Heinrieh Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettesheim, a German philosopher, born at Cologne, Sept. 14, 1486, died at Grenoble, Feb. 18, 1535. He was a linguist, statesman, soldier, physician, theologian, and chemist. Having engaged in some peasant insurrections in the south of France, he retreated to Paris, where he held public discourses, and the reputation he thus acquired gained him a professorship of theology at Dole. Accused of heresy, or more probably magic, he fled to England in 1510, whence, however, he returned to Cologne, and afterward became secretary of the emperor Maximilian. He fought in a campaign against the Venetians, and was knighted on the field. Tired of this employment, he applied himself to the study of physic, lectured publicly at Pavia, held an office in Metz, and then returned to Germany. At the invitation of Henry VIII. and Francis I., he visited both England and France. He was an ardent student of alchemy and the occult sciences, in reference to which he insisted that the writings of adepts were not to be read for a literal, but for a mystical meaning.

His work De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum (Paris. 1531) is a satire on the state of knowledge at the period in which he lived.