1591 - 1635 Person Name: Friedrich von Spee, S.J. (1591-1635) Author of "Fairest Lord Jesus" in The Summit Choirbook Spee, Friedrich von, son of Peter Spee (of the family of Spee, of Langenfeld), judge at Kaisers worth, was born at Kaisersworth, Feb. 25, 1591. He was educated in the Jesuit gymnasium at Cologne, entered the order of the Jesuits there on Sept. 22, 1610, and was ordained priest about 1621. From 1613 to 1624 he was one of the tutors in the Jesuit college at Cologne, and was then sent to Paderborn to assist in the Counter Reformation. In 1627 he was summoned by the Bishop of Würzburg to act as confessor to persons accused of witchcraft, and, within two years, had to accompany to the stake some 200 persons, of all ranks and ages, in whose innocence he himself firmly believed (His Cautio criminalis, sen de processibus contra sagas lib, Rinteln, 1631, was the means of almost putting a stop to such cruelties). He was then sent to further the Counter Reformation at Peine near Hildesheim, but on April 29, 1629, he was nearly murdered by some persons from Hildesheim. In 1631 he became professor of Moral Theology at Cologne. The last years of his life were spent at Trier, where, after the city had been stormed by the Spanish troops on May 6, 1635, he contracted a fever from some of the hospital patients to whom he was ministering, and died there Aug. 7, 1635. (Koch, iv. 185; Goedeke's Grundriss, vol. iii., 1887, p. 193,
Friedrich von Spee
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