandered around looking for good teachers, travelling to Trier, Cologne, the Netherlands, and Heidelberg. His stepfather, whom his mother Elisabeth married seven years later, was hostile to education and thus Johannes could only learn in secret and with many difficulties. When Johannes was still an infant his father Johann von Heidenburg died. The byname Trithemius refers to his native town of Trittenheim on the Moselle River, at the time part of the Electorate of Trier.