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This contribution reconstructs the reflection on witches of Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), a German Benedictine who took up the pen on several occasions to declare against the spread of witchcraft and the need to solve this problem. The method adopted is to understand Trithemius’ thought from the analysis of his own works, specifically the Antipalus maleficiorum (1505–1508), the Liber octo quaestionum (1515) and what can be known of the De daemonibus (1507–1514). What will emerge will be an articulate reflection, which re-proposes the doctrine of the Malleus maleficarum (1486) enriched with original elements often drawn from popular superstitions. Thus, Trithemius proposes artifices to be immune from witches (e.g., apotropaic amulets) and provides specific indications on how to cure evil spells (exorcism), extending the dissertation to broader issues, such as the gender question, the relationship between witches and children (e.g., sacrifices, proselytes, victims) and developments in exorcism practice.

En el siglo XVI se aborda la literatura del secreto, divulgada por la Imprenta, tanto a reyes como a burgueses y comerciantes. A partir de documentos del Real Consejo de Indias se analizan tres episodios de Juan de Ibarra, influyente secretario del rey Felipe II. Se esclarecen sus estrategias secretas en el Consulado de cargadores a de Indias. Se escoge el año 1598 para hacer una primera cata de la red de secretos que envolvía la ida y la vuelta de la flota y armada de la plata desde las Indias a Sevilla. In the sixteenth century the literature of secrecy is addressed, disseminated by the Press, both kings and bourgeois and merchants. From documents of the Royal Council of the Indies, three episodes of Juan de Ibarra, influential secretary of King Philip II, are analyzed. Their secret strategies are clarified in the Consulate of shippers to the Indies. The year 1598 is chosen to make a first tasting of the network of secrets that involved the round trip of the fleet and armada of silver from the Indies to Seville.

While it is not possible to identify exact sources for the square tables that Johannes Trithemius and, after him, Blaise de Vigenère presented in their cryptographic publications, there is good evidence that Trithemius may have been influenced by a variety of materials: He knew the figural poetry of Rabanus Maurus (780-856) that frequently used squares with a grid of 36 letters; he was fully aware of the medieval ars combinatoria and the works of the Mallorcan philosopher and theologian Raymundus Lullus (1233-1316), where he would have also found combinatorial circular disks; and he may have discerned a pattern for his square table in the medieval Easter or Lenten tables used for the calculation of the forty days of Lent and the days of Easter over a period of years.

Book III of Trithemius's Steganographia (written ca. 1500) contains hidden cipher messages within what is ostensibly a work on magic. After almost 500 years these cryptograms have been detected and solved. (Since 1606 it was known that similar ciphers were present in Books I and II.) As a result the Steganographia can no longer be regarded as one of the main early modern demonological treatises but instead stands unambiguously revealed as the first book-length treatment of cryptography in Europe.

I solved both Trithemius's cipher and Heidel's encrypted solution in 1993 and published amonograph on the subject in 1996. In addition to drawing on my previous research, the following article includes several new observations and references, especially with regard to the chronology of the work, additional manuscript copies of the Steganographia, and the position of the Third Book within Trithemius's complete cryptological oeuvre.