White magic, black magic in the European Renaissance / by Paola Zambelli.

Subtitle on cover: From Ficino, Pico, Della Porta to Trithemius, Agrippa, Bruno

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2007.

x, 282 pages ; 25 cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Introduction : must we really re-appropriate magic? -- White magic, black magic. Continuity in the definition of natural magic from Pico to Della Porta : astrology and magic in Italy and north of the Alps ; Scholastic and humanist views of Hermetism : witchcraft, "natural magic", Trithemius' magic and Agrippa's critical turn of mind (Medieval Hermetic antecedents ; Ficino and Pico ; Hermetists in Germany) ; Magic, pseudepigraphy, prophecies and forgeries in Trithemius' manuscripts : from Cusanus to Bovelles? (To publish or not to publish? ; Trithemius' passion for magic ; Trithemius as a prophet or prognosticator ; Magical authorities and forgeries ; Blessings and exorcisms ; Trithemius and his German contemporaries ; Ancient and medieval occult sources ; Denunciations and self-defences ; Socratism and Cusanian ignorance or simplicity) ; Appendix I : Trithemius' bibliography for necromancers -- Agrippa as an author of prohibited books. Agrippa of Nettesheim as a critical Magus ; Magic and radical Reformation in Agrippa of Nettesheim ; Appendix II : recent studies on Agrippa -- Bruno as a reader of prohibited books. The initiates and the idiot : conjectures on some Brunian sources (Bruno as a reader of the necromancers' 'theoricae' ; Bruno and the Paracelsian revival ; Bruno as a reader of Lullian and pseudo-Lullian works) ; Hermetism and magic in Giordano Bruno : some interpretations from Tocco to Corsano, from Yates to Ciliberto (F.A. Yates, D.P. Walker and other scholars in the Warburg Institute ; Renaissance magic as seen by Yates and Walker ; Magic tricks of Professor Ciliberto) ; Appendix III : a Nolan before Bruno : Momus and Socratism in the Renaissance.