White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance ─ From Ficino and Della Porta to Trithemius, Agrippa, Bruno

Independent thinkers of the Renaissance studied nature, argued about their interpretations of those studies, and generally sought to understand humans' capacity for controlling it, all the way up to the cosmos. Zambelli (history of philosophy , U. of Florence) examines the influence of those who studied natural magic and participated in magical ceremonies in popular rites and in witchcraft. She analyzes the work of the title scholars in astrology and magic whether their emphasis was definition and characterization of natural magic, humanist views of hermetism and witchcraft, or pseudepigraphy and prophecies, with a long glance at forgeries, and then considers Agrippa as a critical magus and an element in the radical arm of the Reformation, closing with a very interesting examination of Giordano Bruno as a reader and dealer of prohibited ideas. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Paola Zambelli, Ph.D. (1966) in History of Philosophy, Rome, is Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Florence. She has published on the history of astrology and magic in the age of scholasticism and in the Renaissance. Publications include ‘Astrologi hallucinati’. Stars and the End of the World at Luther’s Time (De Gruyter, 1986) andThe ‘Speculum astronomiae’ and its enigma (Kluwer, 1992).