Christian Thomasius (1655-1728)
1704
Thomasius, a professor of law at the university in Leipzig, turned his attention to witch trials after his participation in one in 1694. While he did not deny the existence of witches, citing the evidence in the Bible as proof, he did protest the commonly held beliefs in Satanic compacts, and became an outspoken critic of torture as a means of obtaining confessions. He was also a critic of Joseph Glanvill’s arguments concerning atheism and witchcraft.