Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Preliminary material / P. Zambelli -- Introduction: Must we really re-appropriate magic? / P. Zambelli -- Chapter One. Continuity in the definition of natural magic from Pico to Della Porta.Astrology and magic in Italy and north of the Alps / P. Zambelli -- Chapter Two. Scholastic and humanist views of hermetism. witchcraft, \'natural magic\',Trithemius’ magic and Agrippa’s critical turn of mind / P. Zambelli -- Chapter Three. Magic, pseudepigraphy, prophecies and forgeries in Trithemius’ manuscripts.From Cusanus to Bovelles? / P. Zambelli -- Appendix I. Trithemius’ bibliography for necromancers / P. Zambelli -- Chapter Four. Agrippa of Nettesheim as a critical magus / P. Zambelli -- Chapter Five. Magic and radical reformation in Agrippa of Nettesheim / P. Zambelli -- Appendix II. Recent studies on Agrippa / P. Zambelli -- Chapter Six. The initiates and the idiot. Conjectures on some Brunian sources / P. Zambelli -- Chapter Seven. Hermetism and magic in Giordano Bruno. Some interpretations from Tocco to Corsano, From Yates to Ciliberto / P. Zambelli -- Appendix III. A Nolan before Bruno: Momus and socratism in the Renaissance / P. Zambelli -- Index nominum / P. Zambelli -- Index rerum / P. Zambelli.

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This book explores philosophical theories which in the Renaissance provided an interpretation of nature, of its laws and exceptions and, lastly, of man’s capacity to dominate the cosmos by way of natural magic or by magical ceremonies. It does not concentrate on the Hermetic and Neoplatonic philosophers (Ficino, Pico, Della Porta), or on the relationship between magic and the scientific revolution, but rather upon the interference of the ideas and practices of learned magicians with popular rites and also with witchcraft, a most important question for social and religious history. New definitions of magic put forward by certain unorthodox and “wandering scholastics” (Trithemius, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Bruno) will interest readers of Renaissance and Reformation texts and history.