A book of doubts about witch trials, published anonymously in 1631 by a Jesuit priest who had accompanied the condemned to execution in the German prosecutions. Spee did not argue that there are no witches. He argued something more dangerous to the courts: that the procedure could not tell. Torture extracts the confession the interrogator asks for, an innocent person under torture will accuse others, those named will be tortured in turn, and there is no point in the process at which an innocent defendant can stop. He set this out as a series of questions with answers, coldly, from inside the system.
Facts
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Literary Form Scholarship
TransmissionCirculated widely in Latin across German speaking lands and was translated into German within Spee's own century, reaching readers well beyond the clergy and jurists it most directly addressed. 1 What Counted as EvidenceSpee's central argument is that torture produces a confession rather than the truth, because what ends the pain is agreeing with the interrogator; the confessed must then name accomplices, who are tortured in turn. Denial is punished, confession is fatal and retraction brings more torture, so the procedure contains no point at which an innocent defendant can stop. 2 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteWritten from Friedrich Spee's own experience as a Jesuit confessor to condemned witches, the book argues that torture itself manufactures confessions, so that no accused person, however innocent, could survive the procedure without naming others in turn. 2 Structure
StructureArranged as fifty one dubia, doubts posed and answered in the style of a scholastic legal disputation, a structure that let Spee address the trial procedure point by point rather than argue against witch trials as a single continuous thesis. 2 Transmission
Manuscript TraditionCirculated widely in Latin across German speaking lands and was translated into German within Spee's own century, reaching readers well beyond the clergy and jurists it most directly addressed. 1 Disputed
How Its Legacy Is ContestedThe book is credited with contributing to the ending of witch prosecutions in several German territories. 1 Some contemporaries said as much directly and historians take the claim seriously. Others hold that the decline in the Holy Roman Empire had several causes running together, including the exhaustion of the Thirty Years War, reform of criminal procedure, the reassertion of higher courts over local ones, and a slow change in what educated people found plausible. A book does not stop a persecution on its own, and no one has isolated its effect. Origins
Era of Composition Era of Composition Attributed Author / CompilerPublished anonymously at Rinteln in 1631. Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld's authorship became known in his lifetime and was affirmed later in the century by Leibniz. 2 Sources
Textual NoteHe wrote as a Jesuit priest who had heard the confessions of the condemned and accompanied them to execution in the German prosecutions, and states that he does not believe he ever accompanied a guilty one. 2 Textual NoteSpee did not argue that there are no witches. He treated the question as open and set it aside, which is what made the book difficult to answer: his case is about the machinery, not about metaphysics. 2 Learn More
The Procedure Cannot Tell the Innocent from the Guilty
Friedrich Spee's book is built as a series of questions with answers, in the manner of a legal treatise, and its power comes from the fact that it concedes almost everything to its opponents before dismantling them. Spee does not argue that there are no witches. He treats that as an open question and sets it aside. His argument is about the machinery.
Torture, he says, produces a confession. It does not produce the truth, because what it produces is whatever ends the pain, and what ends the pain is agreeing with the interrogator. An innocent woman under torture will confess. Having confessed, she will be asked who else was at the gathering, and she must name someone, because she has already agreed there was a gathering. Those she names will be arrested and tortured and will name others. There is no exit anywhere in the sequence. A defendant who denies is tortured for denying, a defendant who confesses is executed, and a defendant who retracts is tortured again for retracting.
Spee had the authority to say this because of where he had been. As a Jesuit priest in the German prosecutions he had heard the confessions of the condemned and walked with them to execution, and the book carries the flat, exhausted certainty of a man who has been told the truth in the last hour by people who had nothing left to gain by lying. He states plainly that he does not believe he ever accompanied a guilty one.
Anonymous Publication, and What It Is Credited With
The book appeared at Rinteln in 1631 without its author's name, which was a rational precaution: it accused named practices, and by implication the judges and princes who ran them, of killing the innocent by the hundred. Spee's authorship became known during his lifetime nonetheless, and it was affirmed later in the century by Leibniz, who admired the book. It was reprinted and translated into German, and it circulated among exactly the readers it was aimed at.
What it achieved is a genuine question rather than a settled one. Historians credit the Cautio Criminalis with contributing to the ending of witch prosecutions in several German territories, and some contemporaries said as much directly. It is also true that the decline of the trials in the Holy Roman Empire had several causes running at once, including the exhaustion of the Thirty Years War, changes in criminal procedure, the reassertion of higher courts over local ones, and a slow shift in what educated people found plausible. A book does not stop a persecution by itself.
Spee did not live to see any of it. He died in 1635 at Trier, of plague caught while nursing wounded soldiers, in his mid forties. His other surviving work is religious poetry, some of it still sung, which is not the usual afterlife for a man who wrote the sharpest procedural critique of his century.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Authored By
Published anonymously in 1631; his authorship became known in his lifetime.
Related To
The German prosecutions of these years are the immediate setting for Spee's attack on judicial torture.
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