Writing the history of the Tironian notes in the Sixteenth Century: Johannes Trithemius and Roman Shorthand

The first scholar to identify and discuss the Tironian notes since their decline in the eleventh century was the German Benedictine abbot Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516). His De Notis was widely read and highly influential, both in terms of the abbot’s anecdotal information concerning his discovery and his attribution to particular inventors, namely Cicero and Cyprian. However, his cursory grasp of the principles governing Tironian notes had little impact among his more immediate readers. This paper argues that Trithemius developed a bet- ter grasp for the peculiarities of Tironian notes than he is usually given credit for. It does so by reconstructing Trithemius’s work, his sources, his conclusions, and his effort to understand – even to recreate – a non-alphabetic writing system at the close of the fifteenth century.