James I published his Demonology, while still a Scottish king, in Edinburgh in 1597. There were two London editions in 1603, later it was translated into Latin, French and Dutch. As Stewart Clark emphasizes, “although the obvious aim of the treatise was simply to refute the two main skeptics, Reginald Scott and Johann Weyer, the treatise was called upon, along with other theological and political works, to demonstrate the intellectual and religious bona fides of James I as ruler.” In this sense, the royal "Demonology" can be read as an intellectual "declaration of an ideal monarchy." Based on this interpretation,James’ demonism can be seen not as a personal attachment traditionally attributed to the monarch, but as one of the “prerequisites for the metaphysics of the order on which his political ideas rested”.
