Everything about Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa totally explained
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (
September 14,
1486 –
February 18 1535) was a German
magician,
occult writer,
astrologer, and
alchemist.
Life
Agrippa was born in
Cologne in 1486. In 1512, 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 didn't 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. (
Nauert demonstrates this pattern effectively.)
There is no evidence 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. It is impossible of course to cite negatively, but
Nauert, the best bio-bibliographical study to date, shows no indication of such persecution, and
van der Poel's careful examination of the various attacks suggest that they were founded on quite other theological grounds.
It is important to mention that, according to some scholarship, "As early as 1525 and again as late as 1533 (two years before his death) Agrippa clearly and unequivocally rejected magic in its totality, from its sources in imagined antiquity to contemporary practice." Some aspects remain unclear, but there are those who believe it was sincere (not our of fear, as a parody, or else). Recent scholarship (see Further Reading below, in
Lehrich,
Nauert, and
van der Poel) generally agrees that this rejection or repudiation of magic isn't what it seems: Agrippa never rejected magic in its totality, but he did retract his early manuscript of the
Occult Philosophy -- to be replaced by the later form.
According to his student
Johann Weyer, Agrippa died in
Grenoble, in 1535, for which see Weyer's
De praestigiis daemonium.
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.
Mary Shelley mentioned Agrippa in some of her works. In her 1818 gothic novel
Frankenstein, Agrippa's works were read and admired by
Victor Frankenstein. In her 1833
short story "The Mortal Immortal", Agrippa is imagined as having created an elixir allowing his apprentice to survive for hundreds of years.
The novel
The Fiery Angel (1908) by
Valery Bryusov (on which
Sergei Prokofiev's opera
The Fiery Angel is based), set in the sixteenth century, features a visit paid to Agrippa by the protagonist Ruprecht who is seeking advice on the occult. In novel and opera, 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's the study of nature itself.
Agrippa is briefly mentioned in Joyce's 1916 novel,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, as being known to the protagonist Stephen: "A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind".
In
Václav Havel's modern rewrite of
Doctor Faustus, Fistula tempts Doctor Foustka to indulge in witchcraft, noting that he's several books by occultists such as Agrippa,
Nostradamus,
Eliphas Levi, and
Papus.
Agrippa is briefly mentioned in the
Harry Potter series, appearing on a
Chocolate Frog card.
He told "Nothing is concealed from the wise and sensible, while the unbelieving and unworthy can't learn the secrets." He emphasized: "All things which are similar and therefore connected, are drawn to each other's power." This is known as the law of resonance.
Writings
Agrippa is perhaps best known for his books. An incomplete list:
- De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio invectiva (Declamation 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(External Link
)), a book on the theological and moral superiority of women. Edition with English translation, London 1670(External Link)
- 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. » One example of the text, not especially indicative of its broader contents, is Agrippa's analysis herbal treatments for malaria in numeric terms: "Rabanus also, a famous Doctor, composed an excellent book of the vertues of numbers: But now how great vertues numbers have in nature, is manifest in the hearb which is called Cinquefoil, for example five leaved Grass; for this resists poysons by vertue of the number of five; also drives away divells, conduceth to expiation; and one leafe of it taken twice in a day in wine, cures the Feaver of one day: three the tertian Feaver: foure the quartane. In like manner four grains of the seed of Turnisole being drunk, cures the quartane, but three the tertian. In like manner Vervin is said to cure Feavers, being drunk in wine, if in tertians it be cut from the third joynt, in quartans from the fourth."
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 (whose early draft, quite different from the final form, circulated in manuscript long before it was published) is often cited in discussions of Albrecht Dürer's famous engraving Melencolia 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; arguably more complete editions followed, but none is without serious textual problems.)
Modern editions of Agrippa's works
De occulta philosophia libri tres. Ed. Vittoria 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.
Notes and references
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