The life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, doctor and knight, commonly known as a magician / Henry Morley.

  • Morley, Henry, 1822-1894.
Date:
1856
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, doctor and knight, commonly known as a magician / Henry Morley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    well disposed towards me. Write what is done at Geneva, that is to say, whether they love the Word; let there be sometimes letters exchanged between us. Grace and peace from our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Strasburg, the last day of December, 1525.” By an obvious mistake this letter has been printed in Agrippa’s works as one sent from Agrippa to a friend. The tone of thought, the style, the facts contained in it, all seem to me to declare Zuinglius the writer. Not only had Zuinglius his marriage to announce, but the tractate on Marriage to which he refers was, at the date when this letter was written, the last thing published by him. It had appeared earlier in the same year, and .vas an address to the Swiss in reply to an outcry made against himself for having joined a husbandman in wedlock to a woman who stood to him in the relation of godmother to one of his children; this tie of commaternity, or corn- paternity, as it was called, having been held by the Church, but being repudiated by Zuinglius, as a bar to marriage1. Bucer was head of the Reformed Church at Strasburg. It was at this time that Cornelius wrote and dedicated to the King’s sister, Margaret of Valois, his tractate on the Sacrament of Marriage2. She was clever, spiritual, skilled in languages, favourably disposed towards the cleverness of the Reformers, and a skilful inventor of tales, then amusing, and not more immoral than some sermons 1 Operum D. Huldricki Zuinglii, vigilantissimi Tigurince Ecclesiai Antistitis, Partes iii. &c. &c. Tiguri. Exc. C. Froschover, 1581. Pars Prima, fol. 151-154.