Paolo Grillandi[Paolo Grillando, Paulus Grillandus, Ghirlandus or Grilandus.] (born c. 1490) was an Italian jurist, from
Abruzzo,
[ Risultato della ricerca Web OPAC ICCU] active as a papal judge in
, from 1517.
[ (in Italian).] He was an influential observer of confessions.
[Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century p.114 states that Grillandi accepted the existence of witches, on the basis of confessions that were not extracted by torture.] His book
Tractatus de hereticis et sortilegiis (1536), based substantially on his judicial experience, became a standard text on
witchcraft and
demonology. Other related works are his
De Questionibus et tortura tractatus,
De relaxatione carceratorum, and the
De Lamiis of Gianfrancesco Ponzinibio that was later printed with the
Tractatus de hereticis et sortilegiis. James Franklin
[ The Science of Conjecture (2001), p.46.] writes
Grillandus's On the Question and Torture distinguishes between doubtful or hall-full indication, full indication, reputation, rumor, four types of presumption, argument, vehement and nonvehement support, conjecture, the likely, and the notorious, before going on to detail with equal learning the five degrees of torture.
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