Friedrich Spee

Friedrich Spee (Kaiserswerth, 1591 – Trier, 1635) was a German Jesuit priest, professor and poet who lived during the Thirty Years' War. He wrote in Latin and German, and he is remembered above all as a forceful opponent of witch trials, a subject he knew closely as a priest who accompanied the accused.

He entered the Society of Jesus in 1610 and taught in several cities along the Rhine, in Franconia and in Hesse. Ordained a priest in 1622, he became a professor at Paderborn in 1624. According to tradition, he accompanied condemned women to their executions and came to believe in their innocence. He is also said to have been led to see the deceit of confessions extracted under torture by a Duke of Brunswick. In 1635, during the imperial assault on Trier, he tended the wounded, and he died soon afterwards of an infection caught in a hospital.

His main work, Cautio Criminalis, appeared anonymously at Rinteln in 1631, attributed to an unknown Roman theologian. Written in Latin, it examines, in some fifty questions, the lack of legal defence, torture and chains of denunciation. Spee did not deny that witches existed, but he denounced a judicial system that manufactured guilty people.

His literary output is late and poorly documented. After his death appeared the Goldenes Tugendbuch and the Trutznachtigall, a collection of sacred songs. He also composed hymns, some of which still appear in German Catholic hymnals.

His book had a wide impact. New editions appeared already in the seventeenth century, and it is considered to have helped curb witch burnings in places such as Mainz and to prepare their gradual abolition.