The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-25 00:00:00

r OCTOBER 25, 1856. Yiteratart. The Life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa Von Net tesheim. By Henry Morley. Two Vols. London : Chapman and Hall. BALLADMONGERS have not unseldom done injury to great names by perpetuating the calumnies invented to dishonour them. Ma licious legends have been preserved in verse which else would have perished. The great ness which lived in a twilight time is most open to this kind of abuse, and the diabolical spirit, fostered by religious antagonism, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has handed down to us, stained with every crime, names and deeds which in a better age would have been surrounded with the golden haze of my thical reverence, and been invested with attri butes of divinity. The dark Gothic spirit still casts its shadow on our literature. Faust is in league with the devil, and Goethe owes his fame to a conception of character which might have originated with an atheistical monk. Southey's ballad of " Cornelius Agrippa" is of the coarsest texture of fiendish legends. Many Of our readers must recollect the terror with which in their childhood tney listened to the commencement : Cornelius Agrippa went nut one day. The reputation of the reputed sorcerer has been signally neglected ; and we must acknow ledge our obligations to Mr. Morley for having placed before us an intelligent and authentic record of his career. The biography is need lessly minute, and it is occasionally obscure. It is wanting in breadth of view and picturesque ness of language, but it has the great, and in such books the primary merit, of presenting information only to be obtained by consider able research. We cannot exactly say that the " Life of Cornelius Agrippa" is an interesting book, but we can very decidedly say that it is a valuable addition to biographical literature, and that the world will be something the wiser for its publication. Cornelius Agrippa was born at Cologne on the 14th of September, 1486, three years later than Martin Luther. His family was •noble. The Von Nettesheims were attached to the service of the Emperor, and were persons of hereditary consequence. Cornelius received the name of Agrippa, according to Mr. Morley, because he came with his feet foremost into the world, the term being compounded from the labour of the woman and the feet of the child. Cornelius was educated at the Cologne University, was patronised by the archbishop, and at an early age taken into the service of the Emperor Maximilian. So clear a dawn augured a splendid day. It was early clouded, and went down in storm. In his youth Cornelius distinguished him self equally by his adventurous spirit and his devotion to learning He was a faithful sol dier of the Empefor at the same time that he was a doctor of divinity. Scholarship had most charms for him, and when the ardour of youth was passed he gave himself up to the study of the various branches of learning then known He first exercised his pen to establish the superiority of woman's nature to that of man. He was not without a motive. He de sired to gain the favour of the Princess Mar garet, the daughter of Maximilian, and after wards the well-known Duchess Regent of the Netherlands. Mr. Morley gives a lengthened analysis of this curious production. It is full of the strange fancies which mark the dog matic treatises of the period. Perhaps the fervour of his convictions on the excellence of the female character conduced to his own marriage, as in this year, 1509, he married a noble young lady of Geneva, with whom he was completely happy. The world smiled brightly for him at this time. But he was already suspected by the Church as not free from the taint of strange doctrines. He was a Cabalist, and the composition of his books on magic, which he set about with great earnestness, deepened the suspicion. He was a marked man, and never wholly freed him selffrom the taint which th e F ran ci s can Friar Catilmet sueceeded in fastening on him. His books of occult philosophy attempt to reduce all theories of magic to a system. THE PRESS. Of course his labour was lost. His theories could scarcely be right, being founded on what, by a lingual license common in the last century, may be termed false facts. Cor nelius was not sceptical ; he accepted as truth all that he found positively asserted; and hence his work is an embodiment of all the errors and absurdities of his time. Monstrous as they seem, they survived long after hia time. In the established medical books of a century and a half ago we find the same kind of assertions that Cornelius re ceived,—as that peculiar properties resided in certain strange bodies. We remember it being particularly set down that cats' brains are a remedy for epileptic fits—a prescription scarcely less strange than that given by Cor nelius for raising a storm of thunder and lightning,—to burn the liver of a chameleon oa the top of a house. He does not seem, how ever, to have countenanced magic practices. He ingeniously confesses that with regard to the transmutation of metals, the utmost he had known done was to obtain a certain quan tity of gold as the result of a long chemical process which had that same quantity to com mence with. In the midst of much confusion we occasionally get rays of pure light, as : " The more intensely I yearn heavenward, the " more shall I bring down light to dwell in my " own soul." A year after his marriage he was fiercely as sailed by the monk Catilinet before the Prin cess Margaret. The spirit of the Reformation was abroad, but its first effect was only to ren der the monks more jealous and intolerant. Cornelius had in early life no taste for the bit terness of controversy. He resolved to quit Dole, where the Princess Margaret held her court, and to seek employment from the Em peror. He was attached to the imperial em bassy at London that he might use his in fluence to prevent the young king, Henry VIII., from taking part with the Pope in the dispute with the Emperor. In London, Come nelius was the guest of Dean Colet of St. Paul's. Colet was the friend of Erasmus, and favor able to the party of Church Reformation. The thoughts of Cornelius were fast turning that way, though he never openlf joined the Lutheran party. Subsequently he joined the standard of Maximilian against the French in Italy, but often doffed his coat of arms to as sume the doctor's gown. He taught. in Milan and in Pavia, and for a time made his home in the latter city, where he was admitted by the university to its degree of doctor in each faculty—divinity, law, and physic. He had previously been made a knight of arms : In what battle he won that distinction we are not in formed. He himself says, after telling of his acquisition of the dignity of Doctor " utriusque juris " and of Medicine, as if by after thought : " Before that time I was a knight, which rank I did not beg for, borrow in foreign travels, or secure by impudence and insolence at the inthronisa tion of a king, but earned it by valour in war, among the troops in open battle." He has secured, therefore, the best honours attainable in arts and arms. He is acquainted at this time with eight languages, master of six. He is distinguished among the learned for his cultivation of occult philosophy, upon which he has a complete work in manuscript, and though he has not yet committed anything to press, much has been written by him upon which he hopes to rest a title to fair fame. He is not now unprosperous. There is a lull in war, during which he receives the pay to which he is entitled for his military services, and can earn money also as a teacher in the University. He has a wife whom he loves dearly, and more than a single child. With these he has settled in tho town of Pavia. His wife's father and her brother are there also. We gain an insight into his character by a letter in which he speaks of his wife : "1 give," he writes to a friend, "innumerable thanks to the omnipotent God, who has joined me to a wife after my own heart; a maiden noble and well•mannered, young, beautiful, who lives so much in harmony with all my habits, that never has a word of scolding dropped between us, and wherein 1 count myself happiest of all, however our affairs change, in prosperity and adversity always alike kind to me, alike affable, constant; most just in mind and sound in counsel, always self-possessed." When he said that, it was after three years more of life than have been yet accounted for—three years of severe trial, among which the sorest, at the period of which we now speak, was at hand. After many vicissitudes, he settled in 1518 at Metz as orator and advocate. He was then thirty-two, and took up his residence in the city with his wife and son. He was soon involved in a controversy with the monks of the city. A young woman was charged 1023 with witchcraft. Cornelius came forward to defend her. One Nicholas Savin, a Domi nican and an Inquisitor, laboured hard to convict her. He persisted on sitting beside the judge in the court, and had reviled the ad vocate who appeared for;the unfortunate young woman. Cornelius appealed to the judge : On the same evening be wrote a letter to the judge, showing the law in writing that he was not suffered to explain by word of mouth. For his being called a favourer of heretics, " the rascally Inquisitor," he says, " as you may see by these his words, condemns the simple woman as a heretic, when the cause of action scarcely has been stated. I seek fair hearing for her while she is untried and uncondemned, and the vile scoffer calls me favourer of heresy ! Have you admitted this man to sit on the bench with you ? The lie is on his head, the infamous calumniator, and he thinks to quell me with his threats ; but, to the best of my calling, to the best of my constancy, I will not desist from the defence of this innocent woman. Let this brotherkin, priest, or Levite, turn his heart from her. I will be pitiful with all my power, and call myself Samaritan, that is to Ray not favourer of heretics, but a disciple of him, who when it was Raid to him that he was a Samaritan, and had a devil, denied that he had a devil, but did not deny that he was P. Samaritan." Presently he tells how, on the evening before, Sevin, though he had never before visited the place, went to Vuoypv, feasted with the girl's accusers, and took presents from them. But," he adds, " the hypocrite dissembles his iniquity under the shadow of the Gospel !" He ends a letter, touching upon sundry legal points, by urging that in the case in hand there is no heresy at all, or none that comes at any time under the control of an inquisitor. For no inquisitor has cognisance or jurisdiction on matters of suspicion. Heresy must he manifest before it can fall under inquisitorial correction : therefore the monk must be excluded. " I pray you," he says, " not to despise what I have written, unless indeed, even from these pri vileges, the poor are excluded. If you are so persuaded, laws help us in vain, and I have no need to discuss their meaning. But I hope better things from your integrity, and have little distrust concerning that bloodthirsty monk. Farewell. From my study,—with all speed. In this city of Metz, 1519." The extract illustrates the character of Cor nelius. His protection, however, could not save the woman from being put to the ques tion, and from suffering atrocious torture. From this date the life of Cornelius was one of continued vicissitude, of danger, and of dis tress. Never had any man more reason to complain of the faithlessness of princes. He attended at their courts and received from them promises and appointments, but rarely could obtain funds to supply the common necessaries of life. When in the service of Louisa of Savoy he in vain petitioned for pay ment of his stipulated salary. His complaints to his friend Chapelain, the physician of Francis I , are bitter : "You see how we are played with ! Think of me, fought against on every side by sorrows—by griefs, indeed, greater and more incessant than I care to write. There is no friend here to help me ; all comfort me with empty words and the court title, which should have brought me honou r and profit, aggravates my hurt, by adding against me envy to contempt." He goes on to repeat how he was led by false promises into his false position at Lyons, and how he was taught to feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow. Held in suspense," he says, "by this continual hope, to this hour no messenger has told me whether to remain at this place or quit it: here, therefore, I live with my large family as a pilgrim in a caravansary, and that in the most expensive of all towns, under a load of charges, subject to no little loss. You write that the Queen will some day comply with my request ; but that she is always slow—slow also in your affairs. What if in the meantime I perish ? Truly, so slow a fortune cannot save me mighty goddess as she is." He fared no better when he took employment under his early patron, the Duchess Margaret. When Regent of the Netherlands, she ap pointed him her historiographer, but he neve received the salary of his office. He was once cast in prison for debt while in Brussels, and at last had to leave the country that he might escape from his creditors. On the death of his wife he married again, and as happily as before. His children were numerous, but he knew not how to provide them with bread. It was after wide experience of life that he wrote his " Vanity of Sciences and Arts." It seems by Mr. Morley's analysis to be the most valuable of his works, but it only raised him new enemies. At length he sought refuge in his native city Cologne, and here for a time the protec tion of the archbishop sheltered him. The publication of his " Occult Sciences " raised the monks against him. The Emperor Charles V. was prejudiced against him, and Cornelius (though there is obscurity in this part of the narrative) seems to have been com pelled to fly for his life, and to seek protection = ■ . • O .44/40 '