Cautio Criminalis, or a Book on Witch Trials (review)

Friedrich Spee’s Cautio Criminalis is an unusual text: a deeply moving work couched in the dry form of a scholastic disputation. Deeply rooted in the historical moment of the seventeenth-century witch trials, it is also an ethical work of continuing relevance. Students and scholars alike will be served by Marcus Hellyer’s fluent and accessible translation.

In addition to producing a solid and reliable translation of Spee’s classic text, Hellyer offers in his introduction a well-rounded, contextualized overview of the man and the book. The reader who seeks a bibliographic survey of the literature on Spee and the Cautio Criminalis will not find it here, however. Although he draws on the vast literature on the subject himself, Hellyer does not undertake to survey it. Neither in the text nor the footnotes of the introduction is more than a fraction of the scholarship on the subject mentioned. Both the introduction and the notes throughout the text of the Cautio Criminalis seem aimed primarily at a student audience. Hellyer skillfully situates Spee in his context as a Jesuit, a critic of witchhunting, and a man of the seventeenth century. He demystifies passing references in the text by providing the content of their referents in his notes. For scholars who desire more complete notes, Hellyer cites Theo G. M. von Oorschot’s critical edition of the Cautio Criminalis (Tübingen: Francke, 1992). Throughout the introduction and translation, Hellyer seeks to reach the broadest audience possible; in this he undoubtedly succeeds.

Hellyer’s admiration for the Society of Jesus in general and Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld in particular is unmistakable in his introduction. To some, Hellyer’s description of the Jesuits and their activities in Europe and the colonies may seem laudatory to a fault. The translator’s discussion of Spee also brooks no criticism. Spee’s limited use of authorities, Hellyer argues, was deliberate rather than due to deficient knowledge. The only minor departure from this admiring stance comes with a brief mention of Spee’s misogynistic language. Hellyer acknowledges that it is impossible to know whether Spee was speaking his own mind or reflecting the arguments of others in order to refute them, as he does skillfully throughout the work. Weyer also used a low estimation of women as a weapon in the ideological battle against witch hunting. Moreover, as Tamar Herzig has recently pointed out, it is simplistic to condemn even the most virulent proponents of witch hunting, such as Heinrich Kramer, of being misogynistic without first examining their other writings on women.¹ Evidently the question of exactly what role misogyny played in the witch hunts is still an open one.

Hellyer reminds his readers that the Cautio Criminalis was more an expression of growing skepticism toward witch trials than its cause, acknowledging the limits to the work’s effects while extolling both its author and contents. To the widening circle of readers that the translation will no doubt engender, Spee’s work will seem more than worthy of the praise lavished upon it. Based on moral theology and couched in the style of a scholastic disputation, the Cautio Criminalis persuasively argues against the abandonment of procedural safeguards in the prosecution of witches. Beginning with the first Question, “Whether witches, hags, or sorcerers really exist,” in which he concedes that they do, Spee skillfully adopts some of the positions of his opponents in order to defeat them through superior logic. That witches exist, that their crime is so utterly deplorable, supports his first argument for caution. Opposition to the horrible crime might easily inspire such zeal that moderation and justice are abandoned altogether. In addressing the most heinous crimes, Spee argues, more caution and prudence are required than usual, not less.

One of Spee’s central arguments is that the innocent should not be harmed in the attempt to root out evil. “One must not do evil in order that good might result” (p. 43). He supports...