Friedrich von Spee
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Friedrich von Spee (February 25, 1591 – August 7, 1635) was a German Jesuit and poet, most noted as an opponent of trials for witchcraft. Spee was the first person in his time who spoke strongly and with arguments against torture in general. He may be considered the first who ever gave good arguments why torture is not a way of finding truth while undergoing someone a painful questioning.
He ws born at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine. On finishing his early education at Cologne, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1610, and, after prolonged studies and activity as a teacher at Trier, Fulda, Würzburg, Speyer, Worms and Mainz, was ordained priest in 1622. He became professor at the University of Paderborn in 1624; from 1626 he taught at Speyer, Wesel, Trier and Cologne, and was preacher at Paderborn, Cologne and Hildesheim.
[edit] Life during Thirty Years' War
An attempt to assassinate von Spee was made at Peine in 1629. He resumed his activity as professor and priest at Paderborn and later at Cologne, and in 1633 removed to Trier. During the storming of Trier by the imperial forces in March 1635, he distinguished himself in the care of the suffering, and died soon afterwards from the results of an infection contracted in a hospital.
[edit] Publications
His literary activity belongs to the last years of his life, the details of which are little known. Two of his works were not published until after his death: Goldenes Tugendbuch (Golden Book of Virtues), a book of devotion highly prized by Leibniz, and the Trutznachtigall, a collection of fifty to sixty sacred songs, which take a prominent place among religious lyrics of the seventeenth century, and have been in recent times repeatedly printed and revised. But the assumption that the author in this work applied the metrical principle independent of Opitz, is at least doubtful.
His principal work, which won him a wide reputation, is the Cautio Criminalis, written in Latin. It is an arraignment of trial for witchcraft, based on his own experiences probably principally in Westphalia; the traditional assumption that he acted for a long time as "witch confessor" in Würzburg has no documentary authority. The work was printed in 1631 at Rinteln without Spee's name or permission. He does not advocate the immediate abolition of trials for witchcraft, but describes with sarcasm the abuses in the prevailing legal proceedings, particularly the use of the rack. He demands measures of reform, such as a new German imperial law on the subject, liability to damages on the part of the judges, etc. If these had been carried out, they would have quickly put an end to the persecution of witches. Nevertheless, the Cautio Criminalis brought about the abolition of witch-burning in a number of places, especially at Mainz, and led the way to its gradual suppression. The moral impression created by the publication was very great. Even in the seventeenth century a number of new editions and German translations appeared, with Protestants eagerly assisting in promoting its circulation. Among the members of Spee's order his treatise seems to have found a favourable reception, although it was published without official sanction, and its publication led to a correspondence between the general of the Jesuits, the provincial of the order on the Lower Rhine, and Spee himself.
