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

  • Henry Morley
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

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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    of the traffic between east and west which passed through Venice to the Netherlands. At Cologne all merchandise that passed paid toll both to the town and the right reverend lord of the town; and it not only paid a direct toll, but had to be transhipped into vessels owned by the local merchants, who thus were enriched by the monopoly which made them masters of the Rhine. While prosperity wras secured in this manner to its merchants, the manufacturers and traders of Cologne took excellent advantage of the opportunities for commerce offered them by the position of their town. They began early to form strong guilds, and with trade and commerce the arts flourished1. Except Nuremberg, there is no city in Ger- many able to show a series of works of art, dating from the earliest times to the sixteenth century, so perfect as that which may still be studied here. The goldsmiths and painters of the place had an extended reputation. In the “ Parcival” of Wolfram von Eschenbach, written before 1215, the Cologne painters are referred to as notorious for their great skill2; and the Cologne builders were in even more renown. It is proper, also, to mention in the narrative that among the scholars of Germany one, who before the time of Cornelius Agrippa was known as 1 F. C. J. Fischer’s Geschichte des teutschen Handels, 8vo, Hanover, 1793, vol. i. pp. 945-947. 2 Praising a knight’s great beauty, he says— “Yon Collen noch von Mastricht Nicht ein Schildrer entwarf ihn bass”— the conception of a painter from Cologne or Maestricht being assumed as an ideal of beauty by this poet, who was the greatest of the Minnesingers.
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