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A Skeptic Looks at Witch Hunting – Friedrich von Spee (1631)

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ARGUMENT IX. It is clear from criminal trials that frequently all those who were denounced by others truly were witches, since they themselves then confessed under torture, from which it follows that the denouncers spoke truly. Therefore we should not withhold our trust from the denunciations.

I ANSWER, their own subsequent confessions do not adequately prove that the majority of those denounced were real witches. It is abundantly clear how uncertain is proof acquired through torture, and this is manifest from the things we provided above. However, any accused witch who does not confess that she is guilty is a fool, for these tortures will finally force her to succumb anyway, and if she does not succumb she will be burned alive as obstinate. Reread what we said about this above. Of course those who are accustomed to write their nocturnal ramblings in peace and leisure, or have never gained a sense of this pain because of their harsh and haughty spirit, do not know how much power these torments have. I pray, not out of any malevolent will, but from the best Christian affection for their greater good and the protection of their consciences, that it may occur to them to try a little taste of the rack for half of a quarter of an hour to get a foretaste in their imagination, as it were, before they conduct these odious cases by putting accused people on the rack. For I do not want to be as harsh as some prince, I do not know which one, is said to have been. He ordered those men whom he wanted to appoint to judge criminal trials to first be strapped to the rack for half an hour, however much they struggled, so that being no longer completely ignorant of that pain, they would understand the power of torture more clearly. He thought that through the not particularly protracted torture of one person, it would follow that many others would be rescued not only from torment but even from death. Therefore he completely convinced himself that he could do this in good conscience for the benefit of the state and that the judges for their part had to endure it.

I will not add my judgment; may God grant that we all love him and pass through this temporal world in such a way that we do not lose the eternal one. [ . . . ]

Argument X. [ . . . ] I ANSWER II. Those women who must name others either are true and real witches or they are not and are witches in name only, so that I should say that they are women coerced by the violence of torture to acknowledge a crime of which they are actually innocent. If they are true witches, I deny the minor premise, for they will name innocent people promptly, willingly, and quickly because of the reasons given earlier. But since everywhere those who name others must be forced into it with great effort and pain under torture, I argue rather that they therefore are not true witches but in name only. For I will twist back the argument offered to the complete contrary in this manner:

If true witches must name people, they will willingly name innocent people at least, as my adversary concedes. But the women who name others everywhere now do not willingly name anybody at all, as he will concede. Therefore those women who name others everywhere now are not true witches. This syllogism is completely correct.

From this the solution to what the argument above said clearly follows: therefore witches only name dead people.

The princes should pay attention to what I have said in this serious matter, for this is how things really are:

Most ignorant and careless judges, and many avaricious and malicious ones also, arrest and torture on worthless evidence. The power of torture produces witches who are not really witches. Nevertheless, because they must be witches, they must also denounce their teachers, students, and companions whom they do not have. Because this vexes their consciences, they resist until they are compelled by the force or their fear of torture. Then finally, unequal to the torture, they name those concerning whom their accusations appear credible and whom they will harm as little as possible. So, I say they name those who have already died and were burned as witches. If they are urged on further, they also name living women; first of all those whom they have already heard defamed or denounced by others, or arrested at some time on this charge, etc. This is the way it happens everywhere. If I knowingly deceive you, [Virgil, Aeneid, 4.25.]

Then omnipotent Father drive me with thunderbolts into the shadows.

I know, however, what I am talking about. At the final judgment of the living and the dead I will reveal how I know it to those rulers who should also know these things and whom so many innocents will justly summon before the tribunal that day—and I will summon them too.

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