1. Johann Weyer was born in Grave, a small town in the Duchy of Brabant in the Habsburg Netherlands.
15 Facts About Johann Weyer
1. 2.
Johann Weyer attended the Latin schools in 's-Hertogenbosch and Leuven and when he was about 14 years of age, he became a live-in student of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, in Antwerp.
3.
Agrippa had to leave Antwerp in 1532 and he and Johann Weyer settled in Bonn, under the protection of prince-bishop Hermann von Wied.
4.
From 1534, Johann Weyer studied medicine in Paris and later in Orleans, but it appears unlikely that he obtained the title of Doctor through these studies.
5.
Johann Weyer moved to Cleves in 1550, where he became court doctor to duke William the Rich, through mediation by humanist Konrad Heresbach.
6.
Johann Weyer published his major works on witchcraft in which he applied a skeptical medical view to reported wonders and supposed examples of witchcraft.
7.
Johann Weyer retired from his post in 1578 and was succeeded by his son, Galenus Wier.
8.
Johann Weyer was buried in the local churchyard, which no longer exists.
9.
Johann Weyer's works include medical and moral works as well as his more famous critiques of magic and witchcraft:.
10.
Johann Weyer criticised the and the witch hunting by the Christian and Civil authorities; he is said to have been the first person that used the term mentally ill or melancholy to designate those women accused of practicing witchcraft.
11.
Johann Weyer claimed that not only were examples of magic largely incredible but that the crime of witchcraft was literally impossible, so that anyone who confessed to the crime was likely to be suffering some mental disturbance.
12.
Some scholars have said that Johann Weyer intended to mock the concept of the hellish hierarchy that previous grimoires had established by writing those two books and entitling his catalogue of demons.
13.
Johann Weyer never denied the existence of the Devil and a huge number of other demons of high and low order.
14.
Johann Weyer's work was an inspiration for other occultists and demonologists, including an anonymous author who wrote the.
15.
Nevertheless, since the 20th century the name "Johann Weyer" has become standard in German and English-language scholarship.