Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II: With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred SubjectsUpham, Charles Wentworth
History
Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II: With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects
Upham, Charles Wentworth
Salem (Mass.) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem -- History -- 17th century
Raphael De La Torre and Adam Tanner published treatises establishing
the right and duty of ecclesiastical tribunals to punish all who
practised or dealt with the arts of demonology. In 1484, Sprenger came
out with his famous book, "Malleus Maleficarum;" or, the "Hammer of
Witches." Paul Layman, in 1629, issued an elaborate work on "Judicial
Processes against Sorcerers and Witches." The following is the title of
a bulky volume of some seven hundred pages: "Demonology, or Natural
Magic or demoniacal, lawful and unlawful, also open or secret, by the
intervention and invocation of a Demon," published in 1612. It consists
of four books, treating of the crime of witchcraft, and its punishment
in the ordinary tribunals and the Inquisitorial office. Its author was
Don Francisco Torreblanca Villalpando, of Cordova, Advocate Royal in
the courts of Grenada. It was republished in 1623, by command of Philip
III. of Spain, on the recommendation of the Fiscal General, and with
the sanction of the Royal Council and the Holy Inquisition. This work
may be considered as establishing and defining the doctrines, in
reference to witchcraft, prevailing in all Catholic countries. It was
indorsed by royal, judicial, academical, and ecclesiastical approval;
is replete with extraordinary erudition, arranged in the most
scientific form, em[i.362]bracing in a methodical classification all
the minutest details of the subject, and codifying it into a complete
system of law. There was no particular in all the proceedings and all
the doctrines brought out at the trials in Salem, which did not find
ample justification and support in this work of Catholic, imperial, and
European authority.
But perhaps the writer of the greatest influence on this subject in
England and America, during the whole of the seventeenth century, was
William Perkins, "the learned, pious, and painful preacher of God's
Word, at St. Andrew's, in Cambridge," where he died, in 1602, aged
forty-four years. He was quite a voluminous author; and many of his
works were translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish. Fuller,
in "The Holy State," selects him as the impersonation of the qualities
requisite to "the Faithful Minister." In his glowing eulogium upon his
learning and talents, he says:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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