AGRIPPA, HENRICUS CORNELIUS ( 1486-1535).
A cosmopolitan physician, philosopher, and writ er, whose genius and learning had a tinge of quackery. lie was born at Cologne, September 14, l4Sti. At the age of twenty, he was sent by Emperor Maximilian on a diplomatic mission to Paris. At twenty-three, he was teaching the ology at Drile, in the Here he attacked the monks, who replied with an accusa tion of heresy. In 1510, he reentered the diplo matic service, and the next year he attended, as theologian, the schismatic Council of Pisa. In 1515, he lectured at Pavia, where he received a doctor's degree in law and medicine; then, after some years in diplomatic service, he became involved once more in .controversy with the Church, for his bold defense at Metz of a woman accused of witchcraft. He practiced medicine at Geneva, Fribourg, and Lyons, and, under pres sure of poverty composed a keen Latin satire on the existent state of science, A Declamation on the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and Arts, and on the Excellence of the 1Vord of God (Dc Incertitudine et Vanitate Scicntiarum, etc.) (1527), which furnished new occasion for
malicious accusation. In 1529, he quarreled with the queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, and left Lyons for the Netherlands, to become historiog rapher of the Emperor Charles V., of whose reign he wrote a histOry. His salary was un paid, and he was imprisoned and finally banished from Cologne for debt. He found a brief refuge at Grenoble, where he died, February 18, 1535, only to be pursued in the grave by a spiteful epitaph from his Dominican enemies. Agrippa was a man of clear sight and keen wit ; but he lacked stability, seriousness. and discretion. His Works appeared at Lyons in two volumes (1550). They are analyzed in Henry Morley's appreciative Life of Agrippa (London, 1856). Noteworthy are Agrippa's Dc Occulta Philoso phia ( 1510), which gives an account of the Cab bala (q.v.), and Dc ,Yobilitate et PraTellentia Firminci Sc.rus ( 1532 ).