Cornelius Loos

Cornelius Loos (1546 – February 3, 1595), also known as Cornelius Losaeus Callidius, was a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, and professor of theology. He was the first Catholic official to write publicly against the witch trials raging throughout Europe from the 1580s to the 1590s. For this, he was imprisoned and forced to recant; his work was confiscated and suppressed by church officials. His manuscript was lost for almost 300 years. It was discovered in the Jesuit Library of Trier in 1886 by an American historian, George Lincoln Burr.

Cornelius Loos was born in 1546 in Gouda. He was from a patrician family and studied Philosophy and Theology at what is today known as the Catholic University of Leuven. In 1574, Loos and his family were forced to leave for political reasons (primarily the capture of the city by Protestant/nationalist rebels during the Dutch Revolt). After he was ordained as a priest, he was awarded a Doctor of Theology degree in 1578 at the University of Mainz, where he became a Professor of Theology and a vigorous campaigner against Protestant beliefs.

In the 1580s, Loos published a number of works: a prayer book, polemical theological writings against Protestantism, a political work (by subscription) about the Netherlands rebellion, a survey of German Catholic authors, and a pocket Latin grammar book.

In 1585, he moved to Trier, where he observed the witch trials taking place there. Loos first wrote letters to the city authorities, and, failing in that effort, he sought in 1592 to publish a book protesting against the hunts and questioning some of the beliefs of the witch hunters. The attempted publication of De vera et falsa magia (True and False Magic) offended Petrus Binsfeld, the Suffragan Bishop of Trier and deputy to Johann VI von Schonenberg, one of the highest-ranking officials in the Holy Roman Empire.

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