AGRIPPA, Cornelius

by Cornelius Agrippa

£4,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

An attractive, unsophisticated copy, in an unusual, contemporary Netherlandish binding, of this extremely influential philosophical work, praised by the likes of Montaigne and Descartes. Due to the controversial reputation of its author, several early editions have few recorded copies and a complex bibliographical history, i.e., from the first of 1530 (possibly a ghost ) to 1539, with most bearing neither imprint nor (frequently) a date. According to D. Cl ément s Biblioth√®que curieuse (1750), this edition is very similar to that printed in Cologne. The pages are unnumbered. It has no suppressed passages. There is one difference: the title is decorated with the bust of Cornelius Agrippa, absent in all preceding six editions (I, n.86). This is one of his earliest and most reliable portraits. Agrippa (1486-1535) was a major German polymath, physician, soldier (who travelled extensively in Europe) and official historian to Charles V; he was especially renowned for his occulta and ideas on the cabala (Bodin called him the greatest magician of his age ), which led to clashes with the Inquisition, despite his recantation. Agrippa s ambivalence towards occultism, religion and epistemology caused a mixed reception of De incertitudine a harsh critique of all sciences and arts, and Renaissance epistemology in general which Agrippa subsequently defended in print. Each of the 102 chapters summarises wittily, only to berate, a discipline or art, from the elements of the trivium and quadr

• Binding: Hardcover

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