My poet of the month

[selenak]

Today's city is Paderborn, and as during my last visit here, which was several years ago, what touched me most about this city is the small statue representing Friedrich von Spee (1591-1635). A Jesuit, he lived and taught here for a while, at the local unversity. Spee was famous for two things during his time - the Thirty Years War - and after: his poetry, and the Cautio Criminalis, the book he wrote about and against the twitch trials. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, it's easy to consider the burning of witches a horrible crime today, when we don't believe in them. But Spee lived in a time when everybody did. (And as likely as not believed they existed himself.) A time, moreover, where thanks to the most devastating international war to rage anywhere till WWI people easily induced to look for scapegoats and compassion was in ever rarer demand. A time of religious war, where the "you're either for us or against us" attitude was almost dogma, and any criticism could easily get you prison (at the least) yourself. Still, he wrote, and for once, a book really made a difference for the better. Not everywhere, of course, and not at once, but towns such as Mainz abolished witch burnings because of the Cautio Criminalis.

I haven't posted a poem through all of April, but I'd like to post one of Spee's today, and an excerpt from the Cautio. He wasn't the best writer of his epoch, either in poetry or in prose. But he was a writer whom all epochs should remember. One of our later poets, Heinrich Heine, once wrote "where they burn books, they soon burn humans", something that often gets quoted as eerily prescient in regards to the Holocaust. But Spee showed the reverse is also true: where they write books, they sometimes save people from burning.

So, a passage from the Cautio Criminalis, regarding the use of torture in criminal investigations. One might say this has contemporary relevance.


"27. Ist die Folter ein geeignetes Mittel zur Enthüllung der Wahrheit?
Bei der Folter ist alles voll von Unsicherheit und Dunkel [...]; ein Unschuldiger muß für ein unsicheres Verbrechen die sichersten Qualen erdulden.
28. Welches sind die Beweise derer, die sofort die auf der Folter erpressten Geständnisse für wahr halten?
Auf diese Geständnisse haben alle Gelehrten fast ihre ganze Hexenlehre gegründet, und die Welt hat's ihnen, wie es scheint, geglaubt. Die Gewalt der Schmerzen erzwingt alles, auch das, was man für Sünde hält, wie lügen und andere in üblen Ruf bringen. Die dann einmal angefangen haben, auf der Folter gegen sich auszusagen, geben später nach der Folter alles zu, was man von ihnen verlangt, damit sie nicht der Unbeständigkeit geziehen werden. [...] Und die Kriminalrichter glauben dann diese Possen und bestärken sich in ihrem Tun. Ich aber verlache diese Einfältigkeit. [...]
29: Muß die so gefährliche Folter abgeschafft werden?
Ich antworte: entweder ist die Folter gänzlich abzuschaffen oder so umzugestalten, daß sie nicht mit moralischer Sicherheit Unschuldigen Gefahr bringt. [...] Man darf mit Menschenblut nicht spielen, und unsere Köpfe sind keine Bälle, die man nur so hin und her wirft. Wenn vor dem Gericht der Ewigkeit Rechenschaft für jedes müßige Wort abgelegt werden muß, wie steht's dann mit der Verantwortung für das vergossene Menschenblut? [...]"



"27. Is torture a suitable instrument to find out the truth?
Everything is full of insecurity and darkness when it comes to torture. (...) An innocent has to endure the most assured pain for a crime merely suspected.
28. What are the proofs of those who claim the confessions produced by torture are true?
On these confessions, scholars have founded nearly their entire teachings about witchcraft and witches, and the world, it seems, has believed them. The power of pain forces everyone to do anything, even something one believes to be sinful, such as to lie and to slander others. Those who have started to accuse themselves while being tortured later confess everything brought against them so they do not get accused of inconsistency. And the judges believe this farce and feel confirmed in their methods.
29. Is torture to be abolished?
I reply: one must either abolish torture entirely or find a miraculous way so it does not with moral certainty endanger innocents. (...) Nobody should be allowed to play with human blood, and our heads are not balls to be thrown to and thro. If we have to justify ourselves to the eternal Judgement for every idle word spoken, how about the responsibility for all the human blood shed?"


And a spring poem of Spee's, which was, centuries later, made into a song by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (as "Altdeutsches Frühlingslied" , op. 86 no. 6 (1847)" if there are any Mendelssohn fans reading this). Ortography changed to present-day German:


Der trübe Winter ist vorbei,
Die Schwalben wiederkehren;
Nun regt sich alles wieder neu;
Die Quellen sich vermehren.

Laub allgemach nun schleicht an Tag,
Die Blümlein nun sich melden;
Wie Schlänglein krumm gehn lächelnd um
Die Bächlein kühl in Wälden.

Wo man nur schaut, fast alle Welt
Zur Freuden sich tut rüsten;
Zum Scherzen alles ist gestellt,
Schwebt alles fast in Lüsten.

Nur ich allein, ich leide Pein,
Ohn' Ende werd ich leiden:
Seit du von mir und ich von dir,
O Liebste, mußte scheiden.

Lastly, a picture of the man himself is here.