Spee, Friedrich Von
Spee, Friedrich von
Poet and author. Born on 25 February 1591 at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, Germany; died on 7 August 1635 at Trier, Germany. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1610, was ordained in 1622, and was professor and preacher at Paderborn, Cologne, and Trier. His literary activities include a book of devotions entitled the Golden Book of Virtues, and a collection of sacred songs, but his worldwide reputation is due to his Cautio Criminalis (1631), a denunciation of the prevailing method of trials for witchcraft with their instruments of torture.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Spee, Friedrich Von
A poet, opponent of trials for witchcraft, born at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, 25 February, 1591; died at Trier 7 August, 1635. On finishing his early education at Cologne, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1610, and, after prolonged studies and activity as a teacher at Trier, Fulda, Würzburg, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, was ordained priest in 1622. He became professor at the University of Paderborn in 1624; from 1626 he taught at Speyer, Wesel, Trier, and Cologne, and was preacher at Paderborn, Cologne, and Hildesheim. An attempt to assassinate him was made at Peine in 1629. He resumed his activity as professor and priest at Paderborn and later at Cologne, and in 1633 removed to Trier. During the storming of Trier by the imperial forces in March, 1635, he distinguished himself in the care of the suffering, and died soon afterwards from the results of an infection contracted in a hospital. He was one of the noblest and most attractive figures of the awful era of the Thirty Years’ War. His literary activity belongs to the last years of his life, the details of which are little known, Two of his works were not published until after his death: “Goldenes Tugendbuch” (Golden Book of Virtues), a book of devotion highly prized by Leibniz, and the “Trutznachtigall”, a collection of fifty to sixty sacred songs, which, though not free from the weaknesses of the day, take a prominent place among religious lyrics of the seventeenth century, and have been in recent times repeatedly printed and revised. But the assumption that the author in this work applied the metrical principle independent of Opitz, is at least doubtful. His principal work, through which he obtained a well-deserved and world-wide reputation, is the “Cautio Criminalis”, written in admirable Latin. It is an arraignment of trial for witchcraft, based upon his own awful experiences probably principally in Westphalia, for the traditional assumption that he acted for a long time as “witch confessor” in Würzburg has no documentary authority. This work was printed in 1631 at Rinteln without Spee’s name or permission, although he was doubtlessly widely known as its author. He does not advocate the immediate abolition of trials for witchcraft, but describes in thrilling language and with cutting sarcasm the horrible abuses in the prevailing legal proceedings, particularly the inhuman use of the rack. He demands measures of reform, such as a new German imperial law on the subject, liability to damages on the part of the judges, etc., which, if they had been conscientiously carried out, would have quickly put an end to the persecution of witches. Many a generation passed before witch burning ceased in Germany, the classic land of these outrages; but at all events the “Cautio Criminals” brought about its abolition in a number of places, especially at Mainz, and led the way to its gradual suppression. The moral impression created by its publication was very great. Even in the seventeenth century a number of new editions and German translations appeared, Protestants also eagerly assisting in promoting its circulation. Among the members of Spee’s order his treatise seems to have usually found a favourable reception, although it was published without official sanction, and its publication led to a correspondence between the general of the Jesuits, the provincial of the order on the Lower Rhine, and Spee himself. The general wished more exact information as to how the printing took place and expressed the suspicion that Spee, even if he, perhaps, did not directly cause it, at least allowed it, and wrote him a mild rebuke.
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The earlier literature is enumerated by CARDAUNS, Friedrich Spee in Frankfurter zeitgemässe Broschüren, V, pt. 4 (1884), where the first exact analysis of the Cautio is given. Since then much new material has appeared in the publications of DUHR, Die Stellung der Jesuiten in den deutschen Hexenprocessen, published by the Görresgesellschaft (1900); DIEL, Friedrich Spee in Sammlung historischer Bildnisse, second edition revised by DUHR (1901). Valuable articles by DUHR have appeared in the Historisehes Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft (1900), 328 sqq.; (1905), 327 sqq. For a good bibliography see the introduction to the latest edition of the Trutznachtigall by WEINRICH (1907), xxxvii sqq.
HERMANN CARDAUNS. Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Spee, Friedrich Von
a German Jesuit and composer of religious poems, was born at Kaiserwerth in 1591 of the noble family Spee von Langenberg, entered the Order of Jesuits at the age of nineteen (1610), and was employed in the school at Cologne as teacher of grammar, philosophy, and morals. He was afterwards removed (about 1627) to Wrzburg and Bamberg, and transferred to the pastorate, a measure which is supposed to indicate dissatisfaction with his teaching on the part of his superiors. He had acquired both reputation and popularity with his auditors; but later events reveal a degree of liberality in his views such as Jesuitism does not often tolerate. While acting as a pastor Spee was often obliged to minister to the unfortunates who were accused of witchcraft, and, after having been compelled by torture to make the most improbable confessions, were condemned to death by fire. More than two hundred of these miserable victims came under his care in the course of a few years. It is related that he was asked by John Philip of Schonborn, subsequently the elector of Mayence; why his head was gray at the early age of thirty; and that he gave as a reason the fact that he had been obliged to accompany so many witches to the stake, though every one of them was innocent. He gave a more emphatic expression to his sentiments upon this matter by the (anonymous) publication of a Cautio Criminalis, v. de Processu contra Sagas Liber, in which he stripped off the false gloss from the principles and the indefensible judicial methods by which such prosecutions were controlled. He would seem to have been suspected of the authorship by his superiors, as he was soon afterwards sent to Lower Saxony to attempt the conversion of Protestants to Roman Catholicism. He actually succeeded in gaining over a Protestant community; but, according to Jesuitical authorities, came near to suffering a martyr’s death in consequence. He was attacked by an assassin, said to have been employed by the Protestants of Hildesheim, who beat him unmercifully; and having lost his enthusiasm for missionary work, as the result, he went to Treves. This place afforded him a wide field of pastoral usefulness, especially during the siege and storm of 1635 by Imperialists and Spaniards. He was indefatigable in his labors for the sick, wounded, and dying, and also for the impoverished and the prisoners.
While engaged in such work he was taken with fever, and died Aug. 7, 1635. Spee’s reputation rests on his religious poems, which are contained in two collections, the Trutz-Nachtigall and the Guldenes Tugendbuch. The former was first issued at Cologne in 1649, and appeared afterwards in several editions; but was then lost from observation until Brentano republished it in a somewhat modernized form in 1817. The latter, which received high commendation from Leibnitz (Theodicoe, 96), likewise appeared for the first time after the author’s death, in 1643, perhaps not earlier even than 1649. As a poet Spee stands alone, holding no relation to any of the schools of his century. He possessed a fine sense of prosody and euphonic forms, and felt profoundly the spirit of his compositions. He was, moreover, entirely rational, a lover of nature; and, consequently, in no danger of a mystical absorption in God or of a theosophic pantheism. His poems are not. however, hymns; they were composed without the slightest reference to use by a Christian congregation. Their subject is always either some observation of nature or an expression of the author’s intense and glowing love for Christ. Occasional stanzas are worthy of comparison with the productions of the most eminent lyric poets of his country; but the adoption of the pastoral as a medium for expressing the poet’s admiration of God will serve to show how utterly unsuited are his works for a place in the worship of the congregation. Spee’s writings were published by Smets (Fromme Lieder Spee’s [Bonn, i849]); and earlier by Forster, in Muller’s Biblioth. deutscher Dichter des 17fen Jahrhunderts (Leips. 1831, vol. 12), the latter preserving the original form more faithfully than the other. The Guldenes Tugendbuch, somewhat changed, was republished at Coblentz in 1850 as a Roman Catholic manual of devotion. See Hauber, Biblioth. Magica, vol. 3; Gorres, Christl. Mystik, vol. 4.