De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis & De operatione daemonum

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What is His Excellency's opinion of Johann Weyer and his works? In particular, what is His Excellency's opinion of Weyer's Praestigiis Daemonum (especially the appendix to this work, Pseudomonarchia daemonum, which claims to list the major infernal princes)? I should also like to ask, what is His Excellency's opinion of Pseudo-Psellos' work, The Operations of Daemons? I have never read these works, and I should like to know whether or not they are worth reading (especially, I should like to know, are they orthodox or heretical)? I thank His Excellency for his time and consideration. In Christ, Theodore.

Johann Weyer (1515-1588) was a Dutch physician, occultist and demonologist, disciple and follower of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. He was among the first to publish against the persecution of witches. His most influential work is De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis (On the Illusions of the Demons and on Spells and Poisons, 1563). Leaving Agrippa, Weyer studied medicine at Orleans and the University of Paris, where he received his doctor's degree in 1537 at the age of twenty-two. In the following years of general practice he came face to face with the witch hunts and was outraged at the pretensions of the Inquisition and its guide: Malleus Maleficarum. He railed vocally and in writing against the discussions in that book of the erotic perversions of the Devil with women, of the fantastic claims concerning the powers of the incubi and succubi, and of the persecutions of "silly old women” by Church and State.

His bluntly stated criticisms forced him to seek protection as physician to Duke William V of Julich-Cleve-Berg, and he spent most of the rest of his life with this intelligent man. After the Duke's death, however, Weyer was forced to turn elsewhere, and he lived the remaining few years of his life under the protection of Countess Anna of Techlenberg. He died in 1588 and was buried in the local churchyard, but his grave site is now unknown. His critical analysis of the scourge of witchcraft, his scientific, descriptive, observational approach to the problem, are the very roots of modern psychiatry. His was the first statement to demonstrate psychopathology as something completely apart from the work of the Devil and something which could be successfully treated. He was the first to outline such treatment. Weyer left evidence that human beings are vulnerable to mental illness and that sanity, to say the least, is a very fragile thing. It has long been recognised that the first book of the Lemegeton, Goetia, corresponds closely with Weyer's appendix of demons, though in Weyer’s text there are no demonic seals, and the demons are invoked by a simple conjuration, not the elaborate ritual found in the Lemegeton. The most striking difference between Weyer’s text and the Goetia is the order of spirits.

Michael Psellos

(image from the Monastery Pantokrator, Athos)

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Michael Psellos or Psellus was a Byzantine writer, philosopher, politician, and historian. He was born almost certainly in Constantinople in 1017 or 1018, and died some time after 1078. His family hailed from Nicomedia and, according to his own testimony, counted members of the consular and patrician elite among its ancestors. His baptismal name was Constantine. Michael was the monastic name he chose when he entered a monastery later in life. Psellos ('the stammerer') probably was a personal by-name referring to a speech defect.

Psellos' best known and most accessible work is the Chronographia. It is a history of the Byzantine emperors during the century leading up to Psellos' own time. It was once thought that there was another Byzantine writer of the same name, Michael Psellos the Elder (now also called Pseudo-Psellos), who lived on the island of Andros in the ninth century, and who was a pupil of Photius and teacher of emperor Leo VI the Wise. Michael Psellos himself was also called "the younger" by some authors. This belief was based on an entry in a medieval chronicle, the Σύνοψις Κεδρηνοῦ-Σκυλίτση, which mentions the name in that context. It is now believed that the inclusion of the name Psellos in this chronicle was the mistake of an ignorant copyist at a later time, and that no "Michael Psellos the elder" ever existed. The term Pseudo-Psellos is also used in modern scholarship to describe the authorship of several later works that are believed to have been falsely ascribed to Psellos in Byzantine times. One of these is De operatione daemonum (The Operations of Daemons).
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These works are certainly worth reading from a researching student's or scholar's perspective. Otherwise I would approach them with a certain amount of caution, as they fall short of orthodoxy and are heretical in much of their content, particularly so in Weyer's case.

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