The XVI Century: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, the German alchimist (1486-1535)

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (September 14, 1486 – February 18, 1535) was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist.

LIFE
.1486. Agrippa was born in Cologne within the Holy Roman Empire (Colonia Agrippina in the Roman Empire, its inhabitants were called Agrippinenses) where Albertus Magnus professed and died 200 years ago. Cologne was an important academic and publishing center in the Empire and in his youth Agrippa became famous in his native town for refusing to speak anything but Latin. Afterwards he often referred to himself with the Latin part of his name, i. e. Cornelius Agrippa.

. 1493. Emperor Maximilian I succeeded his father Friedrich III. He was to become the main patron of Agrippa. In the same year Paracelsus was born in Einsiedeln, near Zürich.

. 1494. Johannes Reuchlin published his De verbo mirifico (On the Word that makes miracles) in Germany.

. 1499. Agrippa enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at Cologne University and received his License in Arts on 14.III..1502. By 1506, as we read in his Epistles, he was a secretary to the Emperor Maximilian I and studied in the University of Paris where he organised a secret society - a brotherhood of students interested in alchemy and magic. Its members were to help and play an important role during his whole life. In the same town, exactly 300 years before the first rosicrucian societies of that kind appeared, Jacques de Molay was burnt alive in 1314 thus proving what Agrippa wrote on the qualities of fire "alterum comprehendens, incomprehensibilis, et lux omnibus vitam tribuens". Landulfus became Professor at the University of Pavia, Germain became historian to Charles V. During the same year Reuchlin published his Hebrew grammar and dictionary.

. 1508. Agrippa travelled to Spain (Barcelona etc.), the Balearic Islands and Italy (Naples etc.) and then to France (Avignon).

. 1509. He lectured in the University of Dôle on De verbo mirifico, with the support of the University's chancellor and Archbishop of Besançon Antoine de Vergy. The courses were free of charge. They were attended even by Parliament councillors, which made him quite, maybe too famous (which was very dangerous and still is, even without the Inquisition). Lectures were dedicated to Princess Margaret, daughter of Maximilian I (she was governor of Netherlands etc., incl. Dôle). Agrippa became Professor of theology at the University of Dôle. He wrote De Nobilitate et præcellentia to gain favour of Margaret, but his efforts met a fierce opposition from the Franciscan order of Burgundy and he could not publish it until 1532. End 1509. Agrippa was 23 years old when he sent the manuscript of De occulta philosophia to his friend and teacher Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Spanheim, near Würzburg (Trithemius was also Paracelsus' teacher of alchemy).

. 1510. In his answer to Agrippa, concerning De occulta philosophia (8.IV.1510), Trithemius wrote: "I wonder... that you, being so young, should penetrate into such secrets as have been hid from most learned men, and not only clearly and truly, but also properly and elegantly set them forth".

Jean Catilinet, head of the Franciscan order of Burgundy, delivered at Ghent a sermon before Princess Margaret, against Agrippa's lectures at Dôle. Agrippa had to leave the continent, accused of judaicising heresy. Emperor Maximilian I sent him as ambassador to Henry VIII, as Agrippa wrote in his Epistles - on an occultissimum negotium. Shortly after this mission (by the end of 1511) Maximilian I left Louis XII and united with Henry VIII against France. Agrippa stayed in the house of Erasmus' friend John Colet, pupil of Ficino, who by that time lectured at Oxford on the Epistles of Saint Paul. On the basis of the Epistles, Agrippa wrote an Expostulatio to the accusations of the Franciscans.

. 1511. Agrippa returned to Cologne and resumed lecturing, this time at the Cologne University. By mid 1511 he entered the Army and soon became Captain - a position (much higher than it is today) which showed his influence, as well as his belonging to (at least) middle nobility. In late 1511 he took part in the Council of Pisa, as a German theologist, where he was excommunicated together with other "defiants". Shortly after, the pope died and the new pope Leo X revoked his excommunication in February 1513. The Emperor assigned a new patron for Agrippa - William IX Paleologus, Marquis de Monferrat.

. 1512. Agrippa lectured in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Pavia on Plato's Convivium. Till 1515 Agrippa stayed in Italy as a soldier and diplomat under the Duke of Milan. He studied Ficino and Pico de la Mirandola. By mid 1515 Agrippa lectured at Pavia University on Pimander (Ficino's Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum). Eventually here he made his doctorates on both laws and medecine. By the end of 1515 he dedicated his De triplici ratione cognoscendi Deum to his patron William. But then Francis I, king of France, invaded Pavia. Agrippa lost his fortune and had to leave the town.

. 1516. He gave lectures of theology at the University of Turin, probably based on the Epistles of Saint Paul.

Mid 1517. He became court physician to Charles III, Duc de Savoy, who was close to Margaret of Austria and William Paleologus, but the payment was so low that he refused it and the next year left for Metz where he became orator and advocate of the town. By this time, he wrote his "De originali peccato, On Geomancy" and a treatise on the plague.

In 1519, while in Metz, Agrippa defended Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples from Claudius Salini, prior of the Celestine monastery and also won a case, defending a woman accused of witchcraft by the Inquisitor of Metz. Agrippa even succeeded in removing the Inquisitor from that case. Of course, he again became too famous and there was no more place left for him in Metz.

. 1520. He returned to Cologne where he got the magical part of the Trithemius library. By that same year Charles V succeeded Agrippa's patron, the Emperor Maximilian I. In 1521 Agrippa went to Geneva and showed ultimate interest in Martin Luther. In October 1522, he went to Friburg (Switzerland) where he worked as town physician but often helped magistrates and used his diplomatic skills.

. May 1524. He went to Lyon as court physician to Louise de Savoy, Queen mother of Francis I. There he wrote his Commentary on Ars brevis of Raymond Lully. During the same year began an impressive conjunction of planets - the Big Parade, which rose dramatically the interest in astrology and it became the celebrity of the day. All authorities and influential people amused themselves in ordering horoscopes even for the most trivial decisions. Astrologers were overwhelmed with work, often did not care about the lengthy calculations and simulated - this golden mine resulted in a total abandoning of the old Chaldean principles in astrology and had its destructive impact on all mantic arts.

. By mid 1526, Agrippa was still not paid for his court duties and when the Queen mother asked him to make a horoscope for her son the king Francis and his war with Charles V and the Bourbons, he refused with bitter comments on Louise in a letter which she somehow managed to read. Moreover, he predicted a triumph for the Bourbons. Thus Agrippa was forced to stay in Lyon without pension and without the right to leave the town. He did it only in December 1527. This was the perfect background and the right time for Agrippa's attack on the astrologers and magicians of the day in his De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum et artium.

. July 1528. After problems with leaving France, Agrippa went to Antwerp where he tried successfully to regain the favour of Margaret of Austria and in January 1529 she appointed him as Archives Councillor and Historiographer to the Emperor Charles V. Agrippa also obtained the print license and copyright to publish his works. In Antwerp Agrippa settled and again became too popular. He had many pupils, including Johann Wierus and as may be seen from his writings, resumed alchemical experiments in his laboratory.

. But in August 1529 the plague raged in Antwerp and all physicians left the city. Agrippa stayed and treated the sick. After it was over, the physicians returned and accused him of practicing without a proper diploma, trying to keep him away from their rich patients. Eleven years ago he wrote a treatise named Securest antidotes against the plague on a request of Theodoric, Bishop of Cyrene.

. IX 1530. Agrippa published his "De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum". By the end of the year, his patron Margaret of Austria died and Agrippa was again not paid for his duties at the court, Charles V obviously being against the former court physician of Francis I's mother. De incertitudine "helped" much in that direction.

. II 1531 Agrippa published the first edition of De occulta philosophia from the press of John Grapheus at Antwerp. As he intended to put the whole work to the press, he included all the index in the first book. It was dedicated to Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne. Now against him were the Emperor, the monks of Louvain and the scholars of the Sorbonne, as we may read in his last work (1533) Complaint against the Calumny of the Monks and Schoolmen. By mid 1531, Agrippa left Antwerp for Brussels and settled in a little house in Mechlin. The next year, upon the invitation of Hermann, he went to Poppelsdorf, then moved to Bonn. The Dominican Conrad Köllin, Inquisitor of Cologne, delayed the other 2 volumes but with the Archbishop's influence, after some compromise, publication was resumed and the whole book appeared in 1533 without information on place, publisher etc., with fragments from De incertitudine.

. July 1533. Agrippa's correspondence suddenly ended and the next events were described according to his pupil Johann Wierus. The Dominicans continued their prosecution and urged Charles V who sentenced Agrippa to death for heresy. He fled to France despite his relations with Francis I, who put him immediately in prison for the old offense with the horoscope. Then Charles V changed the sentence to exile. Agrippa was soon released by friends, made his way towards Lyon but did not appear there. He was last seen in Grenoble, Rue des Clercs, in the house of the Ferrand family, owned by Vachon, governor of Grenoble, son of M. Vachon - Receiver General of the Province of Dauphine. His manuscripts and letters in secure hands, he had nothing else to do in this world. And he departed.

.In 1545 we read a little note: "Henricus Cornelius Agrippa ab Nettesheym a conciliis et archivis Indiatrii sacrae Caesareae Maiestatis armatae militiae equitis aurati et utriusque iuris doctoris qui intra decennium aut circiter Gratianopoli in Gallia ad summam paupertatem redactus obiit". Where, when, did anyone help (his body resting in a Dominican convent), did the yellow serpent help the Little Prince, does it matter? It does not matter. Because he is part of a Tradition holding the foundation of a whole human civilisation with a Teaching - the mortality of the body, the greatness of the Spirit, the immortality of the Soul and the freedom of human choice - to be conquered by Sin and Punishment or to conquer them attaining the One in the multitude.

... After that, we know nothing of Agrippa's wife and sons. All we know is that his manuscripts and letters made their own way to the publisher in Lyon. And when you ask them who was that man who put life in them, De incertitudine, from its first page, will always assert:

BOOKS:

Agrippa is perhaps best known for his books.

De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books Concerning Occult Philosophy, Book 1 printed Paris 1531; Books 1-3 in Cologne 1533). This summa of occult and magical thought, Agrippa's most important work in a number of respects, sought a solution to the skepticism proposed in De vanitate. In short, Agrippa argued for a synthetic vision of magic whereby the natural world combined with the celestial and the divine through Neoplatonic participation, such that ordinarily licit natural magic was in fact validated by a kind of demonic magic sourced ultimately from God. By this means Agrippa proposed a magic that could resolve all epistemological problems raised by skepticism in a total validation of Christian faith.

More about Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa:

http://www.geocities.com/athens/agora/7850/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/9807/Heinrich-Cornelius-Agrippa-von-Nettesheim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Cornelius_Agrippa