The De praestigiis

When faced with inexplicable events attributed to supernatural intervention, Wier, as a man of science and of culture, stressed the need to intervene. His desire was to contribute to the removal of the blanket of ignorance and to express a sense of human piety towards those who were unjustly considered witches. For many years, Wier had developed a sense of human compassion towards these women, whom he believed to be victims of demonic illusion, unjustly accused as responsible for events that they could not possibly have caused. Wier believed that in many cases it was the victim's natural disposition towards melancholy that led them to confess, a confession almost always extorted by a judge. The experience of mass demonic possession in Arnhem had opened Wier's eyes, leading him to reflect on the effects of prejudices, and from that moment on he began to collect material for inclusion in a work aimed at abolishing capital punishment for witchcraft.

The example of Wier further confirms what historians have recently shed light on: the majority of authors of treatises on demonology across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries either held ecclesiastical offices or were individuals who, in the course of everyday life, had an experience that brought them closer to supernatural events and related trials. Direct testimony and unmediated contact with a witch became the common thread amongst many of the authors on witch-hunts. In the same way as witnessing demonic episodes, the spectacle of demonic action, which also revealed the depths of human weakness, together with a widespread fear of the imminent end of the world, awoke in these men the necessity of taking a stand in relation to the witch-hunts.