ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the Holy Roman Empire throughout the seventeenth century with demonology, the systematic study of ideas about witchcraft that was carried out primarily by academics at universities across all faculties. Moreover, the debates that ensued about this subject were no mere theoretical exercises on the role of the Devil, or the sexual idiosyncrasies of demons. On the scientific interest see Mordechai Feingold, The Occult Tradition in the English Universities of the Renaissance. University professors were part of a distinct culture in which through their active engagement with the supernatural, the diabolic, and the magical they endowed their profession with mystical qualities. By centering on the work of two law professors, Hermann Goehausen and Christian Thomasius: to outline the former's orthodox position concerning the right' academic stance towards witchcraft and how in the context of the early German Enlightenment the latter's critique thereof led to an eventual change that introduced a different type of academic charisma.
