Note 98 — GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE

Knuttel, p. 357. Strictly speaking, it was not for his denial of modern witchcraft that Bekker was punished, for it is in the last two books of his treatise that he deals particularly with this subject, and these did not appear until after he had been unfrocked. Still, his Second Book, which got him into trouble, contains all the essentials. It denies the power of the devil and wicked spirits to afflict men, and holds that the demoniacs of the New Testament were neither possessed nor obsessed, but merely sufferers from disease. For a full analysis of Bekker’s work and an account of the opposition which it roused, see Knuttel, chap. v, pp. 188 ff.; for the ecclesiastical proceedings against Bekker, see chap. vi, pp. 270 ff. The various editions and translations of De Betoverde Weereld are enumerated by van der Linde in his Balthasar Bekker, Bibliographie (the Hague, 1869), where may also be found a long list of the books and pamphlets which the work called forth. There is a good account of Bekker’s argument in Soldan’s Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, neu bearbeitet von Dr. Heinrich Heppe (Stuttgart, 1880), II, 233 ff. See also Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, II, 445 ff.