AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM, HEINRICH CORNELIUS

(1486-1535)

   German humanist and polymath, known in his own time principally for his learning in magic and other occult sciences. Born near Cologne and educated in liberal arts there, he seems to have studied also at Dôle, Paris, and Pavia and claimed degrees in both law and medicine. He studied Greek and Hebrew and investigated occult learning that he believed to be very ancient, such as the Jewish mystical thought known as Cabala and the Hermetic books. In 1510 Agrippa produced the first version of his famous book on magic, De occulta philosophia / On Occult Philosophy, which was first printed in 1531-1533. Although he was influenced by the German humanist and Cabalist Johann Reuchlin and the occultist abbot Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim, his mastery of both humanistic studies and the occult arts increased greatly during six years (1512-1518) spent in Italy. He may have taken a law degree during this period, but he spent most of it studying and lecturing on occult arts and Neoplatonic philosophy. His subsequent writings, including the revised version of De occulta philosophia, show influence by the Italian Neoplatonists Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Like them Agrippa affirmed the existence of a body of secret learning, originally revealed by God and embodied in the books of the Jewish Cabalists, Hermes Trismegistus, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and Plato. These interests reflect a Christianized religious universalism that acknowledged a divine revelation at the roots of every human culture.

   Between 1518 and 1524, Agrippa lived in Metz, Geneva, and Swiss Fribourg as city legal counsellor, medical director of the civic hospital, and city physician, respectively.In this period he displayed sympathy with the Lutheran Reformation, though he was a critic of church corruption and clerical arrogance rather than an adherent of Lutheran theology. At Metz Agrippa defended the French humanist Lefèvre d'Etaples from attacks by local mendicant friars. In 1524 he moved to Lyon as personal physician to Louise of Savoy, mother of King Francis I. Resentment of his outspoken criticism of the queen mother, suspicions of sympathy for Martin Luther, and objections to his study and practice of magic caused him to lose favor at court.

   During this time of disappointment and financial hardship, Agrippa wrote his second major book, De incertitudine et vanitate scientium et artium / On the Uncertainty and Vanity of All Sciences and Arts, first published in 1530. In it he discusses every field of human endeavor and every type of academic learning and concludes that all of them are unreliable and useless; only a simple Christian piety based on the words of Scripture has enduring value.

   In 1528 he moved to the Netherlands, where he became historiographer to the governor, Margaret of Austria. Once again, Agrippa's interest in magic, suspicions that he favored the Lutheran cause, and resentment of his caustic attacks on traditional learning and established religious and political authorities cost him the favor of his patron. He left the Netherlands in 1532 to live with a new patron, the archbishop-elector of Cologne, Hermann von Wied. He moved to Lyon in 1535 and was briefly arrested because of his public criticisms of the mother of King Francis. He died at Grenoble later that year.

   In his own time and for centuries afterward, Agrippa was famous (or infamous) chiefly for his knowledge and active practice of occult arts such as astrology and alchemy, but also for his skeptical book on the uncertainty of human knowledge, De incertitudine et vanitate. Popular stories about his magical learning and practices made him the subject of legends and bred rumors of diabolical connections. These stories merged with contemporary legends about the German charlatan Georg Faust (ca. 1480-1540), so that the literary figure of Faust in German popular books and in the famous play by the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe contains elements derived from the life and legend of Agrippa. He revelled in paradoxical assertions contrary to contemporary opinion, a tendency expressed not only in De incertitudine et vanitate but also in his De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus / On the Nobility and Superiority of the Female Sex, which defended the proposition that the female sex is not only equal but actually superior to the male sex, an opinion wildly contrary to prevailing opinion. This little book was frequently reprinted and translated into several European vernaculars during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, a Neoplatonist with a penchant for mysticism, excelled in such wide-ranging professions as university professor, soldier, physician, lawyer, astrologer, and occult philosopher. His many enemies, however, marred the successes of his tumultuous career by maligning him as a magician and a heretic.

Born in Cologne, Agrippa matriculated from the city's university in 1499 and began his career as a professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Dole in 1509. Agrippa's public lectures on Johannes Reuchlin's De verbo mir­ifico earned him a doctorate of theology, but they also attracted the attention of Burgundy's Franciscan provincial superior, who accused Agrippa of heresy.Agrippa left Dole and traveled to London before serving Emperor Maximilian I as both a minor secretary and a soldier during the French-Italian wars from 1511 to 1518. Amid military engagements, Agrippa continued his occult studies and taught theology courses at the Universities of Pavia and Turin.

Agrippa subsequently accepted a position as ambassador and legal advisor for the city of Metz. While there, he became a close friend of Father Deodatus and visited his Celestine monastery regularly to give lectures and discuss the­ology. Bitter conflict, however, characterized Agrippa's relationship with the city's Dominican leaders, who decried his enthusiastic support for Jacques Le-fevre's* De una ex tribus Maria and his successful defense of a woman dubi­ously accused of witchcraft.

Agrippa left Metz in 1520 and served as physician to Louise of Savoy from 1524 to 1527, when disputes with his employer forced him to become Margaret of Austria's advisor and historiographer. While in Antwerp, he obtained an imperial privilege to publish several of his works, including his most famous, De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum (On the Vanity of the Arts and Sciences, 1530). Doubting the book's orthodoxy, Princess Margaret sent it for review to the theology faculty at Louvain, which charged Agrippa with heresy.

Unemployed and in debt, Agrippa returned to Cologne in 1531 in order to publish De occulta philosophia (Occult Philosophy). The efforts of Cologne's inquisitor and Faculty of Theology to prevent its publication enraged Agrippa, and he accused both of denouncing the ideas of reformers like himself, Reuchlin, and Desiderius Erasmus* before undertaking a proper preliminary investigation. In order to escape creditors, Agrippa moved his family to Bonn, where he pub­lished his remaining works, including a commentary on Ramon Lull's Ars brevis (1533) and a volume entitled Collected Orations (1535). After a brief period of imprisonment, Agrippa moved to Grenoble, where he died in 1535.

Agrippa's conviction that God manifests himself in the created world explains his enthusiastic inquiry into the fields of alchemy, astrology, medicine, and ge­ology. His research contributions in these areas include a clinical description of the plague, the development of medicines, a report on firearms and war engines, and a work on mining and minerals. Agrippa's desire to bring humanity closer to God also explains his career-long interest in religious matters ranging from the essence of faith to church politics. Agrippa, who radically opposed Scho­lastic theology, championed a new, humanistic theology that would ascertain the true meaning of God's word through a comparison of similar biblical texts, an analysis of Hermetic writings, and the commentaries of church-sanctioned authorities.

C. Nauert, Jr., Agrippa and the Crisis ofRenaissance Thought, 1965.