Spiritual and Medical Melancholy in Lutheran Responses to Johann Weyer’s Criticism of the Witch Trials

This article examines responses from Lutheran pastors, theologians, and physicians to the arguments given by Johann Weyer in 1563 that those women who confessed to a pact with the devil suffered from melancholy and were thus not responsible for their acts. Weyer’s conception of melancholy was a medical one, yet among Lutheran pastors and theologians the concept of a spiritual form of melancholy emerged that came from religious sources. The article clarifies the difference between the concepts of medical and spiritual melancholy within Lutheranism and reviews the respective roles they played in the debates over Weyer’s arguments

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