TheCodeBreakers
department the position of precursor, pioneer, and indicator. Always
original and always fertile, he prophesied of lands he was not privileged
to enter, leaving the memory of dim and varied greatness rather than any
solid monument behind him."
Polyalphabeticity took another step forward in 1518, with the
appearance of the first printed book on cryptology, written by one of the
most famous intellectuals of his day. This was Johannes Trithemius, a
Benedictine monk whose dabbling in alchemy and other mystic powers
made him one of the most revered figures in occult science, while his
more solid scholarship won him the title of "Father of Bibiliography." In
1518, a year and a half after his death, his Polygraphiae libri sex, loannis
Trithemii abbatis Peapolitani, quondam Spanheimensis, ad Maximilianum
Caesarem ("Six Books of Polygraphy, by Johannes Trithemius, Abbot at
Wurzburg, formerly at Spanheim, for the Emperor Maximilian") was