Introduction: Witchmongers and Physicians
During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries many physicians became interested in the subject of spirits, demons and witches to the extent of devoting a whole treatise to that question.
Although we tend to retain the figures of Pomponazzi and Weyer as emblematic of the profession’s sceptical attitude towards witchcraft, in reality the entire spectrum of opinions were found in medical treatises ranging from total acceptance of the phenomenon to total rejection of any preternatural or supernatural powers. Even the two abovementioned celebrities did not reject all supernatural phenomena, since Piero Pomponazzi[1106] retained the sidereal influence in human activities, while the famous advocate of witches, Johann Weyer[1107] and his less famous correspondent and friend Johann Ewich,[1108] shared a belief in the interaction between devils and humans, especially in the case of learned male wizards. Of the same generation, though of catholic confession, the renowned Italian botanist and physician Andrea Cesalpino recognised the physical reality of demons and of demonic possession in his Daemonum investigatio peripatetica (1580)[1109] For many other physicians at least some phenomena were to be accounted for outside the realm of nature. Girolamo Cardano was an eager astrologer, and although he often denounced superstition when he recognized it, he also accepted many other phenomena that he could not explain. Similarly Caspar Peucer or Levinus Lemnius, Jean Fernel or Ambroise Pare[1110] could not totally discard the supernatural, demonic thesis, not to mention those, like Thomas Erastus or Baptista Codronchi[1111] who accepted witchcraft as a sound reality. One of the reasons may be sought in the fact that some physicians were also distinguished and recognized theologians. Caspar Peucer graduated md but also took over Melanchthon's theological work after the latter's death; Thomas Erastus taught and practised medicine, while getting involved in the theological debates after Zwingli's death.In pre-Civil-war England, only two authors, who were also practising medical doctors, published works that fully belong in the demonological field. The first was the physician cum theologian Richard Argentine, who wrote the first demonological treatise ever written by an Englishman, albeit in Latin—De praestigiis et incantionibus daemonum et necromanticorum (1568).[1112] The second one was John Cotta. What makes the latter's case particularly interesting is that within scarcely four years he published two treatises tackling the question of witchcraft, in which he defended almost contradictory positions towards the reality of witchcraft, reflecting the period's tensions between medicine and theology in affirming their authority over demonological expertise.