Ungewissheit und Eitelkeit aller Kunste und Wissenschafften: auch wie selbige dem menschlichen Geschlechte mehr schadlich als nutzlich sind.

"In 1518 Agrippa was a public advocate in Metz and the defense lawyer in a sorcery trial; the latter service aroused such opposition that he had to leave town. In 1528 Margaret of Austria, the regent of the Netherlands, summoned Agrippa to become historian and librarian in Antwerp. Agrippa's personality and curriculum vitae are still open to dispute, as is the authorship of his works. He has been described as an 'honest, fearless, and generous man,…but somewhat vainglorious…,whereby he himself several times spoiled his chances at success and also as a scientific swindler. Today Agrippa's importance is considered to lie in the social criticism that is embodied in his works on magic as well as in his polemic against the vanity and uncertainty of science. He has his De occulta and De incertitudine to thank not only for his fame but also for the doubt cast upon his having been a scientist. For a long time historians lumped him together with Reuchlin and even with Ramon Lull, for he attempted to combine Neoplatonic mysticism and magic-subject to nature-with Renaissance skepticism. Recent historical investigation does not support this view, however, and assigns him a central place in the history of ideas of the Middle Ages; he is seen as characterizing the main line of intellectual development from Nicholas of Cusa to Sebastian Franck. Modern opinion evaluates him on the basis of his Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic influences" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).

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