" In the _Pseudomonarchia
Daemonum_, he gives a kind of census of the diabolic kingdom,[116] but
evidently with secret intention of making the whole thing ridiculous, or
it would not have so stirred the bile of Bodin. Wierus was saluted by
many contemporaries as a Hercules who destroyed monsters, and himself not
immodestly claimed the civic wreath for having saved the lives of
fellow-citizens. Posterity should not forget a man who really did an
honest life's work for humanity and the liberation of thought. From one
of the letters appended to his book we learn that Jacobus Savagius, a
physician of Antwerp, had twenty years before written a treatise with the
same design, but confining himself to the medical argument exclusively.
He was, however, prevented from publishing it by death. It is pleasant to
learn from Bodin that Alciato, the famous lawyer and emblematist, was one
of those who "laughed and made others laugh at the evidence relied on at
the trials, insisting that witchcraft was a thing impossible and
fabulous, and so softened the hearts of judges (in spite of the fact that
an inquisitor had caused to burn more than a hundred sorcerers in
Piedmont), that all the accused escaped." In England, Reginald Scot was
the first to enter the lists in behalf of those who had no champion.
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