Demons, Imagination, and Mental Illness: Medical Disputations on “Phantasia” in Wittenberg (1593-1643)
In the latter half of the sixteenth century, and particularly in its final years, the University of Wittenberg witnessed a surge in disputations concerning ostensibly supernatural mental states, like lycanthropy, ecstasy, and witchcraft. In their analyses, contemporaries attributed such phenomena to the influence of demons, to a disorder of the imaginatio/phantasia, or a combination of…