Antwerp and Margaret of Austria: imperial archivist and historiographer

In 1528 Agrippa settled in Antwerp, the great port of the Habsburg Netherlands, which in those years was becoming the richest commercial centre in Europe. Here he enjoyed a brief season of success, crowned by his appointment as archivist and historiographer to Margaret of Austria, the princess to whom twenty years earlier he had dedicated his treatise on female nobility. But in Antwerp too his fortune was short-lived, and his last years in the Low Countries were marked by bereavement, debt and condemnation.

The physician and the plague

Soon after arriving, Agrippa practised medicine with success. In 1529 an epidemic struck the city, and according to his letters he stayed to treat the sick while other physicians fled, earning the gratitude of many and the hostility of his colleagues, who accused him of practising without recognised qualifications. In the same epidemic his second wife, Jeanne-Loyse, died, leaving him alone with the children.

Shortly afterwards Agrippa entered a third marriage, at Mechelen, which proved unhappy and ended in separation in 1535. These are private matters that the letters let us glimpse without much detail, but they help to explain the bitter tone of his writings in these years. Agrippa found himself raising several children on an uncertain income, in a city where competition among physicians was fierce and his reputation as a scholar of secret arts aroused suspicion.

In the governor's service

Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian and aunt of Charles V, governed the Netherlands from her court at Mechelen. In 1529 she appointed Agrippa archivist and historiographer, with the task of recording the events of Charles V's reign. In this capacity Agrippa composed historical writings, including an account of the double coronation of Charles V at Bologna in 1530, performed by Pope Clement VII.

In 1529 Agrippa also published in Antwerp a collection of short treatises, finally including the declamation on the nobility of the female sex. The following year the De vanitate scientiarum appeared, again in Antwerp. Agrippa now had an official role, and the city's presses, among the most active in Europe, offered him an international readership.

Margaret's death and the fall

On 1 December 1530 Margaret died at Mechelen, and Agrippa delivered her funeral oration. With her he lost his chief patron. The De vanitate was examined by the theologians of Louvain and the Sorbonne, who found in it many propositions they judged scandalous, and the imperial court distanced itself from the author. His salary as historiographer was no longer paid regularly.

In 1531 Agrippa was even imprisoned for debt in Brussels. Once released, he sought refuge with the Archbishop of Cologne, Hermann von Wied, and from 1532 he lived in Bonn. The Antwerp period, which began as a redemption, thus ended with the loss of all support at court. Yet it was precisely those years that gave the world his most important books, which the printers of the Low Countries and the Rhineland would spread throughout Europe within a few years.