Arguments
Cautio Criminalis contains 52 questions which Spee attempts to answer. Amongst his more notable conclusions are:
- (17) That alleged witches should be allowed a lawyer and a legal defense: the enormity of the crime making this right even more important than normal.
- (20) That there is real danger innocents will confess under torture simply to stop the pain.
- (25) That condemning alleged witches for not confessing under torture is absurd. Spee opposed the notion that such silence was itself evidence of sorcery, as this made everyone guilty.
- (27) That torture does not produce truth, since those who wish to stop their own suffering can stop it with either the truth or with lies.
- (44) That denunciations of accomplices by tortured "witches" were of little value: either the tortured person was innocent, in which case she had no accomplices, or she was really in league with the Devil, in which case her denunciations cannot be trusted either.
Spee was particularly concerned about cases where a person was tortured and forced to denounce accomplices, who were then tortured and forced to denounce more accomplices, until everyone was under suspicion:
- Many people who incite the Inquisition so vehemently against sorcerers in their towns and villages are not at all aware and do not notice or foresee that once they have begun to clamor for torture, every person tortured must denounce several more. The trials will continue, so eventually the denunciations will inevitably reach them and their families, since, as I warned above, no end will be found until everyone has been burned. (question 15)
Spee was not, however, a skeptic regarding the existence of witches, and opened his work with a declaration that witches are real. However, he was concerned with the fact that innocent people were being killed alongside real witches, as he thought. He argued (question 13) that the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13:24-30 meant that some of the guilty must be allowed freedom, so that the innocent are not condemned either.
Read more about this topic: Friedrich Spee
Famous quotes containing the word arguments:
“When I am convinced of any principle, it is only an idea which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“‘Tis happy, therefore, that nature breaks the force of all sceptical arguments in time, and keeps them from having any considerable influence on the understanding. Were we to trust entirely to their self-destruction, that can never take place, ‘till they have first subverted all conviction, and have totally destroy’d human reason.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)