[Revised entry by Vittoria Perrone Compagni on March 28, 2025.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
The intellectual biography of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486 – 1535) provides us with significant proof of a cultural crisis in the Renaissance. The most striking aspect of his heritage is the seemingly paradoxical coexistence of a comprehensive treatise on magic and occult arts, De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books on Occult Philosophy), written in 1510, but then reworked, substantially enlarged, and finally published in 1533, and a rigorous refutation of all products of human reason,…