Let us finally inscribe on the roll of honor, with our respects, the name of Jean Wier,[63] or rather of Joannes Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves, who studied in Paris, where he received the degree of doctor, and was afterwards the disciple of Cornelius Agrippa, a partisan of demonology. Like the latter, Jean Weir believed in astrology, alchemy, the cabala, sorcerers and female mediums; likewise in demons who possessed control of human beings through magic power. But in his works that he published in 1560 he proclaims the innocence of those unfortunates punished for witchcraft, and declares them to have been insane and melancholic; likewise asserting that they could have been cured by proper treatment. He declares that he is fully persuaded that sorcerers, witches, and lycanthropic patients who were burned at the stake were crazy people whose reason had been overthrown; and that the faults imputed to these unfortunates were dangerous to none but themselves; that the possessed were dupes to false sensations that had been experienced during the time of their ecstatic transports or in their sleep. Weir[64] insisted that the homicidal monomania attributed to the inhabitants of Vaud should not be credited, and was not except by fools and fanatics; while the so-called vampires, whose blood was shed on the banks of Lake Leman, the borders of the Rhine, and on the mountains of Savoy, had never been guilty of crimes, nor murders especially, and cites cases of condemnation where the _insanity_ or _imbecility_ of the victims was incontestible. He declares, in general, that all sorcerers are irresponsible, that they are insane, and that the devils possessing them can be combatted without exorcism. “Above all,” says he to the judges and executioners, “do not kill, do not torture. Have you fear that these poor frightened women have not suffered enough already? Think you they can have more misery than that they already suffer? Ah! my friends, even though they merited punishment, rest assured of one thing, _that their disease is enough_.” Beautiful words, worthy of a grand philosopher. Born in the sixteenth century, he believed in magic and sorcery; but as a physician he pleaded for the saving of human life, and as a man he frowned down the crimes committed on the scaffold. “The duty of the monk,” says he, “is to study how to cure the soul rather than to destroy it.” Alas! he preached his doctrine in the barren desert of ecclesiastical fanaticism.