AGRIPPA di NETTESHEIM, CORNELIUS HEINRICH. – Philosopher, born in Cologne in 1486 to a noble family. After an unsettled and adventurous life, he died, apparently in Grenoble, in 1535.
His principal work, written in his youth but to which he devoted himself throughout his life with revisions and additions, is the De occulta Philosophia, presented, as A. says in the prologue, to the celebrated Abbot Titemius, who corrected and approved II. Magic is described therein as the highest form of knowledge, to which the three parts of philosophy (physics, mathematics, and theology) receive their completion; these are respectively the subjects of the three books into which the work is divided.
The object of occult philosophy is the inner natures and occult properties of things, so called because their causes are hidden from the abstract consideration of philosophers and are revealed only through the exercise of particular experiences (I, 10). They do not belong to natures as such, but are infused into them and communicated by the divine ideas through the “anima (or spiritus) mundi,” by the rays of the stars, and by the intelligences that preside over them. Magic, therefore, after natural reason and divine revelation, is the “third way” that introduces us to knowledge of divine things, and it provides that hidden sense of nature and of Revelation which God reserves for some of his elect. Mediating between the intelligences and the corporeal world is the “spiritus mundi,” which is called the “fifth essence,” after the four elements (I, 14); it should not be understood as a hypostasis, but rather as the universal force that exists in the world as the soul exists in its body. In book III (chap. 9) we note a profession of faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation, a pious and ardent abridgment of the Athanasian Creed with thoroughly Catholic content. Less optimistic is the essay De vanitate scientiarum, written in his mature years, in which A. makes a merciless critique of all the sciences, showing how each one stops precisely at the point where the definitive solution to its problems ought to be proposed.
The essay earned him a harsh critique from a doctor of Louvain, to whom he replied with his convictions unchanged. A refined humanist, A. reveals himself in the curious De praecellentia et nobilitate foeminei sexus, which is a dignified defense of feminism “ante litteram” and deserves to be remembered for the affectionate praise it contains in honor of the Madonna.
A. calls her among all virgins “longe lateque principem immaculatum,” so that merely looking upon her arouses the purest thoughts; he defends her divine maternity and her virginity “ante” and “post partum”; finally, he proclaims that “in foemineo sexu optima est Virgo Maria,” so that “nec unquam dignior fuit nec futura est mulier, ipsa inquam beatissima Virgine Maria, quae siquidem praeter originale peccatum concepta sit, ne Christus quidem, quantum ad eius humanitatem attinet, maior est”.
An Italian version of the pamphlet appeared soon afterward (G. De Ferrari, Venice 1549).
There is as yet no comprehensive study that would permit an impartial judgment of the content and significance of A.’s work. In any case, presenting him as a heretic and one in collusion with the reformers, as is usually done, seems to us to disregard his explicit intentions and to pay too little attention to his fundamental doctrines, while overestimating the extravagance of certain doctrines that might find some explanation in the hardening and decline of scholasticism.
neuren Zeit, I, Berlin 1922, p. 205 ff.; A. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei von d. ältesten Zeiten an bis in die Gegenwart, Stuttgart 1925, pp. 200–13, 425–28; L. Maillet-Guy, Henri Corneli Agrippe, sa famille et ses relations, Valencia 1926, Cornelio Fabro