Witchcraft and the Skeptical Tradition

Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficorum Published

1486

One of first books made on printing press. Made for MODULE 4 ASSIGNMENT: Online Study Tools

Johann Weyer’s De praestigiis daemonium, denying the reality of pacts with devils

1550

Dutch, wrote De praestigiis daemonium in 1563
Said female witches (“lamiae”) were vulnerable to deception by the devil because of melancholy or weak faith—not heresy
Says Bible was saying that Hebrew magicians should not live, not witches
Denies the reality of pacts with the devil
Considers women especially weak
Argues that the organs of perception are corrupted by melancholy
Was directly attacked by Bodin

Jean Bodin attacks Weyer in Demon-Mania

1580

Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witches

1584

1584 The Discoverie of Witchcraft
Scot was an educated Calvinist Englishman
Believed there was no biblical basis for prosecuting witchcraft
Ridiculed the Malleus and responded to Bodin
Four main ideas: 1) identifies poor estranged women as most likely to be accused; 2) claims it is idolatrous to attribute power to witches; 3) negatively analyzes components identified by Bodin; 4) uses philosophy and science to assert the impossibility of what witches confess

Martin DelRio’s Disquisitiones Magicae, outlining the “errors” of Cornelius Loos

1599

Cornelius Loos was a Dutch professor at the University of Trier. He wrote a book against his town’s zealous witchcraft prosecutions, which took in all levels of society while enriching those who led the inquisition. His book was seized at the printer's (it was not rediscovered until 1886), and he was put in prison. In spring 1593, he publicly recanted.

Alonso de Salazar Frias’s “Second Report” on witchcraft trials of the Spanish Inquisition

1612

Salazar was a university-educated canon lawyer who took part in the witch hunt in Basque country, 1609-14—the largest in Spanish history (an extension of the one begun by Pierre de Lancre in southern France)
Officials of the Inquisition were alarmed by the confessions of young children and sent Salazar to report on conditions
Salazar does not deny the possibility of witchcraft or the power of the devil, but discredits the particular confessions he examines

Spee’s A Condemnation of Torture

1631

Spee was a Jesuit priest, serving as a professor of moral theology during the Counter-Reformation (the movement within the Roman Catholic Church that followed the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century)
He objected to the way others (such as Jean Bodin, in 1580) treated witchcraft as an “excepted crime”—that is, a crime that poses a danger to the state and therefore does not fall under the usual rules of legal procedure specified in written law.