Of the Devils and Their Many Species
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (3:15): new, except for a short passage from W, 3: 18
This chapter, (Quit/ de animabus coelestibus nostri sentiunt theologi (“Of the Devils and Their Many Species”), occupies a significant place in Agrippa's systematic exposition of occult philosophy. In the 1533 Cologne printed edition (De occulta philosophia libri tres, sigla K in Perrone Compagni's critical apparatus), the text represents Agrippa's mature formulation of the ideas it addresses, the product of over two decades of reading, travel, and revision since the composition of the Würzburg draft.
According to Perrone Compagni's table of comparison, this chapter is new in the 1533 edition and has no direct counterpart in the Würzburg manuscript (W = MS M.ch.q.50). The description notes: \u201cexcept for a short passage from W, 3: 18.\u201d Its addition reflects the conceptual enrichment Agrippa undertook between approximately 1510 and the early 1530s, incorporating sources and arguments unavailable or unexplored in the juvenile draft.
The stability of this chapter across the manuscript and printed versions suggests it belongs to the secure core of Agrippa's natural-magical argument as it was constituted by 1510. Such chapters allow scholars to reconstruct the intellectual foundation on which the more elaborate structures of the 1533 edition were built.
Scholarly Perspectives
Lehrich's monograph is, in its entirety, an argument about how Agrippa theorises contact with the angelic and demonic hierarchy. The angel/demon chapters of Book III provide the theological and cosmological taxonomy within which the magician's operations are classified as licit or illicit: angelic operations are legitimate because angels mediate the divine will; demonic operations are dangerous because demons can deceive. Van der Poel (1997) situates this demonology within Agrippa's broadly orthodox Catholic theology, in which the proper relationship between humans and supernatural beings is governed by faith, prayer, and moral purity.