THYRAEUS, Petrus

by Petrus Thyraeus

£1,950 · Offered by Sokol Books

Second, enlarged edition (the first appeared in 1594), of this demonological tract and handbook for exorcists. Petrus Thyraeus, born in Neuss (Rhineland), joined the Jesuits in 1561, and taught at Jesuit colleges first in Trier and then in Mainz. In 1590, he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Würzburg, and found a patron in Prince-Bishop Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn. He published a number of works on theology, visions and apparition, possessions and exorcism, and on traditional theological subjects such as the Eucharist and the role of the Catholic Church. Petrus Thyraeus concludes in this work that the visible, audible, and tangible phenomena associated with hauntings are hallucinations caused by demons or spirits. It inquires into the nature of demonic possession, its signs, how it occurs, whether witches, magicians, diviners, or heretics are possessed (usually not) whether the Church should be sought to exorcise them (he believed not); finally, he asks whether demons should be allowed to come out of a person if they so desire, and concludes that they should but only if such action is done to the glory of God. The Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century gave occasion to re-examine many aspects of Catholic theology and practice, exorcism among them. As the Malleus malificarum of the fifteenth century was an attempt to establish a thorough and systematic definition of witchcraft in the fifteenth century, so in the six

• Binding: Hardcover

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