Keeping a watch on the witchfinders
Published in 1631 in Rinteln, a small town in Lower Saxony, Friederich Spee’s Cautio Criminalis, seu de Processibus Contra Sagas is a first edition in much later boards of a book that has been described as the first serious attack on witchcraft trials and their use of torture.
The work of a German Jesuit priest and poet, it had considerable moral impact and ran to many edit…