or Sprenger. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries some theologians expressed doubt about witches and witchcraft[1]: in 1505 Samuel de Cassinis, a Minorite, published a tract against witch-flights as untrue, although he said that evil by sorcery and witch-adulteries with demons were true; this is said to have been the first systematic attempt to oppose the witch-mania.[2] Janssen is able to affirm that the writers for and against witchcraft and witches are equal in all sects and professions.[3] Bodin, one of the leaders of the sixteenth century, especially in political philosophy, political economy, and the doctrine of money,[4] wrote a book[5] in which he described witch-doings as if upon his own knowledge of facts, when he was, like the popes, only rehearsing the popular stories. He believed that the early death of Charles IX was due to the fact that he spared the life of a sheerer on condition that he would inform on his colleagues. Kepler, the astronomer, believed in witches and had great difficulty in saving his mother, who was a shrew,[6] from execution as one. Opposition to the mania was dangerous, for it was a proof that the objector was a sorcerer. At Treves, in 1592, several Jesuits, a Carthusian, a Carmelite, and some magistrates were accused; one magistrate, who had himself condemned many, was accused and executed, and another died under the seventh torture.[7] Laymann, Tanner, and Von Spee are three Jesuits who, in the first part of the seventeenth century, resisted the delusion, although in vain.[8] Von Spee wrote his Cautio Criminalis
- ↑ Lecky, W. E. H.: Rationalism, I, 103.
- ↑ Hansen, J.: l.c., 510.
- ↑ L.c., VIII. 585. See a list of them, Lecky, W. E. H.: Rationalism, I. 105 and Janssen, J.: l.c., VIII, 551.
- ↑ Baudrillart, H.: J. Bodin et son Temps, 167, 183, 494; Lecky, W. E. H.: Rationalism, I, 83, 107.
- ↑ De Magorum Daimonomania.
- ↑ Ibid., 637-639.
- ↑ Jansen, J.: l.c., VII. 667.
- ↑ Ibid., 654.
