biography
| name: |
Spee von Langenfeld, Friedrich
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pronunciation:
[shpay fon langenf
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1591–1635)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in Kaiserswerth by Düsseldorf, W Germany. Becoming a Jesuit in 1610, he acted in the late 1620s as spiritual counsellor to condemned witches: this led to his (anonymously published) Cautio criminalis (1631), appealing for changes to the conduct of witchcraft trials, which led to reforms in Würzburg and Brunswick. After 1630 he was involved in the Counter-Reformation in Westphalia, before dying of the plague in Trier. Leading Catholic lyric poet of the Baroque, his spiritual pastoral cycle Trutz-Nachtigall (1649) influenced the Romantics among others. |
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