In 1499 Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, wrote to a Carmelite friend in Ghent about the book he was working on. It would teach a man to send his thoughts to another at any distance, without words, without writing, without a messenger. The friend died before the letter arrived; the prior of Ghent opened it, read it, and started showing it to others. This book’s own preface tells what happened next: the letter was copied and published through all France and Germany, read before princes "with the greatest admiration of all," some proclaiming Trithemius a divine man, others a magus and a necromancer. The abbot spent the rest of his life under that second reputation, and the Steganographia spent a century as a manuscript too dangerous to print, copied hungrily by everyone from Agrippa, who had sat as the abbot’s own pupil, to John Dee.
What the book actually contains is something quite different. On the surface it is a manual of spirit magic: conjurations of Pamersiel, Padiel, and their legions, assembled, as this edition’s title page puts it, "from Arabic, Hebrew, Chaldaic and Greek spirit-names, or, according to others, out of barbarous and meaningless words." Actually, the conjurations are cover-text. The gibberish encodes messages; the spirits carry ciphers. It is the founding book of hidden writing, and the modern word for the art, steganography, is simply this book’s title. It finally reached print in 1606 and was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1609. The title page of this edition recites the whole indictment in red and black: a book "hitherto understood by no one, but everywhere rejected as spurious, pernicious, magical and necromantic, evaded, condemned, and made to suffer the sentence of the Inquisition; now at last vindicated, unlocked, and explained."
The unlocking was the work of Wolfgang Ernst Heidel of Worms. This 1676 edition gathers everything: a Life of Trithemius, Heidel’s point-by-point vindication against the charge of necromancy, the complete Steganographia with its keys, reprinting even the title page of the earlier Darmstadt edition, and a closing Steganographia Illustrata surveying the whole art. The chapter-list reads like a conjurer’s advertisement: how to announce secrets by fire at any distance, without words, writing, or signs; how to signal your will to a prisoner however closely he is guarded, "even if he sat three miles under the earth"; how a man who never knew a word of Latin may be taught in two hours to read, write, and understand it; how to converse without words or nods while preaching, or playing the organ, or singing. And then there is Book III, the famous one: tables of bare numbers ranked under planetary signs, page after page. Heidel announced that he had read them, and printed his solution in a cipher of his own invention, which nobody could read either. Both locks held for three hundred years. Thomas Ernst solved both ciphers in 1993 and published his results in 1996; Jim Reeds of AT&T independently solved the Book III cipher in 1998: the planetary numbers were letters counted backwards, and the abbot’s deepest secrets proved to be test-phrases and the opening of a psalm.
The copy: a quarto, rebound at a later date in half calf done in the antique style, the spine with four raised bands, a red morocco lettering-piece gilt, and the date 1676 in gilt at the foot, with marbled paper sides and leather corners. The edges are sprinkled red. Early owners have left their marks on the printed title: inked initials in two seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hands, an old shelf number, and an old price code. The leaves are closely trimmed, though without loss of text, and there is browning, foxing, and spotting throughout; the text is strong and legible, the impression of the red-and-black title still handsome.
Provenance: Early ink ownership initials in two hands, old shelf number "201," and an old price code to the title page; early ink "NB NB" beside the cipher tables of Book III.
TRITHEMIUS, Johannes (1462–1516). Steganographia: Quae hucusque à nemine intellecta, sed passim ut supposititia, perniciosa, magica & necromantica, rejecta, elusa, damnata & sententiam inquisitionis passa; nunc tandem vindicata reserata et illustrata, ed. Wolfgang Ernst Heidel of Worms. Mainz (Moguntiae): at the expense of Johann Peter Zubrodt, 1676.
Physical Description: 4to. Title in red and black; 394 pp.; [1] leaf of synopsis at the end, closing with SOLI DEO GLORIA. Comprising the Vita Trithemii, Heidel’s Steganographia Vindicata, the complete Steganographia in three books with its Clavis (introduced by a divisional title reprinting that of the Darmstadt edition of 1621), and the Steganographia Illustrata. Woodcut headpieces and tailpieces, large decorated initials, the cipher tables of Book III printed in the text. Opening and closing blanks renewed.
Binding: Later half calf in the antique style, spine with four raised bands, red morocco lettering-piece gilt, small blind ornaments in the compartments, dated 1676 in gilt at the foot; marbled paper sides with leather corners; endleaves renewed. A handsome, sound binding.
Condition: Leaves closely trimmed, without loss of text; browning, foxing, and spotting throughout, heavier in places; the text strong and legible throughout. Very good.
In 1499 Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, wrote to a Carmelite friend in Ghent about the book he was working on. It would teach a man to send his thoughts to another at any distance, without words, without writing, without a messenger. The friend died before the letter arrived; the prior of Ghent opened it, read it, and started showing it to others. This book’s own preface tells what happened next: the letter was copied and published through all France and Germany, read before princes "with the greatest admiration of all," some proclaiming Trithemius a divine man, others a magus and a necromancer. The abbot spent the rest of his life under that second reputation, and the Steganographia spent a century as a manuscript too dangerous to print, copied hungrily by everyone from Agrippa, who had sat as the abbot’s own pupil, to John Dee.
What the book actually contains is something quite different. On the surface it is a manual of spirit magic: conjurations of Pamersiel, Padiel, and their legions, assembled, as this edition’s title page puts it, "from Arabic, Hebrew, Chaldaic and Greek spirit-names, or, according to others, out of barbarous and meaningless words." Actually, the conjurations are cover-text. The gibberish encodes messages; the spirits carry ciphers. It is the founding book of hidden writing, and the modern word for the art, steganography, is simply this book’s title. It finally reached print in 1606 and was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1609. The title page of this edition recites the whole indictment in red and black: a book "hitherto understood by no one, but everywhere rejected as spurious, pernicious, magical and necromantic, evaded, condemned, and made to suffer the sentence of the Inquisition; now at last vindicated, unlocked, and explained."
The unlocking was the work of Wolfgang Ernst Heidel of Worms. This 1676 edition gathers everything: a Life of Trithemius, Heidel’s point-by-point vindication against the charge of necromancy, the complete Steganographia with its keys, reprinting even the title page of the earlier Darmstadt edition, and a closing Steganographia Illustrata surveying the whole art. The chapter-list reads like a conjurer’s advertisement: how to announce secrets by fire at any distance, without words, writing, or signs; how to signal your will to a prisoner however closely he is guarded, "even if he sat three miles under the earth"; how a man who never knew a word of Latin may be taught in two hours to read, write, and understand it; how to converse without words or nods while preaching, or playing the organ, or singing. And then there is Book III, the famous one: tables of bare numbers ranked under planetary signs, page after page. Heidel announced that he had read them, and printed his solution in a cipher of his own invention, which nobody could read either. Both locks held for three hundred years. Thomas Ernst solved both ciphers in 1993 and published his results in 1996; Jim Reeds of AT&T independently solved the Book III cipher in 1998: the planetary numbers were letters counted backwards, and the abbot’s deepest secrets proved to be test-phrases and the opening of a psalm.
The copy: a quarto, rebound at a later date in half calf done in the antique style, the spine with four raised bands, a red morocco lettering-piece gilt, and the date 1676 in gilt at the foot, with marbled paper sides and leather corners. The edges are sprinkled red. Early owners have left their marks on the printed title: inked initials in two seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hands, an old shelf number, and an old price code. The leaves are closely trimmed, though without loss of text, and there is browning, foxing, and spotting throughout; the text is strong and legible, the impression of the red-and-black title still handsome.
Provenance: Early ink ownership initials in two hands, old shelf number "201," and an old price code to the title page; early ink "NB NB" beside the cipher tables of Book III.
TRITHEMIUS, Johannes (1462–1516). Steganographia: Quae hucusque à nemine intellecta, sed passim ut supposititia, perniciosa, magica & necromantica, rejecta, elusa, damnata & sententiam inquisitionis passa; nunc tandem vindicata reserata et illustrata, ed. Wolfgang Ernst Heidel of Worms. Mainz (Moguntiae): at the expense of Johann Peter Zubrodt, 1676.
Physical Description: 4to. Title in red and black; 394 pp.; [1] leaf of synopsis at the end, closing with SOLI DEO GLORIA. Comprising the Vita Trithemii, Heidel’s Steganographia Vindicata, the complete Steganographia in three books with its Clavis (introduced by a divisional title reprinting that of the Darmstadt edition of 1621), and the Steganographia Illustrata. Woodcut headpieces and tailpieces, large decorated initials, the cipher tables of Book III printed in the text. Opening and closing blanks renewed.
Binding: Later half calf in the antique style, spine with four raised bands, red morocco lettering-piece gilt, small blind ornaments in the compartments, dated 1676 in gilt at the foot; marbled paper sides with leather corners; endleaves renewed. A handsome, sound binding.
Condition: Leaves closely trimmed, without loss of text; browning, foxing, and spotting throughout, heavier in places; the text strong and legible throughout. Very good.
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