Portrait of Joos de Damhouder engraved by Philip Galle

Joos de Damhouder (25 November 1507,

Bruges Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the country by population. The area of the whole city a ...

– 22 January 1581, Antwerp), also referred to as Joost, Jost, Josse or Jodocus (de) Damhouder, was a jurist from Bruges, in the

County of Flanders The County of Flanders was a historic territory in the Low Countries. From 862 onwards, the counts of Flanders were among the original twelve peers of the Kingdom of France. For centuries, their estates around the cities of Ghent, Bruges and Yp ...

(then part of the

Seventeen Provinces The Seventeen Provinces were the Imperial states of the Habsburg Netherlands in the 16th century. They roughly covered the Low Countries, i.e., what is now the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and most of the French departments of Nord (Fre ...

). His writings had a lasting influence on European criminal law.

Life

Born in

, de Damhouder studied law in Leuven and

Orléans Orléans (;"Orleans"
(US) and Mary of Hungary Mary, also known as Maria of Anjou (, , ; 137117 May 1395), reigned as Queen of Hungary and Croatia (officially 'king') between 1382 and 1385, and from 1386 until her death. She was the daughter of Louis the Great, King of Hungary and Poland ...

, governor of the

Habsburg Netherlands Habsburg Netherlands was the Renaissance period fiefs in the Low Countries held by the Holy Roman Empire's House of Habsburg. The rule began in 1482, when the last Valois-Burgundy ruler of the Netherlands, Mary, wife of Maximilian I of Austr ...

, and held that office until 1575. He died 1581 in Antwerp, six years after his wife, with whom he had had three daughters and a son.

Writings

Damhouder, Joost de – Praxis rerum civilium, 1596 – BEIC 13813091

His principal work was the ''Praxis rerum criminalium'' (1554), a manual on the practice of criminal law, which he almost entirely

plagiarised Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and though ...

from an unpublished text by Filips Wielant and from other works. The book was a great success and saw numerous translations in other European languages, partly due to de Damhouder's novel approach of illustrating the various crimes and procedural stages with

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...

s. He later published a complementary work on civil law, the ''Praxis rerum civilum'' (1567), which was also an unattributed translation of a work by Wielant.

Witch trials

The most immediate impact of de Damhouder's works was on the

witch trials A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. The Witch trials in the early modern period, classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and European Colon ...

of the time, in which the ''Praxis rerum criminalium'' and its translations were cited regularly as fundamental works. The ''Praxis'' dedicated a lengthy 64 paragraphs to

witchcraft Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have ...

, copied in large part from Paulus Grillandus's ''Tractatus de sortilegiis''. According to the ''Praxis'', witchcraft was a heinous crime that went unpunished too often because of the ignorance of magistrates, and which also covered love charms,

fortune-telling Fortune telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115-116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle identical wi ...

astrology Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Di ...

and other superstitious practices. De Damhouder expanded on this by providing detailed practical advice (backed up by examples from his own court practice) on how to conduct interrogations of suspected witches under

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. definitions of tortur ...

. These included, for example, the recommendation to shave off all hair and to inspect all

orifice An orifice is any opening, mouth, hole or vent, as in a pipe, a plate, or a body * Body orifice, any opening in the body of a human or animal *Orifice plate, a restriction used to measure flow or to control pressure or flow, sometimes given specia ...

s of the suspect, in order to uncover hidden magical amulets that would make the wearer withstand torture. He asserted that a single indication of guilt was sufficient for

to be applied to achieve a confession, though he did recognize that too much torture can produce false confessions.

References

* * * * Ragazzoni, David, "'De quaestione sive tortura' nella Praxis rerum criminalium di Damhouder: coscienza, giustizia e diritto nel Cinquecento europeo", in "Archivio di storia della cultura", XXVI, 2013, pp. 35–56.

External links

Digitalized works from De Damhouder
- SICD Universities Strasbourg {{DEFAULTSORT:Damhouder, Joos de 1507 births 1581 deaths Lawyers of the Habsburg Netherlands Jurists from Bruges Belgian legal writers Supporters of witch hunting Old University of Leuven alumni Witch trials in Spain