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Agrippa in Renaissance Italy: the Esoteric Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Charles G. Nauert Jr.
Charles G. Nauert Jr.*
Affiliation:
Williams College
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Extract

The curious northerner who had been attracted by the culture of Renaissance Italy and who sooner or later managed to fulfill his desire to visit that land in person was certainly one of the most interesting and most significant types of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Historians have found his type interesting and significant partly because they desire to understand the spread of intellectual influences from one region to another, and notably from Italy to northern Europe, and partly because these visitors from the north through their writings give insights into intellectual conditions in Italy itself. The type of the humanistic visitor from the north was already well established by the time that Erasmus began his three-year residence in the peninsula in 1506, for Erasmus was only following the example of many of his humanistic acquaintances, especially his English friends, the Oxford reformers.

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Research Article
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Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 6 , 1959 , pp. 195 - 222
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Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1959

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References

1 Renaudet, Augustin, Érasme et I'ltalie (Geneva, 1954), pp. 46, 75Google Scholar.

2 Holborn, Hajo, Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation, tr. Bainton, Roland H. (New Haven, 1937), pp. 45–46 Google Scholar.

3 Agrippa's wife is first mentioned in a letter dated 24 November 1515, printed as Epist. I, 48, in his Opera (Lugduni, n.d.), II, 715. Henceforth, this extensive correspondence will be cited by the number of the letter as printed in Opera.

4 Renaudet, , op. cit., p. 51 Google Scholar; Zambelli, Paola, ‘Agrippa di Nettesheim, Dialogus de homine ’, Rivista critica di storia della filosofia XIII (1958), 47–71 Google Scholar (henceforth cited as Zambelli); for Christian cabalism in this whole period, see Blau, Joseph Leon, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (New York, 1944)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Agrippa, Oratio in praelectione … Trismegisti, in Opera, II, 1076: ‘Quod si quern vestrum scandalizet, barbarum hominem in Lizeto [sic] gymnasio bonas literas interpretari, is sciat barbaros etiam esse rationales, et frui coelo…. ‘

6 Amicus ad Agrippam, Strasbourg, 1523, Epist. III, 55.

7 Epist. II, 14: ‘Demum hortor te, ut post visam Germaniam ac Galliam, totamque illam barbarorum nostrorum colluviem, tandem in Italiam te conferas: quam si aliquando apertis oculis introspexeris, omnis alia patria turpis vilisque erit, si ad hanc contuleris.’

8 Epist. III, 15: ‘Agrippa, inquit, est oriundus Colonia, educatione Italus….’ The author is the later Protestant leader, Wolfgang Fabricius Capito. Agrippa may have held academic degrees from Italian universities, for he claimed to hold doctorates in both laws and in medicine. See, for example, Epist. II, 19.

9 See Epist. 1, 1-21, for information on members, on activities, and on initiation into the group. Henry Morley, Cornelius Agrippa: The Life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim. Doctor and Knight, Commonly Known as a Magician (London, 1856), 1, 54-55, makes such identifications, though they are, like many of his conclusions about Agrippa, highly conjectural.

10 Expostulatio super exposition sua in librum de verbo mirifico cum Joanne Catilineti fratrum Franciscanorum per Burgundiam provinciali ministro, sacrae theologiae doctori, in Opera, II, 509: ‘haereticum judaisantem, qui in Christianas scholas induxerim scelestissimam, damnatam ac prohibitam cabale artem, qui contemptis Sanctis patribus et catholicis doctoribus praeferam rabinos Iudaeorum, et contorqueam Sacras literas ad artes haereticas et thalmuth Iudaeorum.’

11 Agrippa, De beatissimae Annae monogamia… (n.p., 1534), fol. B6V.

12 The dedication is printed as Epist. 1, 23, and in De occulta philosophia (Cologne, 1533) fol. aa3r-aa3y.

13 A terminus ad quern is set by Epist. I, 29, which shows that Agrippa was at Borgo Lavezzaro on 5 April 1512. Since he claimed to have participated in the Council of Pisa, he must have been in Italy between its opening session in November 1511 and its final session in Italy in April 1512. In 1532, Agrippa wrote to Mary of Hungary, governor of the Low Countries, that he served in Italy for seven years (Epist. VII, 21). Agrippa's arrival in Italy in 1511 did not mark his first visit there. Having become separated from his Italian friend Landulphus in 1508 during an obscure expedition into Spain, Agrippa and a companion made a hurried trip to Naples, but, failing to find Agrippa's friend there as expected, they promptly returned along the Ligurian coast to France. See Epist. I, 10

14 De beatissimae Annae monogamia, fol. B6v: ‘Exinde a Maximiliano Caesare contra Venetos destinatus, in ipsis castris, hostiles inter turbas plebemque cruentam… .’ He repeated the claim in his letter of 1532 to Mary of Hungary (Epist. VII, 21): ‘hinc avo tuo divo Maximiliano Cesari a prima aetate destinatus, aliquandiu illi a minoribus secretis fui. deinde in Italicis castris septennio illius stipendio militavi: postea varia legatione functus, nunc literis, nunc militia… .’ He certainly did not spend all of his seven years in Italy soldiering for the emperor. Cf. also Epist. 11, 19, and Oratio in praekctione… Trismegisti, in Opera, II, 1076. Agrippa's chief biographer is on this, as on so many points, hypercritical. See Prost, Auguste, Les sciences et les arts occultes an XVI siècle: Corneille Agrippa, sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1881-1882), 1, 221–223 Google Scholar; II, 44-70, 436-439.

15 De beatissimae Annae monogamia, fol. B6v. Pastor, Ludwig von, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages, tr. Frederick Ignatius Antrobus et al. (St. Louis, 1894-1953), VI, 415 Google Scholar.

16 Epist. 1, 38. Pastor, op. cit., vi, 412-414.

17 Epist. I, 27-38.

18 Epist. 1, 27, 31, 32. Cf. Memorie e documenti per la storia dell'Università di Pavia e degli uomini più illustri che v'insegnarono (Pavia, 1878), I, 169.

19 Epist. 1, 40, 44.

20 Epist. I, 42, 43, 46.

21 Epist. I, 42-43, 45.

22 Epist. 1, 44; Oratio in praelectione… Trismegisti, in Opera, II, 1077.

23 Zambelli, pp. 52-53; for the date of Ricci's removal to Germany, see Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen et al. (Oxford, 1906-1947), II, soon

24 Zambelli, p. 53, argues that this group of Agrippa's followers was a definite and organized society. Elsewhere, in Testi umanistici su l'Ermetismo, ed. E. Garin et al. (Rome, 1955), pp. 110-111, she argues that Agrippa's warnings in the surviving bits of his public lectures that the profane should be kept at a distance is to be taken literally as a warning to keep the studies which they were conducting secret from the uninitiated, who might cause them trouble with church authorities in spite of all of Agrippa's repeated assertions that he submits all his work to the judgment of the church. See his Oratio in praelectione convivii Platonis, in Opera, II, 1062: ‘Absint autem hac veneranda lectione, quicunque terrenis obvoluti sordibus, Baccho atque illi hortorum deo mancipati, Amorem ipsum divinum munus, porcorum atque canum ritu in lutum prosternunt.’ Cf. n, 1072, for the fear of being denounced for false teaching. Cf. also Oratio in praelectione … Trismegisti, in Opera, II, 1080-1081: ‘Vos igitur illustrissimi candidissimique viri, vos qui virtutem colitis, vos ad mea tantum dicta aures adhibite, animosque intendite vestros: Contra, qui sanctas leges contemnitis, hinc vos efrugite, et procul hinc miseri, procul ite prophani. Vos autem qui divina amatis, quique rerum arcanarum estis percupidi, et circa abditioris philosophiae symbola, ac mirabilium dei operum reconditas vires, plenissunasque mysteriorum antiqui seculi traditiones curiosi estis exploratores, vos inquam adeste foeliciter.… .’

25 De triplici ratione cognoscenti Deum, cap. v, in Opera, II, 493: ‘Habet etiatn Evangelium, quemadmodum Lex Mosaica, aliud in cortice propositum imbecillioribus, aliud in medulla, quod segregatim revelatum est perfectis… .’; De beatissimae Annae monogamia, fol. B6V.

26 Dialogus de homine, Lyon, Bibliotheque Municipale, Fonds du Palais des Arts, MS. no. 48, fols. 56r-56v. Since I have worked from a microfilm of this manuscript, I cite its pagination for references to the Dialogus. The page numbers of the original manuscript are also given by Zambelli in her edition of this text, pp. 57-71. Cf. De originali peccato, in Opera, 11, 554, 558, and De triplici ratione, in Opera, 11, 481-482.

27 Oratio in praelectione … Trismegisti, in Opera, n, 1079-1080: ‘Ejus titulus est Pimander, sive de Sapientia et potestate dei. Est autem liber iste elegantia sermonis refertissimus, copia sententiarum gravissimus, plenus gratiae et decoris, plenus sapientiae et mysteriorum. Continet enim in se vetustissimae theologiae profundissima mysteria, ac utriusque philosophiae latentia arcana, quae omnia non tarn continet quam explicat: Docet enim nos, Quis deus, Quis mundus, Quid mens, Quid uterque daemon, Quid anima, Quis providentiae ordo, Quae et unde fati necessitas, Quae naturae lex, Quod hominum phas, Quae religio, Quae sacra instituta, ritus, phana, observationes sacraque mysteria. instruit nos praeterea de cognitione sui ipsius, de ascensu intellectus, de arcanis precibus, de divino connubio. .. .’ De triplici ratione, cap. III, in Opera, II, 482: ‘Omnium itaque rerum cognosqjre et amare principium ipsum omnium creatorem Deum, haec summa pietas, haec summa justitia, haec summa sapientia, summaque hominis felicitas est.’

28 Ibid., cap. III, in Opera, II, 486: ‘Sed frustra cognoscimus Deum, nisi ilium rite colamus, et legitime cum hominibus vivamus… . Haec duo praecepta ad salutem necessaria sunt, suntque fons omnis bom: horum primum pietatis, alterum justitiae est.’ How similar in sound to the ‘reasonable’ Christianity of a man like John Locke in the seventeenth century, and yet how different in its context!

29 Ibid., cap. IV, in Opera, II, 489: ‘Quod si solum literalem sensum legis apprehendas, absque spiritu futurae lucis, veritatis et perfectionis, nihil erit lege magis ridiculum, et anilis fabulae….’

30 Zambelli, p. 53. That Agostino Ricci shared the cabalistic interests of Paolo and of his friend Agrippa also appears from the title of a book of his own: De motu octaue sphere: opus mathematica atque philosophia plenum, vbi tarn antiquorum quam iuniorum errores luce clarius demonstrantur; in quo et quamplurima platonicorum et antique magie (quam cabalam hebreidicunt) dogmata videre licet intellectu suauissima (In oppido Tridini, 1513).

31 Dialogus de homine, MS. fol. 53v: ‘Omnium enim miraculorum radix cognitio est quanto enim plura intelligimus ac cognoscimus, tanto maiora et promptius, et efficatius operamur ‘

32 De triplici ratione, cap. v, in Opera, II, 492: ‘Et talis anima quotiens dimissis actionibus in seipsam regreditur, et ad aeternum Deum contemplandum se flectit: tunc nullo amplius terrenorum impetu torpens, sed Patre luminum fulta, ad sublimem divinae cognitionis ascendit apicem, ubi propheticis oraculis continuo impletur, saepe etiam ad miracula perpetranda Dei instrumentum eligitur, cujus orationes etiam circa publicas mundi ipsius mutationes non fiunt irritae… . Magnum certe miraculum est homo Christianus, qui in mundo constitutus, supra mundum dominatur, operationesque similes efficit ipsi Creatori mundi, quae opera vulgo miracula appellantur, quorum omnium radix et fundamentum fides est in Iesum Christum.’ Cf. p. 493.

33 Scholem, Gershom Gerhard, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1946), pp. 99–100, 144-145.Google Scholar

34 Epist. III, 55: ‘Papiae etenim te docente diebus illis, quando ego nobilissimam illam academiam denuo repetii, hi qui mecum stabant, miras ingenii tui ubertates de te praedicabant, bonarum artium, scilicet philosophiae peripateticae, medicae artis, et totius naturae secretarium, monstrabant, et nonnulla astrologica indicia [sic], imagines et alia naturae mysteria a te fabrefacta: quibus tarn abunde oblectabar, quod nunquam cessavi tuum deplangere discessum. Videntibus itaque aliis confratribus meis tarn arduum cordis affectum, librum, cui titulus de Magia naturali Cornelii Agrippae offerebant, in quo fons et origo totius philosophicae veritatis adapertissimis rivulis scaturiebat….’ Cf. Epist. in, 77, for another person who came from Italy to Lyons because of Agrippa's fame for occult learning.

35 De triplici ratione, cap. v, in Opera, II, 493, 494-495. The latter passage reads, in part: ‘Sed sunt quidam alii qui Unguis loquuntur, humanis scientiis inflati, imo qui vita et lingua de Deo mentiri non erubescunt, qui suo spiritu omnem Scripturam ad sua mendacia impudentissime torquent, ac mysteria divina ad humanae rationis methodum legunt, inventisque capitibus suis glossis sacrilegis, adulterate verbo Dei, sua portenta stabiliunt, ac sanctum Theologiae nomen furto et rapina sibi temere usurpant, solisque operam dant contentionibus, et rixosis disputationibus… ‘

36 De triplici ratione, cap. III, in Opera, II, 482.

37 De originali peccato, in Opera, II, 554-555. De triplici ratione, cap. v, in Opera, II, 491: ‘Ad ilium igitur vere cognoscendum, dialectica et Philosophia nequeunt ascendere, impeditae ratione, quae est inimica sanctae fidei.’ Opera reads ‘queunt’, but I have emended it to ‘nequeunt’ on the basis of the reading in MS. Lat. 16,625 of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. See appendix. Ibid.: ‘Sola enim fides instrumentum est et medium, qua sola possumus Deum cognoscere….’ Cf. also p. 496.

38 Ibid., 500: ‘quod detenus est, si qui sunt qui huic pristinae theologiae ac religioni se dedicant, insani, ignari, irreligiosi, interdum etiam haeretici vocantur, atque (ut inquit Hermes) odio habentur, etiam periculum capitale in eos constituitur, contumeliis afficiuntur, saepe vita privantur'. Cf. Lazzarelli, Ludovico, Crater Hermetis, in Testi umanistici su I'Ermetismo, p. 68 Google Scholar, and Corpus Hermetkum, ed. A. D. Nock, tr. A. J. Festugiere (Paris, 1945-1954), IX, 4. Agrippa's wording is very similar to that of Ficino's translation of the Pimander. Cf. De potestate et sapientia Dei [i.e., the Pimander] (Paris: Wolfgang Hopyl, 1494), fol. CIv: ‘interdum etiam odio habentur: contumeliis amciuntur: vitaque priuantur’.

39 Ibid., 490, 493-494.

40 See Zambelli, p. 5511 and 57-71, for a commentary showing in detail the Hermetic and other citations in Agrippa's Dialogus.

41 For De triplici ratione, e.g., cf. Opera, II, 482 (‘cupitatum imperio, ad quarum … libidini ullum’) with Corpus Herineticum, XII, 4. For De originali peccato, cf. Opera, II, 558 (‘Quod et Hermes… lapsum’), with Corpus Hermeticum, 1, 13.

42 Oratio in praelectione … Trismegisti, in Opera, II, 1074. This is the only surviving part of Agrippa's lectures on the Pimander.

44 Cited as sepherzourin Dialogus de homine, MS. fol. 56r-56v. In 1519, Agrippa admitted that he knew only a little Greek and Hebrew (De beatissimae Annae monogamia, fol. K7r).

45 Dialogus de homine, MS. fol. 51v-52r. Cf. Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, Portae lucis, tr. Paolo Ricci (Augustae Vindelicorum, 1516), fols. A5v-A6r. This citation is noted by Zambelli. That the Portae lucis was circulating to at least some extent in manuscript before it was printed is suggested by MS. Lat. 598 of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, written in the hand of Cardinal Egidio Canisio di Viterbo, the general of the Augustinian friars, and dated 1513. There is a photostat of this manuscript in the rare-book room of the University of Illinois Library.

46 Cf. the edition published at Rome in 1498, fol. Q2r, with Epist. II, 9. The reference in the Paris edition of 1514 is fol. 4r ; and in the Antwerp edition of 1545, fol. 25r-25v.

47 For the reference to Porphyry, cf. MS. fol. 59r with De occasionibus, lib. I, cap. 8. Agrippa follows the wording of Ficino's translation, in his Opera omnia (Basel, 1576), II, 1929. For Dionysius, see Agrippa's Opera, II, 483, 484, 488, 490, 491. Several translations of Dionysius could have been available to Agrippa, for the works of the Areopagite had been translated into Latin as early as the ninth century by Johannes Scotus Erigena and had been well known both to medieval thinkers and to the men of the Italian Renaissance. Ficino himself made a new translation in the fifteenth century, while in the fourteenth century there was yet another version by Ambrosius Traversarius Camaldulensis. On medieval knowledge of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius, see Realencyklopädie für protestantisclie Theobgie und Kirche, IV, 691.

48 Zambelli, pp. 55-56, and the notes to her text of the Dialogus de homine, pp. 57-71 passim.

49 Cf. Opera, II, 553, with Heptaplus, lib. v, cap. 6, in Scritti vari, ed. Eugenio Garin (Florence, 1942), p. 302. For the similar doctrines of the threefold world (intellectual, celestial, and elementary), cf. Agrippa's Dialogus de homine in Lyon, Bibliothèque Municipale, Fonds du Palais des Arts, MS. no. 48, fol. 49r-49v, with Pico, Heptaplus, ‘ Aliud prooemium', in Scritti vari, p. 184. Though the ideas are similar, there is no similarity in wording, and it is possible that both Agrippa and Pico are drawing on some cabalistic source. On the cabalistic doctrine of the threefold world, see Ginsburg, Christian D., The Essenes: their History and Doctrines; the Kabbalah: its Doctrines, Development and Literature (London, 1955), pp. 105–106 Google Scholar.

50 Cf. Opera, II, 554, with Pico, Scritti vari, p. 494.

51 Garin, Eugenio, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: vita e dottrina (Florence, 1937), pp. 71, 75-76, 167Google Scholar.

52 Cf. Dialogus de homine, MS. fol. 49r-49v. with Ludovico Lazzarelli, Crater Hermetis, cap. 6, in Testi umanistici su I'Ermetismo, p. 61. Zambelli observes these textual similarities also.

53 Cf. Dialogus de homine, MS. fol. 55v, with Lazzarelli, cap. 3, p. 59, and cap. 5, p. 60. Agrippa's discussion of the lignum vitae and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (De originali peccato, in Opera, II, 554) shows similarity of ideas, though not of words, with that of Lazzarelli in Crater Hermetis, cap. 3, p. 59. Cf. Kristeller, Paul Oskar, ‘Marsilio Ficino e Lodovico Lazzarelli: contributo alia diffusione delle idee Ermetiche nel Rinascimento’, in his Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome, 1956), p. 237 Google Scholar.

54 Cf. Dialogus de homine, MS. fol. 56r-56v, with Lazzarelli, cap. 5, p. 61.

55 Letter in Lyon, Bibliothéque Municipale, MS. no. 48, fol. 40v: ‘nuper cum quodam discipulo meo heluetio lucemensi christophoro Schyllingo nomine: quern inueni inter tot germanos nostros tunc papie studentes archanarum literarum’. In place of ‘inueni’, MS. may have written ‘iuuenem’, as Zambelli reads it. This letter is a variant of Epist. 1, 49, which does not contain the reference to Schylling.

56 Epist. II, 15, 37. Cf. Geiger, Ludwig, Johann Reuchlin: sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig, 1871), p. 108 Google Scholar; also Reuchlin, , De accentibus, et orthographia, linguae hebraicac (Hagenoae, 1518), fol. XIr Google Scholar.

57 Epist. 1, 49.

58 Sancio, , Cenno storico intorno ai marchesi del Monferrato di stirpe Paleologa (Casale, 1835), pp. 55–60 Google Scholar.

59 Epist. 1, 54-59; De beatissimae Annae monogamia, fol. B6v.

60 Mattingly, Garrett, ‘Eustache Chapuys and Spanish Diplomacy in England (1488- 1536): A Study in the Development of Resident Embassies’ (unprinted Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1935), pp. 7–10, 47-56, 625-629Google Scholar.

61 Epist. II, 5.

62 E.g., Epist. II, 2.

63 Prost, , op. cit., 1, 299–307 Google Scholar, 309; n, 473-474.

64 Epist. II, 11; cf. Prost, op. cit., II, 473-474, for documents which tend to support his selection of mid-February 1518 as the time of Agrippa's arrival in Metz.

66 Epist. v, 20-23.

66 Epist. v, 84: ‘jamque etiam Augustinus literas accepit abs Marchione quodam, qui me olim cognovit, hie summis precibus pollicitationibusque me cum tota familia in Italiam revocat.’ This marquis could not have been Guglielmo IX, who died in 1518; but it was probably a successor who had known Agrippa.

67 Epist. VII, 22.

67 Epist. VII, 22.