Johannes Trithemius, abbè of the order of St Benedict, and one of the most learned men of the fifteenth century, was born at Tritenheim, in the diocese of Treves, the 1st of February 1462. After having studied for some time, he became a Benedictine friar, and abbot of Spanheim, in the diocese of Mayence, in 1483. He governed the abbey until the year 1506, when he joined the abbey of St James, at Wurtzburgh. He was learned in all sciences, divine and human, and died the 13th of December 1516.
Thevet calls him a subtle philosopher, an ingenious mathematician, a famous poet, an accomplished historian, a very eloquent orator, and eminent divine. Naudius says that those who would make him a magician ground their right on a little book of three or four sheets, printed in 1612, entitled, "Veterum Sophorum sigilla et imagines magicæ, sive sculptura lapidum aut gemmarum ex nomine Tetragrammaton cum signatura planetarum authoribus Zoroastre, Salomone Raphaele, Chaele Hermete Thelete, ex Joan Kithemii manuscripto erutæ." Secondly, his speaking so pertinently of magic, and giving himself the title of magician in some of his epistles. Thirdly, his writing the book of Steganography, a treatise stuffed with the names of devils, and full of invocations, and as very pernicious condemned by Boville as worse than Agrippa. To these Naudius answers that the pamphlet of making images and characters upon stones, under certain constellations, is a pure imposture and cheat of booksellers, it being printed above 120 years before by Camillus Lienard, as the third book of his "Mirror of Precious Stones, De Unguento Armario." From a letter then to a Carmelite of Gaunt, Arnoldus Bostius, the suspicion of his being a magician must be collected, wherein he specified many miraculous and extraordinary effects performed in his treatise of Steganography. This, however, is defended by several writers only as the means to decipher.—Naudius's "History of Magick," translated by Davies, p. 237, &c.
[121] See note on the "Spanish Tragedy," [v. 115]
[122] "Join with me," would suit the sense better, as she is asking Shape to unite his solicitations with hers. The old copy reads as it is reprinted.—Collier.
[123] [Old copy, a.]
[124] [A lecture, probably, was delivered on the phenomenon.]
[125] [The "Book of the Acts and Monuments," &c., 1563, &c. The woodcuts have the dying words of the martyrs printed on labels out of their mouths, in the way mentioned in the text.]
[126] Strabo, a philosopher of Crete and a geographer in the time of Augustus.
[127] Born at Pelusium, flourished about the year 140, and died 162, aged 78.
[128] Robert Stafford, born at Dublin, was of Exeter College, Oxford, and published "A Geographical and Anthological description of all the Empires and Kingdoms, both of Continent and Islands, in this terrestial Globe," &c., 1607. Wood says it was reported that John Prideaux, who was Stafford's tutor, had the chief hand in this work.