An ornate rectangular woodcut headpiece featuring a central circular medallion with a symbolic device (possibly a chalice or fountain). The medallion is flanked by symmetrical, elaborate scrollwork and acanthus leaf patterns in the late Renaissance style.

THE LIFE

OF JOHANNES TRITHEMIUS

ABBOT.

CHAPTER I.

THE BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF TRITHEMIUS.

In that year when Golden Mainz original: "Aurea Moguntia"—a free city of the German Empire and once the capital and metropolis of the Frankish kingdom—lost its liberty and fell into servitude, having been captured, plundered, and set on fire during the conflict between the two bishops Diether von Isenburg and Adolf von Nassau, with many citizens cruelly killed and driven into exile; in the year, I say, of human salvation 1462, in the tenth Roman Indiction A fifteen-year cycle used in the Roman Empire and the Church for dating documents, in the fourth year of Pope Pius II, and the twenty-second year of Emperor Frederick III, on the very night of the Purification of the Virgin The feast of Candlemas, celebrated on February 2nd, that is, on the Calends of February February 1st, at eleven o’clock at night and nearly the thirtieth minute, JOHANNES TRITHEMIUS was born in Trittenheim. He took his surname from this place, which is a village in the Diocese of Trier, located about four miles from that metropolitan city on the left bank of the Moselle River as it flows downstream. He was born to honorable parents of modest fortune, who provided the necessities of life through the cultivation of grapes for wine. They were, however, free citizens. His father was from the "pagan mountain," commonly called Heidenberg, and his mother was Elisabeth, known as being "of the long village" original: "de longo vico". When the boy was only one year old, his father died. His mother, out of love for the infant and fearing that the tender child might be exposed to the mistreatment of a stepfather, remained a widow for seven years. When that time had finally passed, she took a second husband, with whom she bore several other children. All of these, however, died in their youth, except for one son named Jacob...