In the year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations of demoniacal possession by the most eminent theologians and judges, who sat in their robes and looked wise, while women, shrieking, praying, and blaspheming, were put to the torture, a man arose who dared to protest effectively that some of the persons thus charged might be simply insane; and this man was John Wier, of Cleves.
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.

The general scepticism which his work promoted among the French people did much to produce an atmosphere in which the belief in witchcraft and demoniacal possession must inevitably wither.