Andreas Helwig (Helwich, Helvigius) (1572–1643) was a German classical scholar and linguist.
His Origines dictionum germanicarum (1622) was a pioneer etymological work of the German language.
In his period at Berlin, he published Antichristus Romanus,[3] an anti-papal work including the numerical formula identifying Vicarius Filii Dei, an alleged title of the Pope, reduced to its Roman numerals and summed to 666.
Brady mentions a theory of Johann Christoph Wolf that Helwig had already published this observation in an anonymous work of 1600.
Such cryptograms were not uncommon; Brady comments on (from Richard Bernard's Key of Knowledge of 1617) the phrase Generalis Dei Vicarius in Terris likewise treated, and Thomas Beard’s 1625 permutation Vicarius Dei Generalis in Terris, perhaps influenced by Helwig.