MAGNSSON, JN

born c. 1610 died 1696 Icelandic parson and author of the Pslarsaga (Passion Story), one of the strangest documents of cultural and psychic delusion in all literature. A parson at Eyri in 1655, Magnsson was stricken by an illness he ascribed to the witchcraft of two of his parishioners, a father and son. When he did not recover, even after the sorcerers were burned at the stake, he in 1656 extended his accusation to a daughter of the family, who was cleared of charges and sued the parson. The Pslarsaga, written in protest of this suit, is an eloquent document, both in its fantastic description of Magnsson's sufferings and in its documentation of a phenomenon prevalent in many 17th-century societies, the belief in witchcraft as the cause of disease. Pslarsaga is a passionate denunciation of the lenient treatment of witches. As a personal expos of Magnsson's own torment and madness, Pslarsaga resembles August Strindberg's Inferno. It was not published until 1914.