His protest does not at this day strike us as particularly
bold. In his books, _De Praestigiis Daemonum_ and _De Lamiis_, he
did his best not to offend religious or theological
susceptibilities; but he felt obliged to call attention to the
mingled fraud and delusion of those who claimed to be bewitched,
and to point out that it was often not their accusers, but the
alleged witches themselves, who were really ailing, and to urge
that these be brought first of all to a physician.
His book was at once attacked by the most eminent
theologians. One of the greatest laymen of his time, Jean Bodin,
also wrote with especial power against it, and by a plentiful use
of scriptural texts gained to all appearance a complete victory:
this superstition seemed thus fastened upon Europe for a thousand
years more. But doubt was in the air, and, about a quarter of a
century after the publication of Wier's book there were published
in France the essays of a man by no means so noble, but of far
greater genius--Michel de Montaigne.
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