Johann Weyer facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Johann Wier
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Engraving of Johann Wier, age 60, from De Lamiis Liber
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| Born | 1515 Grave, Netherlands
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| Died | 24 February 1588 (aged 73) Tecklenburg, Germany
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| Other names | Jan Wier, Johan Wier, Johannes Wier, Jean Wier, Ioannes Wierus, Piscinarius |
| Occupation | Physician, general occultist |
| Employer | Duke of Jülich-Cleves |
Johannes Wier (Latin: Ioannes Wierus or Piscinarius; 1515 – 24 February 1588) was a Dutch physician who was among the first to publish a thorough treatise against the trials and persecution of people accused of witchcraft. His most influential work is De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis ('On the Illusions of the Demons and on Spells and Poisons'; 1563).
Biography
Weyer was born in Grave, a small town in the Duchy of Brabant in the Habsburg Netherlands. He 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. Agrippa had to leave Antwerp in 1532 and he and Weyer settled in Bonn, under the protection of prince-bishop Hermann von Wied. (Agrippa completed a work on demons in 1533 and perished two years later while on a trip to France). From 1534, Weyer studied medicine in Paris and later in Orléans, but it appears unlikely that he obtained the title of Doctor through these studies. Eventually, he practiced as a physician in his native Grave. Weyer was appointed city physician of Arnhem in 1545. In this capacity, he was asked for advice on witchcraft in a 1548 court case involving a fortune teller. In spite of a subsidy from emperor Charles V, the town of Arnhem was no longer able to pay Weyer's salary. Weyer moved to Cleves in 1550, where he became court doctor to duke William the Rich, through mediation by humanist Konrad Heresbach. Weyer published his major works on witchcraft in which he applied a skeptical medical view to reported wonders and supposed examples of witchcraft. He retired from his post in 1578 and was succeeded by his son, Galenus Wier (1547-1619). After retirement he completed a medical work on a subject unrelated to witchcraft. He died on 24 February 1588 at the age of 73 in Tecklenburg, while visiting an individual who had fallen ill. He was buried in the local churchyard, which no longer exists.
Tributes
The church of Tecklenburg displays a plaque in memory of Weyer and in 1884 the town erected a tower in his honor, the Wierturm. The Dutch human rights organization for health workers is named the Johannes Wier Foundation after him. Alongside his tutor, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, he appears as a character in the video game Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Kurt Baschwitz, a pioneer in communication studies and mass psychology, dedicated most of the content of his first Dutch monography on witchcraft and witch trials De strijd tegen den duivel - de heksenprocessen in het licht der massapsychologie (1948) to the merits of Weyer. Later he extended this work to his German magnum opus, Hexen und Hexenprozesse: Geschichte eines Massenwahns und seiner Bekaempfung which discussed methods of fighting attempts at mass delusion (1963).
Family
Johan was the son of Agnes Rhordam and Theodorus (Dirk) Wier, a merchant of hops, coal and slate, who was a schepen of Grave in the 1520s. Dirk and Agnes Wier came from Zeeland and were closely acquainted with Maximiliaan van Egmond and Françoise de Lannoy, the future in-laws of William the Silent. Johan had two known siblings, Arnold Wier and the mystic Mathijs Wier (c.1520–c.1560). In Arnhem, he married Judith Wintgens, with whom he had at least five children. After Judith's death he married Henriette Holst. Johan's oldest son, Diederik Wier, became a jurist and diplomat, who in 1566-7, while employed by Willem IV van den Bergh, was involved in the "petitions of grievances about the suppression of heresy" by the Dutch nobility to Philip II of Spain, the rejection of which led to the Eighty Years' War.
Name
Weyer signed all his correspondence with "Johannes Wier" or occasionally with "Piscinarius". His parents and children carried the name "Wier" as well, and in 1884 his memorial in Germany was still named "Wierturm" rather than "Weyerturm". Nevertheless, since the 20th century the name "Johann Weyer" has become standard in German and English-language scholarship. The use of "Weyer" may stem from Carl Binz's 1896 monograph "Doctor Johann Weyer, ein rheinischer Arzt, der erste Bekämpfer des Hexenwahns", who in 1885 had already given a lecture "Wier oder Weyer?", in which he, apparently unaware of Weyer's Zeeland origin, claimed that Weyer zur deutchen Nation zählte and Wier was merely a Niederrheinische dialect pronunciation of Weyer.
See also
In Spanish: Johann Weyer para niños
- Nicholas Remy
- Daemonolatreiae libri tres
