A Vicious Seed
In the sixteenth century, witch trials were a fact of life. Women were being hauled before courts across Europe. Confessions were extracted under torture. Executions followed. Into this world stepped Johann Weyer, who looked at all of it—the confessions, the trials, the executions—and said that these women are sick, not sinful. They are patients, not criminals. And the men putting them on trial ought to know better. This episode brings you a story of religious belief and scientific inquiry at the dawn of the modern era, the story of Johann Weyer.
Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben with original music by Purple Planet.
Music
Purple Planet - Revelations
Purple Planet - Bittersweet
Purple Planet - Cobwebbed
Johan Sebastian Bach - Orchestral Suite no. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067 - 7. Badinerie
Purple Planet - Sense of Loss
Purple Planet - Shadowlands
Sources
Primary
Bodin, Jean. “Démonomanie de Sorciers.” In European Witchcraft, edited by E. William Monter, 47–55. New York: Wiley & Sons, 1969.
Weyer, Johann. “De Praestgiis Daemonum (1563).” In European Witchcraft, edited by E. William Monter, 37–47. New York: Wiley & Sons, 1969.
Secondary
Allen, James Robert. “The Trick Of The Tale: Deconstructing Johann Weyer’s De Praestigiis Daemonum.” (Master’s Thesis), The University of Texas at Arlington, 2011.
Bonzol, Judith. “The Medical Diagnosis of Demonic Possession in an Early Modern English Community.” Parergon, 2009.
Briggs, Robin. “‘Many Reasons Why’: Witchcraft and the Problem of Multiple Explanation.” In Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, edited by Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, 49–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Cavanaugh, Ray. “The Founder of Modern Psychiatry.” History Today 65, issue 4 (April 2015).
de Waardt, Hans. “Witchcraft, Spiritualism, and Medicine: The Religious Convictions of Johan Wier.” Sixteenth Century Journal 42, no. 2 (2011): 369-391.
Elmer, Peter. “Saints or Sorcerers: Quakerism, Demonology and the Decline of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century England.” In Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, edited by Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, 145–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Hoorens, Vera. “Why did Johann Weyer write De praestigiis daemonum? How Anti-Catholicism inspired the Landmark Plea for the Witches.” BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review 129 (2014): 3-24.
Monter, E. William. “Law, Medicine, and the Acceptance of Witchcraft, 1560–1580.” In European Witchcraft, edited by E. William Monter, 55–71. New York: Wiley & Sons, 1969.
Schoeneman, Thomas J. “The Role of Mental Illness in the European Witch Hunts of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: An Assessment.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 13 (1977): 337-351.
Valente, Michaela. Johann Wier: Debating the Devil and Witches in Early Modern Europe, translated by Theresa Federici. Amsterdam University Press, 2022.
West, Robert H. Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings on Witchcraft. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.
Westerink, Herman. “Demonic Possession and the Historical Construction of Melancholy and Hysteria.” History of Psychiatry 25, no. 3 (2014): 335-349.
