Agrippa Scholarship
25 works · monographs, articles, editions, reviews
Scholarly works from the collection at E:\pdf\renaissance magic\Agrippa\.
Full essays cover the major monographs and articles; review entries provide contextual notes.
All essays are original commentary; no continuous text from copyrighted editions is reproduced.
2003 · Christopher I. Lehrich
The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy
The leading modern study of Agrippa's occult philosophy as a coherent philosophy of language, reading DOP through the lens of semiotics and Renaissance hermeneutics.
Monograph
1997 · Marc van der Poel
Cornelius Agrippa, the Humanist Theologian and His Declamations
The authoritative study of Agrippa's rhetorical and humanist context, situating the Declamations (including De incertitudine) within the traditions of deliberative oratory and scholarly paradox.
Monograph
1993 · Donald Tyson (ed. and comm.)
Three Books of Occult Philosophy (Complete Annotated Translation)
The most complete English edition of the DOP, combining Freake's 1651 translation with Tyson's exhaustive modern commentary, source identifications, and corrected magic squares.
Edition / Translation
1992 · Vittoria Perrone Compagni (ed.)
De occulta philosophia libri tres
The authoritative critical edition of the DOP, establishing the text of both the 1510 Würzburg manuscript and the 1533 Cologne printing with full critical apparatus.
Critical Edition
1996 · Henricus Cornelius Agrippa; trans. and ed. Albert Rabil Jr.
Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex
The authoritative English edition of Agrippa's feminist declamation, with Rabil's introduction placing the work within the querelle des femmes and the Other Voice tradition.
Edition / Translation
1955 · E. Garin, M. Brini, C. Vasoli, P. Zambelli (eds.)
Testi umanistici su l'ermetismo: Testi di L. Lazzarelli, G. Veneto, C. Agrippa
An early landmark collection placing Agrippa's work alongside Lazzarelli and Giorgio Veneto, with Garin's historiographical essay establishing hermeticism as a serious subject of Renaissance studies.
Edition / Anthology
1993 · Barbara Newman
Renaissance Feminism and Esoteric Theology: The Case of Cornelius Agrippa
Argues that Agrippa's feminism in the Declamatio is not merely rhetorical but grounded in a genuine esoteric theology identifying the divine feminine with the Shekhinah and the anima mundi.
Journal Article
1964 · George H. Daniels Jr.
Knowledge and Faith in the Thought of Cornelius Agrippa
A foundational article arguing that Agrippa's scepticism in De incertitudine is not a repudiation of the DOP but an expression of a consistent fideist epistemology underwriting both works.
Journal Article
2008 · Chris Miles
Occult Retraction: Cornelius Agrippa and the Paradox of Magical Language
The most sustained rhetorical analysis of the DOP's concluding retraction, arguing that the language theory of Book III is self-undermining and that the retraction is logically entailed by Agrippa's own premises.
Journal Article
1997 · Esther Gilman Richey
"To Undoe the Booke": Cornelius Agrippa, Aemilia Lanyer, and the Subversion of Pauline Authority
Traces the influence of Agrippa's feminist hermeneutics on the poet Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, showing how Agrippa's inversion of Pauline authority passed into English Renaissance literary feminism.
Journal Article
1982 · William R. Newman
Thomas Vaughan as an Interpreter of Agrippa von Nettesheim
Documents how the Welsh alchemist Thomas Vaughan (1622–1666) read and adapted Agrippa's natural philosophy, tracing the transmission of Agrippa's doctrines into mid-seventeenth-century English alchemy.
Journal Article
1972 · Barbara C. Bowen
Cornelius Agrippa's De Vanitate: Polemic or Paradox?
A careful generic analysis arguing that De incertitudine belongs to the Erasmian tradition of paradoxical rhetoric, with structural parallels to the Encomium Moriae, rather than to sincere philosophical scepticism.
Journal Article
2003 · Thomas Schipperges
Vom leeren Schein der Musik: Paradoxa der effectus musicae in Agrippa von Nettesheims Declamatio de incertitudine
Analyses the tension between Agrippa's enthusiastic musical theory in the DOP (where music is a powerful magical force) and his dismissal of music in De incertitudine, arguing this exemplifies his broader epistemological paradox.
Journal Article (German)
1964 · Frédéric Le Paige
Un humaniste des pays médians: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa de Nettesheim
A biographical portrait situating Agrippa within the intellectual culture of the Burgundian Netherlands, emphasizing his connections to Erasmian humanism and to the Habsburg court culture of the Low Countries.
Journal Article (French)
1913 · Friedrich Röck
Der Denarzyklus des Agrippa von Nettesheim
An early philological study identifying the sources of Agrippa's animal-decade (Denarzyklus) in Book I in the ancient astronomer Teukros of Babylon and the decanic tradition.
Journal Article (German)
1926 · Alexander C. Judson
Cornelius Agrippa and Henry Vaughan
Identifies Agrippa's De incertitudine as the source for Henry Vaughan's poem 'The Ass', documenting the seventeenth-century English reception of Agrippa's sceptical writings.
Journal Article
1972 · Alan Rudrum
Vaughan's 'The Tempest': A Source in Cornelius Agrippa
Identifies a specific passage in DOP Book I as the source for Henry Vaughan's poem 'The Tempest', extending the documented network of Agrippa's influence on the Vaughan brothers.
Journal Article
1937 · Felix Cunha
Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim
A biographical essay by a medical historian, notable for documenting Agrippa's activities as a physician and his views on medicine in De incertitudine, situating him within the history of Renaissance medicine.
Journal Article
2014 · Antoine Calvet
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, De Arte Chimica: A Critical Edition of the Latin Text with a Seventeenth-Century English Translation
A review article discussing the critical edition of Agrippa's spurious alchemical treatise De Arte Chimica, addressing questions of attribution and Agrippa's relationship to the alchemical tradition.
Review Article
1979 · R. Desmed
Review: Of the Vanitie and Uncertaintie of Artes and Sciences by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, ed. Catherine M. Dunn
A review of the first modern critical edition of the Elizabethan English translation of De incertitudine, assessing its editorial apparatus and its value for the study of Agrippa's reception in sixteenth-century England.
Review
1994 · Peter Dinzelbacher
Review: Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia libri tres, ed. Vittoria Perrone Compagni
An evaluation of the Perrone Compagni critical edition from a medievalist perspective, assessing the edition's handling of medieval sources and the adequacy of its treatment of Agrippa's relationship to scholastic thought.
Review
1994 · Michela Pereira
Review: Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia libri tres, ed. Vittoria Perrone Compagni
An assessment of the Perrone Compagni edition from a historian of science perspective, evaluating its contribution to the study of Renaissance natural philosophy and the occult tradition.
Review
2005 · Steven Vanden Broeke
Review: Christopher I. Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels
A critical assessment of Lehrich's monograph that acknowledges its philosophical originality while raising concerns about anachronism in its application of post-structuralist theory to sixteenth-century texts.
Review
1997 · Charles G. Nauert
Review: Rabil, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex
A brief but authoritative assessment of Rabil's edition of the Declamatio from one of the leading historians of Agrippa's intellectual biography.
Review
1569 · Henry Cornelius Agrippa; trans. James Sanford
Of the Vanitie and Vncertaintie of Artes and Sciences (English translation)
The Elizabethan English translation of De incertitudine by James Sanford (1569), the first extended English version of any Agrippa text and an important document in his Elizabethan reception.
Historical Translation