From a Discoverie Tothe Triall of Witchcraft
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CHAPTER 20 From A Discoverie to The Triall of Witchcraft: Doctor Cotta and Godly John Pierre Kapitaniak Introduction: Witchmongers and Physicians During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries many physicians became interested in the subject of spirits, demons and witches to the extent of devot- ing a whole treatise to that question. Although we tend to retain the figures of Pomponazzi and Weyer as emblematic of the profession’s sceptical attitude towards witchcraft, in reality the entire spectrum of opinions were found in medical treatises ranging from total acceptance of the phenomenon to total rejection of any preternatural or supernatural powers. Even the two above- mentioned celebrities did not reject all supernatural phenomena, since Piero Pomponazzi1 retained the sidereal influence in human activities, while the famous advocate of witches, Johann Weyer2 and his less famous correspondent and friend Johann Ewich,3 shared a belief in the interaction between devils and humans, especially in the case of learned male wizards. Of the same generation, though of catholic confession, the renowned Italian botanist and physician Andrea Cesalpino recognised the physical reality of demons and of demonic possession in his Daemonum investigatio peripatetica (1580).4 For many other physicians at least some phenomena were to be accounted for outside the realm of nature. Girolamo Cardano was an eager astrologer, and although he often denounced superstition when he recognized it, he also accepted many other phenomena that he could not explain. Similarly Caspar Peucer 1 Piero Pomponazzi, De naturalium effectuum causis: sive, De incantationibus [c.1520] (Basel, 1556). 2 Johann Weyer, De Præstigis Dæmonum et incantationibus ac veneficiis (Basel, 1563). 3 Johann Ewich, De sagarum (quas vulgo veneficas appellant) natura, arte, viribus et factis (Bremen, 1584). 4 Andrea Cesalpino, Daemonum investigatio peripatetica (Florence, 1580). See M. E. Clark and K. M. Summers, “Hippocratic Medicine and Aristotelian Science in the ‘Daemonum inves- tigatio peripatetica’ of Andrea Cesalpino,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 69:4 (1995) 527–41. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004338548_0�� From A Discoverie to The Triall of Witchcraft 377 or Levinus Lemnius, Jean Fernel or Ambroise Paré5 could not totally discard the supernatural, demonic thesis, not to mention those, like Thomas Erastus or Baptista Codronchi6 who accepted witchcraft as a sound reality. One of the reasons may be sought in the fact that some physicians were also distinguished and recognized theologians. Caspar Peucer graduated MD but also took over Melanchthon’s theological work after the latter’s death; Thomas Erastus taught and practised medicine, while getting involved in the theological debates after Zwingli’s death. In pre-Civil-war England, only two authors, who were also practising medi- cal doctors, published works that fully belong in the demonological field. The first was the physician cum theologian Richard Argentine, who wrote the first demonological treatise ever written by an Englishman, albeit in Latin—De praestigiis et incantionibus daemonum et necromanticorum (1568).7 The second one was John Cotta. What makes the latter’s case particularly interesting is that within scarcely four years he published two treatises tackling the question of witchcraft, in which he defended almost contradictory positions towards the reality of witchcraft, reflecting the period’s tensions between medicine and theology in affirming their authority over demonological expertise. Cotta’s Life and Works Born in Coventry, John Cotta (1575–1627/8) was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1588 where he proceeded BA in 1593, before moving to Corpus Christi for his MA in 1596 and later an MD in 1604. He set a successful medical practice in Northampton as soon as 1600, and settled there permanently after finishing his MD. His practise became successful thanks to the patronage of Sir William Tate, who, like Cotta, was a native of Coventry.8 Unlike Argentine or Erastus, Cotta never displayed ministerial ambitions, nor wrote works of devotion. During his lifetime he published three books. 5 Caspar Peucer, Commentarius de praecipuis divinationum generibus (Wittenberg, 1553); Levinus Lemnius, Occulta natura miracula (Antwerp, 1559); Ambroise Paré, Des monstres et prodiges (Paris, 1573). 6 Thomas Erastus, Disputationis de Lamiis seu Strigibus (Basel, 1578); Baptista Codronchi, De Morbis Veneficis (Venice, 1595). 7 Argentine started the book around 1563 in Exeter, but published only five years later in Basel, in Latin, never translated into English and remembered only by Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy [1621] (London, 1931), p. 167 & 170. 8 See Peter Elmer, ODNB..