TRITEMIO. — Giovanni di Heidenberg, known as T. from Trittenheim on the Moselle (Treves), where he was born on 1 February 1462; he died at Würzburg on 13 December 1516. It was said of him that “no science was foreign to him”; he studied at Treves, Cologne, and Heidenberg; he learned Greek and Hebrew under Reuchlin and Wimpfeling.
He became a Benedictine monk at Sponheim, of the Bursfeld Congregation, in February 1482, and was elected abbot there the following year. He devoted himself to restoring the property of his abbey and to strengthening monastic observance; he collected rare books and manuscripts, through which the library became renowned throughout Germany and entered the Vatican Library in 1623. He also established a printing press and founded an academy, making the study of the classics the principal means for the formation of minds, and laying down the norms for the development of Christian learning, that is, the study of the Bible, the Fathers, and theology according to the principles of s. Tommaso.
In 1503 he left Sponheim and withdrew to Würzburg, to the monastery of S. Giacomo degli Scotti, of which he was elected abbot on 12 October 1505; there he died, esteemed as an ornament of his homeland, a teacher and model of monks, an educator and friend of priests, a father to the poor, and a physician to the sick (Janssen). He was in contact with the learned men of his time, and, in addition to ecclesiastical sciences, T. possessed such knowledge of the natural sciences that he was considered a sorcerer; but his greatest fame is due to his historical writings, which in some parts still retain their importance. He published the first universal lexicon of learned men in the Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiast. (Mainz 1494), to which his disciples added an appendix of 1155 articles (1508–13). He followed it with De viris illustribus Germaniae (ibid. 1495) and had the monk Paolo Lang collect materials for an extensive history of Germany. He also wrote: De viris illustribus O. S. B., Annalium Hirsangensium libri II, and a Chronicon Hirsangense (830–1370); Compendium annalium de origine Francorum (ibid. 1515–16); Chronicon ducum Bavariae; Chronicon Sponheimense from 1124 to 1506, which an anonymous author continued to 1526; Sermones et exhortationes ad monachos (Strasbourg 1516); Epist. familiar. libri II, and other pious and spiritual works. He also wrote curious works concerning astrologers, alchemists, and witches (Steganographia libri III), as well as secret writings and alphabets (Polygraphia, Frankfurt 1518).