The best known of later attacks on witchcraft was that of Friedrich von Spee, the German Jesuit, poet, and canon lawyer. His Cautio Criminalis, published anonymously in 1631, must be one of the most useful works of a canon lawyer, if only in restraining the excesses of other canon lawyers.83 Like almost everyone opposed to witch trials, Spee avoids discussing whether witches really exist and concentrates instead on abuses of the law of evidence. He represents the psychological realities of witch finding as distorting the law of evidence so as to lead to inevitable conviction, not only for the
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