Agrippa

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Review
Author(s): R. Desmed
Review by: R. Desmed
Source: Latomus, T. 38, Fasc. 3 (JUILLET-SEPTEMBRE 1979), pp. 752-753
Published by: Société d'Études Latines de Bruxelles
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752 NOTICES BIBLIOGRAPHIQUES
particulière, dont s'est servi Armonio. Nous signalons, enfin, avec plaisir, que M. Ludwig
présente dans sa préface un vibrant plaidoyer en faveur de l'édition systématique et
scientifique des textes latins de la Renaissance.
R. Desmed.
Opera omnia Desidera Er asmi RoterodamU recognita et adnotatione critica instructa
notisque illustrata. Ordinis quinti tomus primus (V-l), Amsterdam et Oxford, North￾Holland Publishing Company, 1977, viii-410 p., 26,1 cmx 17,5, 7 pl.
Ce volume contient cinq ouvrages de caractère spirituel ou catéchétique, dont quatre
exécutés sur commande.
De contemptu mundi (éd. S. Dresden) : première œuvre d'Érasme, rédigée sans doute
avant 1490, mais publiée seulement à Louvain en 1521. L'introduction conclut, compte
tenu des conventions littéraires, que, dans sa teneur générale, cette epistola sur la vie
monastique mérite d'être prise au sérieux. Elle s'inscrit dans une tradition qui remonte au
Moyen Age. Le chapitre XII, rédigé après coup, n'est pas en contradiction absolue avec le
corps de l'ouvrage.
Virginis Matris apud Lauretum cultae Liturgia (éd. L. E. Halkin) : la princeps, Bàie,
1 523, ne donnait que le texte même de la messe : on suit ici la seconde édition, accrue d'un
sermon et de l'approbation de l'archevêque de Besançon. L'introduction souligne le
caractère complexe de la piété d'Érasme.
Modus orandi Deum (éd. J. N. Bakhuizen Van Den Brink) : texte de la princeps, Bàie,
1523, où sont insérés les importants compléments de 1525. L'introduction analyse les
concepts théologiques et retrace latradition littéraire dugenre. Une heureuse initiative :
l'éditeur, pour cette œuvre comme pour la suivante, donne la description bibliographique
complète des éditions utilisées.
Explanatio Symboli Apostolorum (éd. J. N. Bakhuizen Van Den Brink) : éd. princeps,
Bále, 1 533. Dès la fin du Moyen Age, l'instruction de la foi a cédé sa place prépondérante
à l'enseignement moral. Par ce traité didactique très complet, Érasme renoue avec une
longue tradition. Quant à l'authenticité philologique des différents Credo, son opinion, qui
est celle de son temps, reste flottante.
De praeparatione ad mortem (éd. A. Van Heck) :la princeps, Bàie, 1 534, est comparée
au manuscrit autographe, qui représente un état antérieur du texte. L'introduction retrace
la diffusion du livre et dresse un inventaireaisonné des variantes. Une constatation
intéressante : làoù les citations bibliques d'Érasme s'écartent de la Vulgate, c'est par
réminiscence duchant liturgique.
Roland Crahay.
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Of the Vanitie and Uncertaintie of Artes and Sciences , ed. by Catherine M. Dunn, Northridge, California State University, 1974, xxxv-453 p., 1 port.
Henri Corneille Agrippa de Nettesheim connut une vie agitée tant sur le plan spirituel
que sur le plan matériel ; son intérêt pour les sciences occultes et ses sympathies pour la
Réforme ne contribuèrent pas à lui assurer la tranquillité, comme le montre M"* Dunn
dans une courte introduction. Agrippa écrivit son De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum
et artium, l'ouvrage le plus représentatif de sa pensée, en 1 526, à un moment de profond
découragement, de pessimisme et de scepticisme envers toutes les connaissances. Il croyait
trouver dans la religion, ou plutôt dans une sorte de fidéisme, la réponse à ses problèmes intellectuels et moraux, tout en dénonçant les
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KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH IN THE THOUGHT OF CORNELIUS AGRIPPA
Author(s): George H. Daniels, Jr
Source: Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, T. 26, No. 2 (1964), pp. 326-340
Published by: Librairie Droz
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KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH IN THE THOUGHT
OF CORNELIUS AGRIPPA
The enigmatic figure of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettes￾heim (1486-1535) has been subjected to various interpretations since
the early 16th Century. Even his contemporaries were never quite
sure what to do with him. Lauded as a great scholar and leading
man of letters on the one hand, he was condemned as a wicked
practitioner of the black arts and collaborator with devils on the
other 1. Men of later generations were equally divided. The great
skeptical works of Sir Philipp Sidney and of Montaigne were con￾sciously modeled after Agrippa's volume, On the Uncertainty and
Vanity of the Arts and Sciences , while Giordano Bruno and Thomas
Vaughan took his three books of occult philosophy as a model. For
Marlowe and, to a lesser extent, for Goethe, Cornelius Agrippa was
the original Faust 2.
The difficulty is that there has always seemed to be two Agrip￾pas - the one who wrote De Occulta Philosophia , proclaiming that
the world was tied together with pervasive mystic bonds and that the
intelligence of man was capable of utilizing the occult qualities of the
universe for his own advantage, and the other Agrippa, the author
of De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum9 Declamatio Invectiva , et
Excellentia Verbi Dei , a violent declamation against all of man's
learning and against the possibility of his reaching understanding
1 According to his first biographer, at one time Agrippa was offered employment by three different courts, including that of the Emperor Charles V, into whose court he entered in1530 as Imperial Historiographer. See Henry Morely, The Life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim , Doctor and Knight , Commonly Known as a Magician (London : Chapman and Hall, 1856), Vol. 2, p. 259. On the other hand, Melanchthon regarded him as being on intimate terms with the devil. On this point, see the quotation in Philip Mason Palmer and Robert Pattison More, The Sources of the Faust Tradition (New York : Oxford University Press, 1936), p. 102. 2 For the similarity of Sidney's «Apology for Poetrie » and Agrippa's de Vanitate ,
see A. C. Hamilton, « Sidney and Agrippa », Review of English Studies , ns, 7 : 151-7, (April, 1956). Pierre Villey in his Les Sources et révolution des Essais de Montaigne (Paris, 1933), II, 166-170, notes the close relationship between de Vanitate and parts of Montaigne's « Apology for Raymond Sebond ».For Giordano Bruno, see Ernest Cassier, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft in Neueren Zeit (Berlin, 1906-7), I, p. 344-5. For Thomas and Henry Vaughan, see А. С. Judson, « Cornelius Agrippa and Henry Vaughan », Modem Lan￾guage Notes , 41 : 178-181 (March, 1926). In Scene I, lines 96-116, Marlowe's Faust specifically takes Agrippa as his ideal. For the relationship of Agrippa to Goethe's Faust, see Anton Reichl, « Agrippa and Gœthe's Faust,» Euphorion , IV, 1897, p. 287-301.
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THOUGHT OF CORNELIUS AGRIPPA 327
through reason г. On the surface at least, the two Agrippas do seem
incompatible, and until very recently, historians have followed the
pattern of choosing one of them and discounting the other as a fraud,
or at least, the victim of a temporary intellectual aberration. A few,
following Marlowe, have looked upon him as a Faustian character
who, at a certain point, renounces scholarly allegiance to human
sciences and turns to the black arts 2.
In 1957, an ingenious attempt was made by Charles G. Nauert
to unite the two strands in the character of Agrippa, by interpreting
him as a paradigm of the dialectical movement of Western European
thought which Hiram Haydn saw as characterizing the period 3.
This paper arose out of the conviction that an insistence upon
viewing Agrippa either in terms of intellectual development or
discounting one side of his thought necessitates an entirely false final
evaluation of the man, and, what is more serious, a misunderstanding
of his real significance in the history of thought. A comparison

• implied or otherwise - of Agrippa with Faust does have a certain

seductive appeal, and interpreting him as a paradigm of the dialectical
movement of Haydn's " Counter-Renaissance " thesis is even more
tempting. But either effort precludes a real understanding of the
relationship between magic, skepticism, and modern science. A
brief chronological sketch of the major events in Agrippa's life will
make clear the difficulty of a developmental analysis.
Agrippa was born in 1486 at Cologne and sometime before 1506
had studied jurisprudence and medicine at Cologne and Paris,
although he took no degree. He spent the next two years in Spain, in
part as a military adventurer and in part as a student in the company
1 The edition I have used is Agrippae : Opera in Duos Tomos Concinne , Lugduni, Per Beringos Fratres, n.d. (fictitious imprint: probably Strasburg in the early 17th
Century). (All translations areby me.) 2 Lynn Thorndyke, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York :
Columbia University Press, 1941) ; V, Chapter 8,sees Agrippa as primarily a practi￾tioner of the black arts ; August Prost, in Corneille Agrippa: sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris,
1881, 1882) interprets him as a skeptic and a charlatan. The Faust interpretation can
be found in various places, most prominently in the article referred to above by Reichl, but also in Agnes Bartscherer, Paracelsus , Paracelsisten und Gœthes Faust , (Dortmund, 1911) especially p. 23-25, and in Harold Jantz, Gœthe's Faust as a Renaissance Man
(Princeton : Princeton University, 1951), passim. For a good summary of interpretations of Agrippa, see Charles G. Nauert, "Magic and Skepticism in Agrippa's Thought", Journal of the History of Ideas , 18 : 161 fï., (April, 1957). Nauert also deals with the
question of whether Agrippa was merely "declaiming " in his De Vanitate and demon￾strates that he did not, in his Apologia , retract any of the views, as distinghished from
some of the obviously fantastic stories, whiche had expressed in the earlier work.
3 Nauert, "Magic and Skepticism in Agrippa's Thought." Nauerťs debt to Haydn
is not, of course, without acknowledgement. Nauert summarizes the Haydn thesis
on pp. 165-6 in the following manner : "In opposition to the orderly world view which
the Thomists and the humanists shared, there arose ageneral skepticism concerning the power of the human mind to gain truth. This skepticism in turn produced two
results, sometimes at odds but often found in the same person : unsystematic empiricism, which granted truth only to sensory knowledge, and occultism, which appealed rather
to gnostic traditions ofrevealed truth, especially the Hermetic and the cabalistic.
Finally, these two tendencies, especially the empirical, contributed in some measure to
the birth of modern scientific methodology, which restored faith in the power of the
human mind, but on a different level from that of medieval rationalism." For Haydn's
thesis, see The Counter-Renaissance , New York, 1951.
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328 GEORGE H. DANIELS, JR.
of a group of theosophists. In 1509, he lectured at the University of
Dole on Reuchlin's Hebraic studies, with such success that, according
to his own account, he was granted a degree of Doctor of Divinity
by the University. In the same year, he wrote his treatise on the
nobility and pre-eminence of women, a logical argument combined
with tortuous Biblical exegesis. In the following year, he wrote the
first draft of his three books on occult philosophy. He was then sent
on a diplomatic mission by the Emperor Maximilian to England,
where he was a guest of Dean Colet. By the end of 1510, he was in
Italy, where he was knighted for bravery at the battle of Ravenna.
In 1515 - again according to his own account - he was admitted as
Doctor of Medicine and of Jurisprudence for his lectures at Pavia on
Hermetic philosophy and Marcilio Ficino's commentary on the
Pimander. In the next few years, Agrippa was town advocate and
orator at Metz, where he also practiced alchemy on the side ; municipal
physician at Fribourg, and physician to Louise of Savoy. He was
forced to leave the service of Louise in 1526 for having first refused
to cast a horoscope for her on the grounds that it was " superstition,
unworthy of a Christian ", and then, upon being pressured, casting
a horoscope which anticipated the success of the Duke of Bourbon.
It was in this year that he wrote his skeptical Treatise, de Vantiate.
The treatise was not printed until 1530, the same year in which he
addressed a paper advocating empiricism in medicine to the Grand
Council of the Netherlands. This wras intended as a defense of Jean
Thibault, who had practiced with him at Antwerp during the plague.
The next year he began preparing his de Occulta Philosophia for
publication, acknowledging in his dedication to Hermann von Weid
that despite the inclusion of much that was probably in error, the
work contained "
many useful and necessary things ". In 1533, he
published his commentary on the Lullian system. He spent his last
two years wandering, and died under obscure circumstances at
Grenoble in 1535. His only publications in this final period of his life
were a series of letters exposing the injustices to him of Louise of
Savoy - letters for which he spent some months in prison г.
From this chronology, it is evident that Agrippa, to say the least,
was hardly a Faust figure. True, both Faust and Agrippa had grasped
the whole range of human learning and both had found it wanting.
But it is not accurate to say that Agrippa turned to magic - there is
no dramatic turning point in his life, nor is there a series of minor
turning points which can fit into
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ESTHER GILMAN RICHEY
“To Undoe the Booke”:
Cornelius Agrippa, Aemilia Lanyer
and the Subversion of Pauline Authority
omen of the Renaissance were enjoined to silence and sub￾mission by a voice that echoed with renewed force through￾out the seventeenth century, a voice privileged in the ser￾mons, tracts, and arguments of that time-the unequivocal pronounce￾ment of the Apostle Paul:’ “Let the woman learne in silence with all
subjection. I permit not a woman to teache, nether to usurpe autoritie
over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived & was in the
transgression” (I Tim. 2.11-14).~ If women were to find a place for
themselves as speakers and writers, they must first call into question
Paul’s interpretation of Genesis; they must first overturn his assessment of
Eve.3 Among those who took up this task, no woman did so with more
I. Suzanne W. Hull discusses the influence of Pauline authority on women in Chaste, Silent
and Obedient (San Marino, 1982), pp. 106-26, and a wide range of criticism offers the same
assessment. See, e.g., Margaret Ezell, The Patriarch’s Wqe: Literary Evidence and the History oJthe
Family (Chapel Hill, 1987). p. 16; Silent Butfor the Word, ed. Margaret Patterson Hannay (Kent,
OH, 1985); Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism (Ithaca, 1990). pp. 22-33; The Paradise of
Women ed. Betty Travitsky (London, 198 I), p. 5; Elaine Hobby, Virtue OfNecessity (Ann Arbor,
19891,pp. 5-11.
2. The Geneva Bible: a Facsimile ofthe 1560 edition (Madison, 1969).
3. For an analysis of Paul’s influence on Renaissance texts in general, see John S. Coolidge,
The Pauline Renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible (Oxford, 1970). Coolidge argues that
Pauline authority led the Puritans to “feel the old modes ofpresentation as a form ofbondage”
(p. xiii). As I will demonstrate here, a number ofwriters felt that Paul had not gone far enough.
Because Paul placed women under the “law,” he put them in the very “bondage” kom which
Christ came to liberate them. When it came to defining woman’s role on the basis of the biblical
record, men and women of the Renaissance found themselves in a double bind it was the
“Word” that liberated women to speak and to write if they took seriously the statement of the
I 06
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Esther Gilman Richey 107
art, authority, or skill than Aemilia Lanyer in Salve Deus RexJudaeonrm
(161 I). Yet despite the recent surge in scholarly criticism of Lanyer’s
we have not yet analyzed the revision of Paul that informs Lan￾yer’s passion narrative, nor have we identified the subversive herme￾neutic method that provides Lanyer with the impetus for this revision.
What we have identified are the questions that puzzle us. Barbara K.
Lewalski, for example, closes each of her articles with an awareness of
how much we do not know, particularly about Lanyer’s feminism:
“How should we account for the feminist thrust of [Lanyer’s] volume,
which rewrites patriarchy by revising the fundamental Christian myths:
Eden, the Passion of Christ, the Communion of Saints, with women at
prophet Joel, “I wdl pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy” (Joel 2.28). The Word also silenced them in the definitive pronouncement of the
apostle Paul. Ifwomen were to gain a voice, the prophetic reading had to be given authority, the
Pauline reading suppressed. Agrippa and Lanyer succeed in both.
4. Aemilia Lanyer’s lengthy passion poem, Salve Deus RexJudaeorum (1611). has had a
checkered literary history. First emerging under the editorial mrection of A. L. Rowse in 1974
and called The Poems ~JShakespeare’s Dark Lady, Lanyerh text became a footnote to Rowse’s
thesis-that he had located the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Scholarship has since moved
onto firmer ground. Elaine Beilin analyzes Lanyer’s poetry in the context of seventeenth￾century encomia, Barbara Lewalski assesses the competing genres and autobiographical details
which shape poem and personal outlook, and Lynette McGrath locates a feminism-at once
medieval and strangely modern-in Lanyer’s subversive metaphors.
Still more recently, the issue of Lanyer’s feminism drew a wealth of attention at the 1992
MLA convention as Barbara Lewalski, Susanne Woods, Boyd Berry, Michael Schoenfeldt, and
Marshall Grossman responded in turn to the way Lanyer’s gender informs her relationship to her
patron, her poetic authority, her digressive “feminist” narrative, her tendency to privilege social
abjection, and her artfbl expression of matronage rather than patronage. For further discussions
of Lanyer, see Aliki Barnstone, “Women and the Garden,” Women and Literature 2 (1982). 147-
67; Elaine Beilin, “The Feminization of Praise: Aemilia Lanyer,” in Redeeming Eve (Princeton,
1987). pp. 177-207; Lorna Hutson, “Why the Lady’s eyes are nothing like the sun,” in New
Feminist Discourzes ed. Isobel Armstrong (New York, 1992). pp. 150-75; Barbara K. Lewalski,
“Of God and Good Women: The Poems of Aeda Lanyer” in Silent Butfor the Word, ed.
Hannay, pp. 203-24 and “Re-writing Patriarchy and Patronage: Margaret Clifford, Anne
Clifford, and Aemilia Lanyer,” Yearbook $English Studies 21 (1991), 87-106; Lynette McGrath,
“Metaphoric Subversions: Feasts and Mirrors in Amelia Lanier’s Salve Dues Rexjudaeorum,” Lit:
Literature Interpretation Theory 3 (1991). 101-13 and “‘Let Us Have Our Libertie Againe’:
Aemilia Lanier’s 17th-Century Feminist Voice” in Women’s Studies 20, 3-4 (1992). 33 1-48;
Jane1 Mueller, “The Feminist Poetics of Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rexjudaeorum” in Feminist
Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory, ed. Lynn Keller and Cristanne Miller (Ann Arbor,
1994); Wendy Wd, The Imprint $Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance
(Ithaca, I993), pp. 3 19-30, and “Our BodiesIOur Texts: Renaissance Women and the Trials of
Authorship” in Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narrative by Women, ed.
Carol J. Singley and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney (Albany, 1993). pp. 51-72; Susanne Woods,
“Aemilia Lanyer and Ben Jonson: Patronage, Authority, and Gender,” Ben /onson Journal I
(I994), 35-30.
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108 English Literary Renaissance
their enter?"^ At the same time Lewalski’s work on Aemilia Lanyer
suggests the beginning of an answer: she identifies the remarkable femi￾nism of Salve Deus RexJudaeonrm with the Querelle des Femmes, a genre
popular with medieval and Renaissance writers.6 The authors of the
Querelle repeatedly attack the Pauline interpretation of Genesis, contest￾ing both his analysis of the Fall and his subordination of women.’
Among these writers, Cornelius Agrippa’s Ofthe Nobilitie and Excellencie
of Womankinde (I 542) offers the most striking parallel to the revision of
Paul found in Lanyer. A book first entering the English imagination as
an affirmation of Mary and Elizabeth’s right to ascend the throne, Ofthe
Nobility is, according to Constance Jordan, the “most explicitly feminist
text to be published in England in the first half of the century.”* Its
popularity would increase during the reign of Elizabeth, a time when
the works of Agrippa were being widely read by Sidney, Bacon, Nashe,
and Marlowe and when the debate about women was chnating in the
pamphlet wan9
5. See Lewalski, “Re-writing Patriarchy and Patronage,” p. 106; “Of God and Good
Women,”p.224.
6. Each of the earlier critics touches upon this issue. Lewalski cites Lanyer’s final epistle “To
the Vertuous Reader” as a “remarkable contribution to the Querelle desfemmes” (“Of God and
Good Women,” p. 212), and she analyzes this epistle more completely in “Rewriting Patriarchy
and Patronage,” p. 102. Elaine Beilin sees the Querelle as a much larger influence, noting that
Lanyer “accomplished her task” by drawing upon the “traditional debate material on the
women question.” She makes a direct connection to the early defenses of women, citing
Cornelius Agrippa in particular. See Beilin, pp. 179, 323. The Querelle itself has been much
discussed. A bibliography of primary texts participating in this tradition is available in Francis
Lee Utley’s Ihe Crooked Rib (New York, 1970). For an analysis of this tradition within the
Renaissance, see Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara E McManus, HalfHumankind (Chi￾cago, 1985); Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient, pp. 106-26; Joan Kelly, “Early Feminist Theory
and the Querelle des Femmes, 1400-1789,” Signs 8 (1982), 4-28; Betty Travitsky, “The Lady
Doth Protest: Protest in the Popular Writings of Renaissance Enghshwomen,” English Literary
Renaissance 14 (1984), 255-83; Linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance (Chicago,
7. In Renaissance Feminism, Constance Jordan writes that the argument over woman’s post￾lapsarian status “fueled feminist responses” throughout the sixteenth century @. 23). These
arguments emerge in a number of texts of the Querelle. See, e.g., the primary texts in Hag
Humankind, particularly the work of Jane Anger and Esther Sowerman. William Heale in his
Apologiefor Women (1609) also offers a compelling reinterpretation of Genesis @p. 60-66).
8. See Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism, pp. 122-126. For critical commentary on
Agrippa and the Querelle, see also Linda Woodbridge, for whom Agrippa’s text is a “personal
favorite,” although she “cannot believe it was meant to be taken seriously” @. 40). Agrippa’s
radical revision of Paul fueled the intellectual debate on the woman question, influencing other
writers in the Querelle tradition, among them Aemilia Lanyer.
9. Agrippa’s influence in the Renaissance is documented by Charles G. Nauert, Jr., Apippa
and the Crisis ofRenaissance nought (Urbana, 1965) who notes that Erasmus, Vives, Rabelais,
Sidney, Nashe, Marlowe, Bacon and Vaughan read his works @p. 325-26). That Agrippa was
19841, pp. 18-48.
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Esther Gilman Richey 109
Before turning to Lanyer, then, I shall first illustrate how Agrippa
rereads Genesis to undermine Pauline hermeneutics, thereby overturn￾ing the authority which underwrites Renaissance gender relations. By
writing the Pauline subjugation ofEve and her daughters not only out of
the Old Testament, but also out of the epistles of Paul himself, Agrippa
indicates that Eve and the women who follow her reproduce an open,
more generous New Testament-a Renaissance version of ecriturefemi￾nine.l0 I shall argue that it is this hermeneutic process-visible most
clearly in Agrippa and available to Lanyer in the general milieu of the
Querelle des Femmes-that becomes the “feminist” framework for Salve
Deus Rex Judueorum.
As Agrippa analyzes Genesis, then, he quite literally starts over, pro￾viding an altogether different “genesis” for women: “Thus blessyng was
gyven for the woman, and law for the man: The lawe I say, of anger and
of cursynge. For why, the fiuyte of the tree was forbydden to the man,
but not to the woman: which was not than created. For god wolde her
to be fiee from the begynning. Thedore the manne sinned in eatynge,
not the woman. The man gave us deathe, not the woman. . . . And we
toke orygynalle synne of oure father the man, not of our mother the
woman”” In his thorough rereading of Genesis 2. I 5-17, Agrippa ex￾plores the gaps in the chronology of the biblical narrative: God plants a
garden, places Adam within it, and issues a command not to eat the
forbidden fruit. Immediately afterwards God says, “It is not good that
the man shulde be him selfe alone: I wil make him an helpe mete for
him” (Gen. 2.18). According to Agrippa, God’s statement calls attention
to Eve’s absence: she “was not than created.” Consequently, Adam alone
is under the “Law” of the Father; Eve is fiee, subordinate neither to the
“Law” nor to Adam and therefore the conduit of divine “blessyng.”
In making Eve’s absence the locus of divine presence, Agrippa undoes
recognized as subversive by Renaissance readers is also true. John Harington (in his 1591
translation of Orlando Furioso) cites Agrippa as calling into question the authority of court,
priests, lawyers, and physicians. See Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso in English Heroiral Vme
(1591). trans. John Harington (New York, 1970). sigs. iijz-iiij.
10. I
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Review
Author(s): Charles G. Nauert
Review by: Charles G. Nauert
Source: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 688-689
Published by: Sixteenth Century Journal
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2543557
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688 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXVIII / 2 (1997)
tion about the lesser lights who haunted the Spanish court, the English diplomatic scene and
the English/Spanish commercial arena. Many of them worked, with varying degrees of suc￾cess, in the netherworld of Catholic intrigue at a time when to be Catholic was to court
disaster in England.
Indeed, Professor Loomie's admirable knowledge of Spanish and English sources and his
painstaking reconstruction of episodes in this often veiled area of history lead to a yearning
for more. What, for instance, in more deail were the status, responsibilities, and histories of
what was becoming the English consular service in Spain? But if knowing the actors in the
complex web of late Tudor and early Stuart diplomatic contact is as important as I believe it
to be, then Loomie has clearly provided a valuable collection of insights. He is also important
in reminding us of the subtleties at work in this period.
There is a quibble however. As much as one might want this volume in one's collection,
one is also a little put off by such a poor example of the publisher's craft. The articles are
simply pulled whole cloth from their original setting, and physically copied.There is thus no
pagination for this volume per se, but rather the original pagination is that of the original arti￾cles.The fonts vary article by article. But what is perhaps most disconcerting is that even the
quality of reproduction is marginal. Some pages are readable, others are reproduced so lightly
that literally only strong illumination makes the text accessible.This is book production at its
lowest common denominator, and one wishes that the contributions of the author had
deserved a more dignified treatment. Nor did Professor Loomie greatly add to his collection
with his all too terse and rare emendations tacked to the end of some of the original texts.
Considerably more could have been contributed by someone so knowledgeable in the field.
Regrettably, one detects too much haste in putting this volume together. In other words, the
redundancy one feels in dealing with this book could have been partially remedied with
greater attention to all aspects of its production.
Gary M. Bell........................................... Texas Tech University
Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. Hen￾ricus Cornelius Agrippa [von Nettesheim]. Translated and edited by Albert
Rabil, Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. xxxii + 109 pp. $33.00
HB, $13.95 PB.
Although Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) did not regard his Declamation on the
Nobility and Preeminence ofthe Female Sex as one of his most important works, it attracted
much attention from the moment of its first publication and was quickly translated from the
original Latin into French, English, Italian, German, and (somewhat later) Polish. Its influ￾ence rested partly on its contrarian point of view as a rebuttal of the traditional misogyny of
learned and popular culture, for it provided not just a defense of the essential equality of
women to men, but even a series of arguments contending that in every important respect,
women were superior to men. It also attracted attention because despite Agrippa's occasional
stretching of his evidence, the book presented a powerful case against the misogynists, draw￾ing on its author's remarkably varied learning to confront and refute each of the many argu￾ments that had long been used to prove the inferiority of women and to justify the subordi￾nation imposed on women by both law and custom. Indeed, perhaps the most striking part
of this little treatise is the brief section at the end which charges that the only real cause for
the present-day subordination of women is unjust laws and customs and the exclusion of
nearly all women from the liberal education that might free them from servitude.
This English translation is based on the critical edition of the Latin original, De nobilitate
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Book Reviews 689
et praecellentiafoem
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DOI 10.1515/kl-2014-0042
Henry Cornelius Agrippa (attributable to). De Arte Chimica (On Alchemy). A Cri￾tical Edition of the Latin Text with a Seventeenth-Century English Translation.
Ed. by Sylvain Matton. Second Edition, Revised. Paris : SÉHA ; Milan : Archè,
2014. (¼ Textes et Travaux de Chrysopœia 14). 109 pp.
Le De Arte Chimica est un traité alchimique anonyme, publié pour la première
fois dans l’Auriferæ artis, quam chemiam vocant, antiquissimi authores, sive tur￾ba philosophorum (Bâle : Pietro Perna, 1572), dont on ne connaît pas de manu￾scrit antérieur à l’édition et qui fut dès la fin du XVIe siècle attribué à Marsile
Ficin, mais que son nouvel éditeur pense être d’Henri Corneille Agrippa de Net￾tesheim (1486–1536), l’auteur du De occulta philosophia (Cologne, 1531–1533).
Avant d’exposer les raisons qui ont déterminé le choix de Sylvain Matton, di￾sons un mot de ce traité. Il est divisé en vingt chapitres. Les douze premiers
préparent le lecteur à pénétrer les arcanes de l’alchimie ; les chapitres XIII à XX
sont réservés à sa pratique. Le style du De Arte Chimica est poétique, jusque
dans les parties où son auteur propose de « descendre à la praxis » (p. 52). Les
mentions des poètes et des philosophes antiques y sont nombreuses : Orphée,
Proclus, Héraclite, Aristote, Théophraste, Virgile. Un des aspects remarquables
du texte consiste en un entrelacement de théologie catholique, de mythologie
gréco-latine et de théorie alchimique1
. Cela, il est vrai, constitue la marque mê￾me de l’alchimie de la Renaissance, de sorte qu’il ne nous appartient pas ici de
la commenter outre mesure2
. Surtout, le De Arte Chimica se fonde (sans jamais
s’y référer nommément) sur la thèse brièvement exposée par Ficin dans son De
vita coelitus comparanda, à savoir que la fabrication de l’élixir ou la pierre phi￾losophale des alchimistes consiste à extraire de l’or où il est enfoui le spiritus
mundi, véhicule de l’anima mundi3
. Quant à la partie pratique de ce traité (cap.
XIII–XX), elle est conforme aux pratiques élaborées au Moyen Âge, basée sur le
Kritikon Litterarum 2014; 41(3–4): 162–165
Compte rendu par : Antoine Calvet (Paris)
1 Citons par exemple cet extrait du chapitre VI, p. 34 : « Le Ciel éthéré a été fermé à tous les
hommes, afin que tous les hommes descendissent aux Enfers et y fussent détenus pour l’éter￾nité. Mais la très humble Vierge Marie ouvrit la porte de l’Olympe éthéré […] De là vient que,
non sans raison, le Mercure est comparé à la très glorieuse la sainte Vierge Marie, etc. » (Coe￾lum æthereum fuit omnibus hominibus occlusum, ut omnes homines ad infernas sedes descende￾rent, et ibi detinerentur perpetuo. Sed Maria virgo humilima aetherei Olympi ianuam aperuit […].
Unde non immerito gloriosissimæ divæ virgini Mariæ æquiparatur mercurius, etc…).
2 Pour un bon aperçu du renouvellement de l’alchimie à la Renaissance et de son inspiration
mytho-hermétique, voir l’article de Didier Kahn : « Alchimie, Occident moderne », J. Servier
(éd.) : Dictionnaire critique de l’ésotérisme. Paris 1998, pp. 38–51.
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mercure et le plus souvent voilées par des symboles, par des métaphores et des
similitudes empruntées à la création du monde, à celle de l’être humain, à la
Résurrection de Jésus, mais aussi à d’autres plus prosaïques renvoyant à des
arts voisins, comme la médecine ou l’art de la verrerie. Et si l’auteur du De Arte
Chimica convoque les plus hautes autorités de l’Antiquité, son texte garde la
trace de figures alchimiques forgées au Moyen Âge et conservées dans la Tabula
chemica de Senior Zadith ou dans le Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkiet (le Livre de
la Sainte Trinité) qu’il attribue au Franciscain allemand Ulmannus (p. 67).4 Il
s’agit en somme d’un traité aux multiples influences, à la fois garant de la tradi￾tion alchimique médiévale et enrichi d’innovations comme celle, principale, de
l’esprit universel du monde cher à Marsile Ficin. Les qualités littéraires du De
Arte Chimica sont réelles ; cependant, il semble que, trop souvent, elles ont
pour résultat d’égarer le lecteur plutôt que de le renseigner. Que penser d’une
phrase comme : « Sunt autem hæ destillationes necessariæ, per quas depuratur
mercurius ab omni feculentia terrestri et cadit Lucifer, hoc est immunditia et
terra maledicta e coelo aureo » (Ces distillations, qui purgent le mercure de toute
saleté terrestre, sont donc nécessaires : Lucifer tombe du Ciel de l’Or, comprenez
l’impureté et la terre maudite), si ce n’est que l’allusion scripturaire5 empêche
de voir exactement ce que l’alchimiste trame dans son laboratoire.
Mais revenons au problème de son attribution que, dans son introduction
(qui reprend et
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Cornelius Agrippa and Henry Vaughan
Author(s): Alexander C. Judson
Source: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Mar., 1926), pp. 178-181
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2913915 .
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.
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.
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178 M. L. N., XLI., 3 (MARCIH, 1926)
uxorem. Si pater virginis dare noluerit, reddet pecuniam juxta
modurm dotis, quam virgines accipere consueverunt. I I Maleficos non
patieris vivere. Further proof of ZElfred not deviating here from
his scriptural tert is afforded by the agreement2 of the Quadri￾partus translation with the Vulgate, dated 1114 by Liebermann.
OTTO B. SORELUTTER.
Brlstol, Ca".
CORNELIUS AGRIPPA AND HENRY VAUGHAN
Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, soldier, physician,
and reputed magician (1486-1535), is known to have exerted a
profound influence upon Thomas Vaughan, Anglican clergyman
and magician, the twin brother of the poet Henry Vaughan. Of
Agrippa, Thomas Vaughan wrote, " He indeed is my author, and
next to God I owe all that I have unto him," 1 a statement that
is substantiated by the many references in the works of Thomas
to Agrippa's two most important books, De Occulta Philosophic
and De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artiunm atque
Excellentia Verbi Dei Declamatio.
No one, I believe, has hitherto called attention to Henry's appar￾ent familiarity with the second of the above-mentioned works of
Agrippa. To me it seems clear that Henry Vaughan's curious little
poem entitled The Ass was inspired, in part at least, by Chapter
102 of The Vanity of Arts and Sciences (to use the title of an
English translation of 1684, from which I shall quote). Agrippa's
The Vanity of Arts and Sciences, written about 1527, attacks
ninety-nine aspects of worldly learning in as many chapters, and
then in Chapter 100 concludes that the real key to knowledge and
wisdom "is nothing else but the Word of God." Agrippa's book
is really a plea for the simple, childlike acceptance of the doctrines
of the Bible, of inspired truth.
In Chapter 101 Agrippa writes as follows:
Neither is there any sort of men less fit to receive Christian doctrine,
than they who have their mindes tainted with the knowledge of the
2-Owing to Si preceding the scribe omitted se- of seduazerit.
1 Works, ed. Waite, 1919, p. 50.
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[image]
<PARSED TEXT FOR PAGE: 3 / 5>
NOTES AND COGMMUNICATIONS 179
Sciences: for they are so stiff and obstinate in their self-opinions, that
they leave no place for the Holy Ghost, and do so assure themselves, and
trust in their own strength and power, that they will allow of nothing
else for truth; and they scorn and despise all those things which they
cannot understand by their own Industry. Therefore hath Christ hidden
these things from the wise acnd prudent, aJnd revealed them to little chil￾dren; that is to say, to the poor in spirit, not enriched with the treasuries
of humane knowledge; to the pure in heart, not defll'd with the vanity of
Opinions. . . . For this cause, Christ chose his Apostles not Scribes, not
Doctors, not Priests, but unlearned persons of the vulgar people, void of
knowledge, unskilful, and Asses.
Chapter 102 is entitled " A Digression in praise of the Ass." This
chapter begins with the statement that, since some one might re￾proach him for calling the Apostles asses, it may be worth while
" to discourse the Mysteries of the Ass." After discussing the
traits of the ass and the veneration in which he has been held, he
continues:
The Ass was consecrated by the touch of the body of Christ: for Christ
ascending to Jerusalem in triumph for the Redemption of mankind, as it
is recorded in the Gospel, rode upon an Ass; which was mysteriously fore￾told by the Oracle of Zachac
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On: 24 October 2014, At: 08:51
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Occult Retraction: Cornelius
Agrippa and the Paradox of
Magical Language
Chris Miles a
a
Communication and Media Studies , Eastern
Mediterranean University , Gazi Magusa , Mersin 10 ,
Turkey
Published online: 14 Oct 2008.
To cite this article: Chris Miles (2008) Occult Retraction: Cornelius Agrippa and
the Paradox of Magical Language, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 38:4, 433-456, DOI:
10.1080/02773940802375467
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02773940802375467
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Occult Retraction: Cornelius
Agrippa and the Paradox of
Magical Language
Chris Miles
Recent work on the relationship between rhetoric and magic has tended to pivot around the
issue of magic’s perceived identification of signifier and signified and what that might mean
for its relationship to larger theological, empirical, and rhetorical approaches to language.
This article seeks to problematize the assumptions underlying this issue through an
examination of the work of Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), the author of what is
commonly regarded as the European Renaissance’s most influential magical text, De
occulta philosophia libri tres (1533). In investigating the rhetorical strategies contained in
Agrippa’s famously ambiguous retraction of his occult works we may uncover an equally
polysemic stance toward the ability of language to deal with both the everyday world and
the realm of the sacred, a stance that uses textual instantiations of paradoxes of self￾reference to forcefully undermine the apparently paradigmatic magical identification of
signifier and signified.
Much recent investigation into the relationship between rhetoric and magic
has been premised on the assumption that magic is, in one way or another,
linguistically mistaken. So, for example, Kenneth Burke, in attempting to
stake out the territory of rhetoric, concludes that magic, although apparently
related to rhetoric in its use of language to try to effect change, fundamen￾tally ‘‘gets the whole subject turned backwards’’ (Rhetoric of Motives 42) due
to its ‘‘mistaken transference’’ of the rhetorical model to attempting to
‘‘induce motion in things’’ rather than in people. What Burke calls ‘‘word
magic’’ (43, using Richards and Ogden’s phrase) is thus both ‘‘erroneous’’
and ‘‘derived’’ and its only real significance lies in the opportunity to exam￾ine the way in which magic was used as a socializing ‘‘primitive rhetoric.’’
Chris Miles is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, Eastern
Mediterranean University, Gazi Magusa, Mersin 10, Turkey. E-mail: chris.miles@emu.edu.tr
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Vol. 38, No. 4, October 2008, pp. 433–456
ISSN 0277-3945 (print)/ISSN 1930-322X (online) # 2008 The Rhetoric Society of America
DOI: 10.1080/02773940802375467
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Similarly, Brian Vickers’s work on the different linguistic paradigms under￾lying the shift between the occult philosophy of the Renaissance and the
scientific method of the Enlightenment revolves around an expansive
investigation into the implications of magic’s supposed reliance on the
‘‘denotative fallacy,’’ a phrase popularized by S. J. Tambiah (although
explicitly argued against in his own work). William Covino has used
Vickers’s research to argue for the existence of an alternative, ‘‘progressive’’
rhetoric that mirrored the Renaissance magical linguistic paradigm. This
rhetoric shared the assumption that words can have an effect on the real
world, that, in some sense, there is an identity between signifier and signi￾fied. Covino characterizes this as ‘‘the pre-Enlightenment magical=rhetorical
belief in a cosmology of possibilities for re-ordering discourse and reality,
through writing that creates new phantasms, new magic rhetorics’’ (356).
For Covino, what we have now come to take as rhetoric is actually only
the victorious handmaiden of scientific empiricism—the suppressed, pro￾gressive rhetoric of ‘‘phantasms’’ having been occulted by the forces of
logical positivism in much the same way that Renaissance magical philo￾sophy was written out of the canon of knowledge by the Enlightenment.
The chronology shared by Covino and Vickers is broadly supported by
Michel Foucault in his influential The Order of Things: An Archaeology of
the Human Sciences. Foucault notes the fundamental changes in European
attitudes toward the relationship between language and the natural world
across the sixteenth century, then the Classical period, and finally into
‘‘modernity.’’ In describing the intellectual transformations across this
chronology, Foucault characterizes the epistemology of the sixteenth century
as one obliged ‘‘to accept magic and erudition on the same level.’’ For, as he
writes,
The world is covered with signs that must be deciphered, and those signs,
which reveal resemblances and affinities, are themselves no more than
forms of similitude. To know must therefore be to interpret: to find a
way from the visible mark to that which is being said by it and which,
without that mark, would lie like unspoken speech, dormant within
things. (Foucault 32)
The Classical period that follows, however, is based on a fierce rejection of
the trope of resemblance, ‘‘denouncing it as a confused mixture that must be
analyzed in terms of identity, difference, measurement and order’’ (52). In
contrast to both Covino and Vickers, Foucault displays little allegiance to
either linguistic paradigm—for him, the sixteenth-century approach to
language and the world is just as flawed as the Classical, classifying paradigm
that overtakes it. However, for the purposes of the current article, what is
434 Miles
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important is that Foucault also works from the familiar assumptions
regarding the Renaissance equation of sign and reality, word and thing.
Most recently, Joshua Gunn has explored the rhetoric of the occult in a
study that is, once again, founded upon the assumption that magical
thinking is best typified by its ‘‘fixed’’ view of language ‘‘that presumes a
meaningful mind-independent reality that language, however inaccurately,
represents, a presumption that Derrida has famously dubbed ‘logocentrism ’’’
(45). As Gunn notes, contemporary rhetoric, along with the majority of the
humanities today, assumes language is fluid and ‘‘never corresponds to the
material world in a direct or transparent way’’ (45). So things remain in
much the same position as they were when Burke pointed out the errors
of the magical paradigm in 1950. Despite Covino’s enthusiasm for the pos￾sibilities of a (re-)created magical rhetoric, and Gunn’s own multidimen￾sional investigation into the generative paradoxes of occult discourse, the
motifs of fixity and identity remain fundamental to the way in which rhet￾oric scholars have tended to approach the issue of magic. In this article, how￾ever, I wish to question the assumptions of this approach and investigate the
possibility that magical paradigms of language might be far more complex
and ambiguous than previous commentators have allowed.
If contemporary rhetorical approaches to magical language are grounded
in biased assumptions, then what is at stake here is the possibility of a truly
critical approach to a large matrix of discourses. The dismissal of magical
language as ‘‘mistaken,’’ ‘‘backwards,’’ or ‘‘fallacious’’ leads to a dismissal
of those discourses that use such language to talk about the world and truth.
The labeling of a discourse as esoteric, hermetic, or occult thus carries with it
implicit pre-judgments regarding its use of language (and therefore its rhet￾oric). Inevitably, such pre-judgments lead to an impoverished engagement
with such discourses. Magical or occult language becomes a stereotyped cari￾cature playing its part in a binary opposition that, as this article will show, is
not supported by the primary literature. Even when contemporary rhetorical
approaches to occult language appear to be presenting it in a more nuanced
manner they end up repeating the established assumptions. Gunn’s study,
for example, argues that many of the linguistic and rhetorical implications
of magical and occult thinking revolve around the paradox of ineffability,
wherein ‘‘the fundamental premise, that spiritual truth is ineffable (A),
requires the seemingly contradictory act of speaking or writing (B)’’ (50).
Gunn states that this contradiction is ‘‘illusory’’ or ‘‘erroneous’’ (50, 49)
because, from the position of the modern rhetoric scholar, it is based on
the belief that there is a (sacred), external truth signified by esoteric
language, in stark contrast to the modern ‘‘rhetorical worldview’’ itself which
Occult Retraction 435
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holds that ‘‘nothing means outside human modes of representation and that
‘truth’ is merely the product of sentences’’ (50). Gunn’s principal focus in his
study is the mapping of the tropes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
occult discourse onto the ostensibly postmodern discourse of contemporary
academia, yet the foundations that underlie this mapping need to be exam￾ined carefully for their own illusory assumptions. How correct is it to say,
along with Burke, Vickers, Foucault, Gunn, and Covino, that the magical
view of language is one based on fixity? Is magical=occult discourse funda￾mentally paradoxical? And if so, is that paradox inherently ‘‘erroneous,’’
or are there other possible interpretations of the relationship between
ineffability and language that the rhetoric of magic might offer up?
In order to investigate the implications of these issues of fixity and ineffa￾bility in magical language, I will be devoting a large part of this article to a
consideration of the philosophy of language contained in the occult works of
Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535). Next to the mythic composite Hermes
Trismegistus, Agrippa is perhaps the most influential of all Western occult
theoreticians. His work has always remained central to the European concep￾tion of ritual magic and continues to be used by those who self-identify
as occultists and magicians today. Furthermore, Agrippa was both a sly
practitioner and able theoretician of rhetoric and demonstrates a deep
engagement with issues of language and the sacred across all of his texts.
He is, correspondingly, a perfect candidate for an examination of the ways
in which occult=magical discourse deals with language and the ineffable. I
hope to demonstrate that Cornelius Agrippa, Western icon of magical dis￾course, can in no way be said to have possessed a simplistic view of language
founded on the motifs of fixity and identity and that consequently the
Western tradition of ritual magic that has been so influenced by his thought
needs to be approached with a far more open rhetorical mind than has so far
been the case. In my conclusion I will discuss the broader implications of this
for rhetorical conceptions of magic and magical language.
Determining Agrippa
Cornelius Agrippa represents in many ways the epitome of the Renaissance
occult scholar. His De occulta philosophia libri tres (circulated in manuscript
from 1510 and then published formally in 1533) is built on a synthesis of the
humanistic magic of Ficino and Pico, adaptations of Jewish Kabbalah, the
rediscovered texts of the Hermetica (thought at the time to represent a
system of the sacred actually older than Moses) and the works of the
Neoplatonists. De occulta philosophia (DOP) stands, then, as ‘‘a grandiose
436 Miles
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summary of the magical speculation of the Renaissance’’ (Borchardt 65), and
the work’s strong influence on later figures such as John Dee, Giordano
Bruno, and Thomas Vaughan explains Agrippa’s position as ‘‘a nodal figure
in the transmission of the Hermetic-Cabalist tradition of the Renaissance’’
(Keefer 614).
As its full title intimates, DOP is divided into three books each given over
to one of the three different types of magic, namely, natural, celestial, and
ceremonial (thus mirroring the threefold division of the universe into
elementary, celestial, and intellectual). The first book, as well as being
concerned with the details of natural magic, also provides the fundamental
premises on which all three forms of magic are built. In this way, Agrippa
explains the threefold nature of the four elements and how those elements
are to be found in all things, not only ‘‘inferiour bodies feculent and gross’’
but also in the celestial and the ‘‘supercelestial’’ realms. In addition to the
elements are the virtues, which are of two sorts, the natural (which originate
from the elemental) and the occult (which issue from the stars
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Christopher I. Lehrich. The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy
The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy by Christopher I
Lehrich
Review by: Steven vanden   Broeke
Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Summer 2005), pp. 676-678
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1353/ren.2008.0705 .
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Christopher I. Lehrich. The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius
Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy.
Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 119. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers,
2003. xiv + 256 pp. index. append. illus. tbls. bibl. $87. ISBN: 90–04–13574–X.
“My ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students, and my proficiency
that of the masters. Professor Krempe often asked me, with a sly smile, how
676 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY
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<PARSED TEXT FOR PAGE: 3 / 4>
Cornelius Agrippa went on? Whilst Mr. Waldman expressed the most heartfelt
exultation in my progress.” Victor Frankenstein’s infamous trajectory from
Agrippan magic to Enlightenment science and back, serves as a useful reminder of
the central question underlying this book: while it is undeniable that Agrippa’s
magic was influential, we have been unable to explain why he was influential.
Christopher Lehrich’s answer agrees well with the conclusions of Van der
Poel’s important study of Agrippa as a humanist theologian (1997). There, we
learned that Agrippa’s Neoplatonic background committed him to a fundamental
distinction between faith and reason and between the study of divine and created
things. Agrippa considered the uncertainties of Christian revelation, not dogma or
articles of faith, to be the proper object of theological debate and was willing to
accommodate more esoteric texts and interpretive strategies within this project.
Lehrich shows that divine things also occupy central stage in the Agrippa’s magical
De occulta philosophia (1533) through the notion of a “chain of vivification” (57)
that connects the natural, celestial, and divine world.
This claim is developed from the perspective of the natural world in chapter
2, of the celestial world in chapter 3, and of the divine realm in chapter 4. These
three central chapters are framed by an introductory chapter, announcing possible
theoretical ramifications for the history of religion, the history of ideas, and textual
criticism, and by a concluding chapter that summarizes the coherence of Agrippa’s
intellectual project, its implications for early modern history of ideas, as well as the
aforementioned theoretical results. As is clear from this brief summary, Lehrich has
decided to “begin with a few axes to grind” and to produce “an analysis which
sacrifices coverage (and tedium) for depth” (213). The interdisciplinary nature of
Lehrich’s strategy is rather unusual among students of early modern magic, and his
book should be applauded for that reason alone. At the same time, the concluding
chapter suggests that Lehrich does privilege Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia as an
object for the history of ideas, and his book may accordingly be read as a contri￾bution to that specific tradition.
In chapter 2, Lehrich argues for a reading of De occulta philosophia, book 1,
as clearing away the vagueness that haunted Ficino’s important distinction between
natural and demonic magic. Agrippa’s solution consists in a rigid application of the
aforementioned distinction between natural, celestial, and divine spheres. But since
the separation of a natural realm also invited sceptical attacks of the type that
Agrippa published in his influential De incertitudine, the three worlds simulta￾neously remained connected, particularly in the mind of the magus. According to
Lehrich, this may constitute the true core of the controversial “Yates thesis”: to
point out the
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