He exposed at a University of Heidelberg. Travelling from either university back to his house town around 1482, he was surprised by a snowstorm and took refuge in the Benedictine abbey of Sponheim near Bad Kreuznach. He decided to stay & was elective abbot in 1483, at the age of twenty-1. He placed bent on transform the abbey from either the unfortunate, undisciplined & ruinous place into a centre of learning. Inside his period, a abbey library increased from around fifty things to other than 2 thousand. Notwithstanding, his efforts did non just meet sustaining praise, & his reputation as a magician did not more his acceptance. Increasing differences by owning a convent led to his resignation in 1506, when he decided to choose higher a offer of the Lord Bishop of Würzburg, Lorenz von Bibra (bishop from 1495 to 1519), to become archimandrite of the Schottenkloster ("Scottish monastery") inside Würzburg. He remained there until a prevent of his life.

Among his pupils was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535).

Steganographia
His best known operate is Steganographia (written c.1499; published Frankfurt, 1606, placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1609). This book is inside iii volumes, & appears to become all about black magic - specifically, about applying spirits to communicate over long-distance call. Since a publication of the decoding key to the first 2 volumes inside 1606, it use at times been known to exist as actually caring by having cryptography and steganography. Until recently, a third volume was widely however believed to exist as just about magic - however recently a "magical" formulae were shown to exist as covertexts for yet further cryptography content. A act has lent its title to the modern field of steganography.

Other works
More works include De septum secundeis (A Seven Secondary Intelligences, 1508), a history of the globe according to astrology; Annales Hirsaugiensis (1514); and Polygraphia (1518).

Annales Hirsaugiensis. A to the full title is Annales hirsaugiensis...complectens historiam Franciae et Germaniae, gesta imperatorum, regum, principium, episcoporum, abbatum, et illustrium virorum, Latin for "The Annals of Hirsau...including the history of France and Germany, the exploits of the emperors, kings, princes, bishops, abbots, and illustrious men". Hirsau was the monastery touching Württemberg, whose abbot commissioned the work in 1495, but it took Trithemius until 1514 to finish the two volume, 1400 page work. It was foremost printed inside 1690. A bit of assume this function to exist as one of a number 1 humanist history books. (It might likewise own began a myth all about a "Year 1000" millenarianism panic 514 years before its completion.)