Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
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Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) was a German magician, occult writer, astrologer, and alchemist. He may also be considered an early feminist.
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[edit] Life
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa was born of minor noble birth in Cologne September 15, 1486.
In 1509, he taught at the University of Dole in France, lecturing on Johann Reuchlin's De verbo mirifico; as a result, Agrippa was denounced, behind his back, as a "Judaizing heretic." Agrippa's vitriolic response many months later did not endear him to the University.
In 1510, he studied briefly with Johannes Trithemius, and Agrippa sent him an early draft of his masterpiece, De occulta philosophia libri tres, a kind of summa of early modern occult thought. Trithemius was guardedly approving, but suggested that Agrippa keep the work more or less secret; Agrippa chose not to publish, perhaps for this reason, but continued to revise and rethink the book for twenty years.
During his wandering life in Germany, France and Italy he worked as a theologian, physician, legal expert and soldier.
He was for some time in the service of Maximilian I, probably as a soldier in Italy, but devoted his time mainly to the study of the occult sciences and to problematic theological legal questions, which exposed him to various persecutions through life, usually in the mode described above: He would be privately denounced for one sort of heresy or another. He would only reply with venom considerably later.
Contrary to much received opinion, there is no evidence whatsoever that Agrippa was seriously accused, much less persecuted, for his interest in or practice of magical or occult arts during his lifetime, apart from losing several positions.
According to his student Johann Weyer, Agrippa died in Grenoble, in 1535. While no other evidence places Agrippa clearly after 1534, there is little reason to doubt Weyer.
[edit] Appearances in fiction
After Agrippa's death, rumors circulated about his having summoned demons. In the most famous of these, Agrippa, upon his deathbed, released a black dog which had been his familiar. This black dog resurfaced in various legends about Faustus, and in Goethe's version became the "schwarze Pudel" Mephistopheles. The latest literary manifestation seems to be the Grim from the Harry Potter series.
In the nineteenth century, Mary Shelley mentioned him in some of her works. In her gothic novel Frankenstein, Agrippa's works were read and admired by Victor Frankenstein. In her short story The Mortal Immortal, Agrippa is imagined as having created an elixir allowing his apprentice to survive for hundreds of years.
Sergei Prokofiev's opera The Fiery Angel (based on the novel by Valery Bryusov), set in the 16th century, features a visit paid to Agrippa by the protagonist Ruprecht who is seeking advice on the occult. In the opera (and novel), Agrippa is presented as being in a dangerous position with the religious authorities: he emphatically denies to Ruprecht that his research is supernatural, stating instead that it is the study of nature itself.
Agrippa also receives mention in the first of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. On Harry's first journey aboard the Hogwarts Express train, Ron Weasley tells Harry he is missing two cards from the complete set of collectible 'famous witches and wizards' cards found inside boxes of Chocolate Frogs. The cards he is missing are Ptolemy and Agrippa.
[edit] Writings
Agrippa is perhaps best known for his books. An incomplete list:
- De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio invectiva (The Speech Attacking the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and the Arts, 1526; printed in Cologne 1527), a skeptical satire of the sad state of science. This book, a significant production of the revival of Pyrrhonic skepticism in its fideist mode, was to have a significant impact on such thinkers and writers as Montaigne, Rene Descartes, and Goethe.
- Declamatio de nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus (Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, 1529[1]), a book on the theological and moral superiority of women. Edition with English translation, London 1670[2]
- De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books About Occult Philosophy, Book 1 printed Paris 1531; Books 1-3 in Cologne 1533). This summa of occult and magical thought, Agrippa's most important work in a number of respects, sought a solution to the skepticism proposed in De vanitate. In short, Agrippa argued for a synthetic vision of magic whereby the natural world linked to the celestial and the divine through Neoplatonic participation, such that the ordinarily licit natural magic was in fact validated by a kind of demonic magic stemming ultimately from God. By this means Agrippa proposed a magic that could resolve all epistemological problems raised by skepticism in a total validation of Christian faith. The book was a major influence on such later magical thinkers as Giordano Bruno and John Dee, but was ill-understood after the decline of the Occult Renaissance concomitant with the Scientific Revolution. The book (which circulated in manuscript long before it was published) is often cited in discussions of Albrecht Dürer's famous engraving Melancholia I (1514). (Note that Philosophy of Natural Magic: Complete Work on Natural Magic, White & Black Magic, 1569, ISBN 1-56459-160-3, is simply book 1 of De occulta philosophia libri tres.)
A spurious Fourth book of occult philosophy, sometimes called Of Magical Ceremonies, has also been attributed to him; this book first appeared in Marburg in 1559 and was certainly not by Agrippa.
(A semi-complete collection of his writings were also printed in Lyon in 1550; more complete editions followed.)
[edit] Modern editions of Agrippa's works
- De occulta philosophia libri tres. Ed. Vitttoria Perrone Compagni. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1992: ISBN 90-04-09421-0.
- Three Books Of Occult Philosophy. Trans. J. F. Edited by Donald Tyson. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1993: ISBN 0-87542-832-0.
- Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. Trans. Albert Rabil, Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996: ISBN 0-226-01059-7
No proper modern edition of De vanitate presently exists.
[edit] Further reading
- Lehrich, Christopher I. The Language of Demons and Angels. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003: ISBN 90-04-13574-X. The only in-depth scholarly study of Agrippa's occult thought.
- Nauert, Charles G. Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965: ASIN B000BANHI6. The first serious bio-bibliographical study.
- van der Poel, Marc. Cornelius Agrippa, the Humanist Theologian and His Declamations. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1997: ISBN 90-04-10756-8. Detailed examination of Agrippa's minor orations and the De vanitate by a Neo-Latin philologist.
- Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. The University of Chicago Press, 1964: ISBN 0-226-95007-7. Provides a scholarly summary of Agrippa's occult thoughts in the context of Hermeticism.
[edit] See also
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