Formicarius  

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The Formicarius, written 1435-1437 by Johannes Nider during the Council of Basel and first printed in 1475, is the second book ever printed to discuss witchcraft. Nider dealt specifically with witchcraft in the fifth section of the book. Unlike his successors, he did not emphasize the idea of the witches' Sabbath and was skeptical of the claim that witches could fly by night. The Formicarius is an important work as it demonstrates that by the early fifteenth century trials and torture of people alleged to be witches were already taking place.

Nider was one of the first to transform the idea of sorcery to its more modern perception of witchcraft. Prior to the fifteenth century magic was thought of to be performed by educated males who performed intricate rituals. In Nider's Formicarius the witch is described as uneducated and more commonly female. The idea that any person could perform acts of magic by simply devoting themselves to the devil scared people of this time and proved to be one of the many factors that led people to begin fearing magic. The idea that the magician was primarily female was also shocking to some. Nider explained that females were capable of such acts by pointing out what he considered their inferior physical, mental, and moral capacity.

The work is further of note for its information regarding notably infamous figures of the time. One of which was the sorcerer Scavius who reputedly escaped his enemies on multiple occasions by metamorphosing himself into a mouse. Prior to his death Scavius was responsible for the tutelage of Stedelen in witchcraft.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Formicarius" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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