The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

Weyer, Johann 267
The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vols. 1 & 2. Edited by
James H. Charlesworth. 1983. Reprint, New York: Doubleday,
1985.
Weyer, Johann (1515–1588) German physician who
argued against the witch hysteria and the alleged workings
of the DEVIL through people and PACTs. Johann
Weyer accepted the existence of DEMONs and their ability
to wreak evil and cause POSSESSION, but he opposed the
torture and execution of accused witches during the
Inquisition and refuted the belief that the Devil recruited
people to cause harm.
Life
Weyer was born the middle of three sons to a Protestant
family in Brabant. His father was a hops merchant who
could afford to give his sons a good education. Weyer was
15 when he went to study in the household of Heinrich
Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, a prominent physician,
philosopher, and occult scholar. Agrippa taught
Weyer Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy and introduced
him to the occult works of Abbot Johannes Trithemius
of Sponheim.
The seeds of Weyer’s skepticism about the witch hysteria
that gripped the 16th century may have been planted
by Agrippa, who once defended an old woman accused
of witchcraft, arguing that she was feeble-minded, not
diabolical.
Weyer’s apprenticeship with Agrippa lasted for about
four years. Weyer studied medicine at the University of
Paris in 1534, and at the University of Orléans from 1534
to 1537. He learned the prevailing medical doctrine, still
in force from ancient times, that health depends on the
balance of four humors in the body: BLOOD, phlegm, bile,
and black bile, or melancholy.
After graduation, Weyer returned to Brabant and
nearby Ravenstein to work as a physician. In 1545, he became
the municipal physician for Arnhem, a much bigger
city. At about the same time, he married Judith Wintgens,
with whom he had four sons and a daughter.
In 1550, Weyer was appointed to a prestigious post that
he held for most of the rest of his career, as personal physician
to Duke William V of Julich-Berg-Cleves in Dusseldorf.
Though Catholic, the duke was liberal-minded, and Weyer
enjoyed a comfortable relationship with him. He pursued
scholarly studies and writing. In 1578, he retired from his
post with the duke. He was succeeded by one of his sons,
Galenus, named after the famous Roman physician Galen.
Weyer continued to write and practice medicine until his
death in Tecklenburg on February 24, 1588.
Works
Weyer wrote on medicine and philosophy; of importance
to the subject of demonology is his main work, De praestigiis
daemonum, et incantationibus, ac veneficiis (On the
illusions, spells and poisons of demons), published in
1563, in which he attacked many of the prevailing beliefs
Johann Weyer (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
of inquisitors. Weyer revised and added to the work several
times up to 1583.
In 1577, he added an appendix, Pseudo-Monarchia (The
false kingdom of the demons), to De praestigiis daemonum.
It is an inventory and description of 68 principal demons,
their characteristics, and how they may be conjured. The
princes rule 7,405,926 demons organized in 1,111 LEGIONs
of 6,666 each. Later, the Lutheran Church thought Weyer’s
estimate too low and raised the census of the demonic
population to 2,665,866,746,664, or roughly 2.6 trillion.
REGINALD SCOT, a contemporary who agreed with
Weyer, translated Pseudo-Monarchia and included it in his
book The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584).
The magical grimoire the Lemegeton, also called The
Lesser Key of Solomon, lists the same 68 spirits and adds
four more, and it gives SEALs for their conjuration. The 72
are also known as SPIRITS OF SOLOMON.
Weyer wrote De lamiis liber (On Witchcraft) in 1577.
He used the term LAMIAE to describe female witches who
thought they had pacts with the DEVIL.