| Volume Thirty-Six | 1994 | |
2. Abraham A. Roback and George Mora used those titles respectively. For an interesting article on the use of Weyer in nineteenth-century psychiatry see Patrick Vandermeersch's "The victory of psychiatry over demonology: the origin of the nineteenth century myth" in History of Psychiatry, 11 (1991) 351-363.
3. For wide-ranging critiques of witchcraft theorists see The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. Sydney Anglo.
4. Institoris and Sprenger were the authors to the Malleus Maleficarum first published in 1486/7. The Malleus defines witchcraft and then provides the legal tools for combating it. It is often credited with causing a surge in witchcraft trials, but the Malleus was published only in Latin and thus accessible to a rather small group of learned individuals. (Weyer is responding directly to claims made by Institoris and Sprenger among others.) Reginald Scot defended witches in his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) by claiming that supernatural powers did not exist, thus rendering witchcraft impossible.
5. Sydney Anglo, "Melancholia and Witchcraft: The Debate between Wier, Bodin, and Scot," Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology: The Literature of Witchcraft, ed.Brian Levack (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992) 138. On the increased power of the devil see also H.C. Erik Midelfort's essay "Johann Weyer and the Transformation of the Insanity Defense" in The German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988, pp.234-61.
6. Institoris (Heinrich Kraemer) and Jacob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, trans. and ed. Montague Summers (New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1979) 31.
7. Midelfort, 235.
8. Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (New York and London: Longman Group UK Limited, 1987), 58.
9. Born 1515 in Graves in the Low Countries, Weyer was trained as a physician and influenced by both humanism (Desiderius Erasmus) and mysticism (Agrippa de Nettesheim) as well as Lutheranism. He received no special training in mental illness. In 1550, Weyer was appointed personal physician for the tolerant Duke William V of Cleve, Julich, and Berg. Weyer wrote De praestigiis daemonum while in that position and remained with Duke William V for the next thirty years. Biographical information on Weyer is drawn from George Mora's introduction to Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance.
10. Weyer, 522.
11. Weyer, 83.
12. Weyer, 3.
13. Weyer, 56 from chapter XVIII titled "Natural things and things accomplished by special skills are sometimes thought to be caused by demons." Italics mine.
14. Midelfort, 241.
15. Weyer, 491.
16. Weyer, 85-6.
17. Weyer, 173.
18. Weyer, 505.
19. Weyer, 174.
20. Weyer, 507.
21. Weyer, 540.
22. Weyer, 574.
23. Weyer, 93-4.
24. Weyer, 492.
25. One assumes that if a poisoner were found not to be of sound mind and body, Weyer would recommend medical treatment rather than legal punishment.
26. Weyer, 553. Italics mine.
27. Weyer, 502-3.
28. Weyer, 98.
29. Christopher Baxter, "Johann Weyer's De praestigiis daemonum: Unsystematic Psychopathology," The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. Sydney Anglo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) 58.
30. Weyer, 150-1.
31. Weyer, 563.
32. Weyer, 98-9.
33. Weyer, 547. Since magicians did not receive greater powers from the devil, it is not entirely clear why they were not merely dupes like witches were. We can assume in this case that Weyer is privileging the will as grounds for culpability. Still the crime would be heresy and not maleficia. However, magicians through sleight of hand and other tricks did aid the devil in spreading illusions. These deceptions infuriated Weyer, probably because they could hamper a doctor's ability to perform his work as well as lead to miscarriages of justice as seen with accusations of witchcraft. The purpose of knowledge for Weyer was to make sense of the world, not to spread illusions.
34. Weyer, 536.
35. Weyer, 480 and 485.
36. Weyer, 150 and 153.
37. Weyer, 189.
38. Weyer, 34.
39. Weyer, 35.
40. Weyer, 495.
41. Weyer, 522.
42. Weyer, 503.
43. In this sense Anglo is correct when he states that Weyer leaves the devil in command. Anglo, 138.
44. Weyer, 518-19.
45. Weyer, 524-35.
46. Weyer, 568-9.
47. Baxter, 58.
48. Weyer, 567.
49. This conflation is often used as evidence of the birth of psychiatry. I would agree with Vandermeersch who asserts instead that it reflects a falling away from a belief in an harmonious cosmos perfectly suited to man, p. 354.
50. Weyer, 542.
51. Midelfort, 246-7.
52. Weyer, 527-8.