From Black Magician to Proto-Feminist: The Reception of Cornelius Agrippa's Oeuvre Through the Centuries

Abstract

The Renaissance humanist Cornelius Agrippa von Netesheim (1486–1533) left a rich body of works in philosophy, theology, biblical exegesis and occultism. The disparity and internal contradictions of this opus, as well as the ambivalent position of Agrippa on the intellectual map of the epoch, caused the reception of his work to branch out in the most diverse directions. Contemporaries from clerical and Protestant circles branded him as a heretic, whereas humanists recognized his great erudition and devotion to faith. While he considered himself a reformer of Christianity, his followers regarded him as an authority in Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and Esoteric studies. On the basis of tendentious interpretations of his writings, as well as the entire tradition of apocryphal stories that developed around his personality, the church and folk tradition of the 16th and 17th centuries constructed a representation of Agrippa as a servant of the devil. Therefore, he served as a model for the character of Faust, first to Christopher Marlowe and later to Goethe. With the strong development of science and its foundations being linked with occult teachings, in the 18th and 19th centuries the image of Agrippa as a proto-scientist appeared, e.g. in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. However, for the positivist science of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Agrippa was, at best, a representative of a barren branch of Western philosophical thought, and at worst, a mere charlatan or mentally disturbed person. Such a perception prevailed until the mid-20th century, when scholars from Warburg Institute in London developed new interpretations of Renaissance humanism, including Agrippa's role in it. Today's science views Agrippa as a representative of the vital religious component of humanism and as a link between ancient, medieval and Renaissance currents of thought. At the same time, in certain segments of New Age, his writings acquire the status of the "bible" of the occultism, and Agrippa himself the status of a kind of New Age guru. Therefore, the literary legacy of Cornelius Agrippa is of significance for the history of ideas, reception studies, imagology, and anthropology of religion as an exceptionally rich case study, and in this paper, we aim to trace the intricate paths of his reception in different epochs and cultural contexts.