This rare polemic captures a pivotal collision between the old world of demonology and the rising German Aufklärung. Published in 1710, less than a decade after Thomasius's revolutionary De Crimine Magiae (1701) dismantled the legal foundation of witch trials, Romanus's Schediasma represents the second wave of rationalist assault on supernatural persecution, and it was still dangerous work. In 1710, publicly questioning the reality of witches could earn accusations of atheism or denial of divine providence.
Romanus navigates the minefield with forensic precision. His Latin title asks about ontology, do spirits exist?, while his vernacular German subtitle asks about empirical reality: are they real? These are not the same question, and Romanus exploits the gap. Structured as a recensio historica, marshaling Church Fathers, scholastics, and Renaissance demonologists, the treatise concludes on page 73 by invoking Thomasius as definitive authority, aligning with the most radical anti-persecution position available in German jurisprudence.
The philosophical maneuver is brilliant: Romanus concedes that spirits may exist in principle, avoiding heresy, but argues that persecution is almost always based on excessus imaginationis (psychological delusion) and dolos hominum (the deceits of malicious men). Demons may be real in theology, but they are irrelevant to law. The proper response to witchcraft accusations is not the stake but the courtroom, where accusers can be tried for slander.
This is the birth of the psychological explanation of magic, the moment when demons begin migrating from the external world into the human psyche. Romanus's text is physical evidence of the "disenchantment" happening in real time: not as historical inevitability, but as a contested, dangerous intellectual battle. The German Enlightenment wasn't a simple victory of reason over superstition. It was a negotiated settlement in which spirits were permitted to exist in theory, so long as they stayed out of courtrooms and away from bonfires.
Rarity: Graesse, Bibliotheca Magica et Pneumatica, 85. Genuinely rare in commerce; limited institutional holdings on OCLC. Early 18th-century German demonological disputations were printed in small academic runs with low survival rates.
ROMANUS, Carl Friedrich [Carolo Friderico]. Schediasma polemicum expendens quaestionem an dentur spectra magi et sagae. Vulgo: Ob wahrhafft Gespenster, Zauberer und Hexen seyn?... [A Polemical Sketch Weighing the Question: Do Ghosts, Magi, and Witches Exist?... Together with a Historical Review of Many Opinions on This Matter.] Leipzig: Heirs of Brandenburg, 1710.
First Edition. 4to (19 × 16 cm). [1 leaf, title], 73 pp. Complete. Rebound in modern blue paste-paper boards.
Condition: A good, honest working copy. Age-typical browning and foxing throughout. Title page bears significant oil or grease staining in the center and lower section, aesthetically distracting but not affecting legibilitym with an old manuscript inventory number "19" in period ink. Sympathetic modern rebinding in paste-paper boards. Complete, readable, and rare: the sort of survival that makes scholarly work possible even when pristine copies are unattainable.
This rare polemic captures a pivotal collision between the old world of demonology and the rising German Aufklärung. Published in 1710, less than a decade after Thomasius's revolutionary De Crimine Magiae (1701) dismantled the legal foundation of witch trials, Romanus's Schediasma represents the second wave of rationalist assault on supernatural persecution, and it was still dangerous work. In 1710, publicly questioning the reality of witches could earn accusations of atheism or denial of divine providence.
Romanus navigates the minefield with forensic precision. His Latin title asks about ontology, do spirits exist?, while his vernacular German subtitle asks about empirical reality: are they real? These are not the same question, and Romanus exploits the gap. Structured as a recensio historica, marshaling Church Fathers, scholastics, and Renaissance demonologists, the treatise concludes on page 73 by invoking Thomasius as definitive authority, aligning with the most radical anti-persecution position available in German jurisprudence.
The philosophical maneuver is brilliant: Romanus concedes that spirits may exist in principle, avoiding heresy, but argues that persecution is almost always based on excessus imaginationis (psychological delusion) and dolos hominum (the deceits of malicious men). Demons may be real in theology, but they are irrelevant to law. The proper response to witchcraft accusations is not the stake but the courtroom, where accusers can be tried for slander.
This is the birth of the psychological explanation of magic, the moment when demons begin migrating from the external world into the human psyche. Romanus's text is physical evidence of the "disenchantment" happening in real time: not as historical inevitability, but as a contested, dangerous intellectual battle. The German Enlightenment wasn't a simple victory of reason over superstition. It was a negotiated settlement in which spirits were permitted to exist in theory, so long as they stayed out of courtrooms and away from bonfires.
Rarity: Graesse, Bibliotheca Magica et Pneumatica, 85. Genuinely rare in commerce; limited institutional holdings on OCLC. Early 18th-century German demonological disputations were printed in small academic runs with low survival rates.
ROMANUS, Carl Friedrich [Carolo Friderico]. Schediasma polemicum expendens quaestionem an dentur spectra magi et sagae. Vulgo: Ob wahrhafft Gespenster, Zauberer und Hexen seyn?... [A Polemical Sketch Weighing the Question: Do Ghosts, Magi, and Witches Exist?... Together with a Historical Review of Many Opinions on This Matter.] Leipzig: Heirs of Brandenburg, 1710.
First Edition. 4to (19 × 16 cm). [1 leaf, title], 73 pp. Complete. Rebound in modern blue paste-paper boards.
Condition: A good, honest working copy. Age-typical browning and foxing throughout. Title page bears significant oil or grease staining in the center and lower section, aesthetically distracting but not affecting legibilitym with an old manuscript inventory number "19" in period ink. Sympathetic modern rebinding in paste-paper boards. Complete, readable, and rare: the sort of survival that makes scholarly work possible even when pristine copies are unattainable.
