The abbot, the poet and the charlatan: reflections on esotericism and politics in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22456/1983-201X.87731Keywords:
Esotericism, Politics, RenaissanceAbstract
The present article will discuss the way in which esotericism and politics were related throughout the XV and XVI centuries. Therefore, we will take as characters the German bishop Johannes Trithemius (1462-1512), the Italian poet and playwright Giambattista della Porta (c. 1540-1615) and the German jurist and physician Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535 ), as well as his major works, respectively, the Steganographie: Ars per occultam Scripturam animi sui voluntatem absentibus aperiendi certu (c. 1500), Magiae naturalis, sive of miraculis rerum naturalium libri IIII (1558) and De Occulta Philosophia libri tres (1533). Supported by the theoretical tools of history of secret and the history of esotericism, we will discuss the contributions of esotericism to the complex transition from the regimen animarum to the Reason of State.
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