Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/251

 SPEDALIERI

213

SPEE

existing laws against gambling and fraud have been found sufficiently etTcclive to provide a remedy for cases of special importance.

Antoine in Dicli.mnairr ,lr Thcolotlir Calholique (Paris. 1905). B. V. Bourse {Jeux dc) ; Brants. Les grandes tigjies de V Economic PoHHque (Louvain, 1908); Ecclesiastical Review, XXXII (New York. 1905). 2; Inqall and Withers, The Stock Exchange (London, 1904).

T. Slater.

Spedalieri, Nicola, prie.st, theologian, and phi" losopher, b. at Bronte in the Province of Catania) Sicily, 6 December, 1740; d. at Rome, 26 November, 179.5. He studied in the seminary of Monreale, then the most flourishing in Sicily, was ordained pri(>st, and appointed professor of i)hilosoi)hy and math- ematics, and later of theology. At the same time he cultivated the arts of poetry, music, and painting. Disgusted at the opposition stirred up by certain theological theses, which were branded as heretical at Palermo but approved at Rome, he withdrew from Monreale to Rome (1773 or 1774), where for ten yeara he led a life of penury but of fruitful study and labour. Howe^•er, he always retained his affection for the seminary of Monreale. In 1784 he obtained from Pius VI a benefice in the Vatican Basilica, and then ceased the efforts he had made for years to obtain a chair in the Universities of Pi.sa, Pavia, and Turin. His first published work was "Analisi dell' Esame critico di Freret" ("Examen critique de.s apologies de la religion chrt'tienne", a work wrongly attributed to Freret, really written by Naigeon), Rome, 1778. In 1779 he i)ubHs]iiMl " Raginnamento sopra I'arte di governare" and " Hagionamento suU' influenza della religione cristiana .sulla societii civile". In 1784 he issued, also at Rome, his ''Confutazione di Gibbon" in which he combats the thesis of the English historian who blames Christ ianity for the downfall of the Roman Empire. In it, as in the .\pology against Freret, he shows especially t he benefits conferred by the Christian religion on the social and political order, inasmuch as Christianity is the most powerful bulwark against despotism.

In 1791 appeared his principal work, "I diritti dell' uomo", also at Rome", this was evidently intended as a Catholic answer to the proclamation of the "Rights of Man", made in France in 1789, which was the signal for the French Revolution. Notwithstand- ing the hearty reception given to this work by Pius VI who said, "For a long while rulers have been asking quid esl papa. Your book will teach them quid est populu.^i", a storm of criticism and refutation burst on the head of its author. Governments took notice of it and (e. g. Piedmont) forbade its circulation. The controversy continued even after Spedalieri's death. In his book, except in certain details, the writer only expressed in the language of the eighteenth century the teaching of the scholastic doctors on the popular origin of political sovereignty, a doctrine commonly taught from St. Thomas to Suarez and Bellarmine, which does not exclude the Divine origin of the same sovereignty. Spedalieri's thesis could not prove acceptable to the absolutism of princes and the Cartesian doctrines then in vogue, which did not admit the existence of a natural moral law but made all depend on the arbitrary Will of God; much less could it please the regalists. On the other hand, it is easy to understanil how his theory might give rise to a fear that it wa.s too favourable to the ideas of the revolutionaries. Si)edalieri was WTonglj' claimed by the Liberals as one of theirs, and if some of them accuse him of a want of loyalty when he wishes to conciliate democracy and a Divine .sanction of the social order, it is because they do not understand the true nature of democracy or of the saying that all authority comes from God. The controversies about Spedalieri were renewed on the occasion of the cen- tenary of his death. Shortly before his decease he

completed a "Storia delle Paludi Pontine", a book Pius VI ordered him to write and which was published by his intimate friend Nicolai, in the work "De bonifieamenti delle terrc |)ontine" (Rome, 1800). His death was attributed to poison; a modern WTiter has not hesitated to lay the blame on the Jesuits, forgetting that Spedalieri's enemies were the bitterest adversaries of the Jesuits.

Nicolai, Laudatio Nicolai Spedalieri (Rome, 1795) : Cimbali, A'icola Spedalieri, Pubblicista e ri formatore del sec. X VIII (Castello. 1905); Idem. L' .inti-Spedalieri (Turin, 1909); Idem, Nel primo centenario della morte di N. Spedalieri (Rome. 1899).

U. Benigni.

Spee, Friedrich von, poet, opponent of trials for witchcraft, b. at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, 25 Feb- ruary, 1591; d. at Trier, 7 Augu.st, 1035. On finishing his early education at Cologne, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1610, and, after prolonged studies and ac- tivity as a teacher at Trier, Fulda, Wiirzburg, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, was ordained jiriest in 1622. He became professor at the University of Paderborn in 1624; from 1626 he taught at Speyer, Wesel, Trier, and Cologne, and was preacher at Paderborn, Cologne, and Hildesheim. An attempt to assassinate him was made at Peine in 1629. He resumed his activity as professor and priest at Paderborn and later at Co- logne, and in 1633 removed to Trier. During the storming of Trier by the imperial forces in March, 1635, he distinguished himself in the care of the suffer- ing, and died soon afterwards from the results of an infection contracted in a hospital. He was one of the noblest and most attracti\e figures of the awful era of the Thirty Years' War. His literary activity belongs to the last years of his life, the details of which are little known. Two of his works were not published until after his death: "Goldenes Tugendbuch" (Golden Book of Virtues), a book of devotion highly prized by Leibniz, and the "Trutznaclitigall", a col- lection of fifty to sixty sacred songs, which, though not free from the weaknesses of the day, take a prominent place among religious lyrics of the seventeenth cen- tury, and have been in recent times repeatedly printed and revised. But the assumption that the author in this work apphed the metrical principle in- dependent of Opitz, is at least doubtful. His principal work, through which he obtained a well-deserved and world-wide reputation, is the "Cautio Criminalis", written in admirable Latin. It is an arraignment of trial for witchcraft, based upon his own awful ex- periences probably principally in Westphalia, for the traditional assumption that lie acted for a long time as "witch confessor" in Wiirzburg has no documentary authority. This work was printed in 1631 at Rinteln without Spec's name or permission, aUlmugli he was doubtlessly widely known as its author. He does not advocate the immediate al)olition of trials for witch- craft, but describes in thrilling language and with cut- ting sarcasm the horrible abuses in the prevailing legal proceedings, particularly the inhuman use of the rack. He demands measures of reform, .such as a new Ger- man imperial law on the subject, liability to damages on the part of the judges, etc., wliieli, if they had been conscientiously carried out, would havi' (|iiickly put an end to the persecution of witches. Many a genera- tion pas.sed before witch burning ceaseil in Germany, the classic land of these outrages; but at all events the "Cautio Criminalis" brought about its abolition in a number of places, especially at Mainz, and led the way to its gradual suppression. The moral impres- sion created by its publication was very great. Even in the seventeenth century :i number of new editions and German translations aiijieared, Protestants also eagerly a.ssi.sting in promoting its circulation. Among the members of Spec's order his treatise .seems to have usually found a favourable reception, although it was pubhshed without official sanction, and its publica- tion led to a correspondence between the general of