Cautio Criminalis, or a Book on Witch Trials

Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld was a Jesuit priest, and Cautio Criminalis, first published anonymously in Latin in 1631, is his own primary text arguing against the use of torture in witch trials, written from his direct experience as a confessor to condemned prisoners. This University of Virginia Press edition is Marcus Hellyer's modern scholarly English translation. As Spee's own primary argument it is the correct source for this early and influential internal Catholic critique of witch trial procedure. Its limit is that it is a polemical argument grounded in one priest's direct but limited experience in one region, not a comprehensive history of the witch trials themselves, so a claim about the trials' broader scope needs a historical source alongside this primary text.