Agrippa and Trithemius: the master of Würzburg and the counsel of secrecy

Early in 1510, on his way back from England, Agrippa stopped at Würzburg to meet one of the most famous men of learned Germany: Johannes Trithemius, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St James. The conversation with the old monk, then nearly fifty, left a deep mark. Shortly afterwards Agrippa sent him the manuscript of the three books De occulta philosophia, together with a dedicatory letter that remains one of the most quoted documents of Renaissance magic.

Who Trithemius was

Johannes Heidenberg, called Trithemius after his birthplace of Trittenheim on the Moselle, was born in 1462. For more than twenty years he had led the abbey of Sponheim, turning its library into one of the richest in Europe, with about two thousand volumes. A historian, bibliographer and monastic reformer, he was also known for the Steganographia, a work on secret writing that circulated in manuscript and that many suspected of containing invocations of spirits.

This ambiguous fame had earned him enemies, and in 1506 Trithemius left Sponheim for the abbey of St James in Würzburg. There he went on writing on history, cryptography and theology, defending the idea of a lawful natural magic distinct from necromancy. For a young man like Agrippa he represented the model of a sage able to combine erudition with the search for hidden things.

The dedication and the reply

In the dedicatory letter Agrippa explained that he wished to restore dignity to magic, which in his view had once been the highest of the sciences and had then fallen into disrepute through the fault of impostors. He asked the abbot to judge the work and correct it. It was a gesture of humility, but also a way of placing the book under the authority of an illustrious name.

Trithemius replied in a letter dated 8 April 1510, praising the work and recommending caution. His advice, which became famous, was to share common things with everyone and the higher ones only with the most trusted friends, according to a proverbial image: “give hay to the ox and sugar to the parrot”. In other words, to each the food he is able to receive. The abbot also urged the young man not to stop at vain and passing things, but to seek the higher realities of the spirit.

A bond the book carries with it

Agrippa did not publish the work for more than twenty years, perhaps partly in keeping with that call for discretion. When he printed it in 1533, by then enlarged and transformed, he kept at the opening both his own dedication and the reply of the abbot, who had died in 1516. The exchange of letters thus became an integral part of the book and helped build the image of a secret tradition handed down from master to disciple.

The relationship with Trithemius was brief but decisive. The abbot gave Agrippa intellectual legitimacy and an example of how one could write about the occult arts while remaining within the Church. Later legend made both of them feared magicians, but the documents show two scholars concerned above all with distinguishing natural and religious wisdom from superstition and fraud.