"From this evidence and from all we know of the practice of torture in their own time, one can undoubtedly conclude that the interpreters of criminal procedure left the theory and practice of torture much, but much, less barbarous than they found it. Of course it would be absurd to attribute this diminution of evil to one cause alone, but I think that among the many causes that it would be reasonable to count the repeated reproofs and warnings, renewed publicly, century after century, by jurists to whom it is certainly granted a definite authority over the practice of the courts."

Alessandro Manzoni, Storia della colonna infame: Testo del 1840, ed. Alberto Chiari and Fausto Ghisalberti(Verona 1963) 702 ― Portrait of Manzoni (1841) by Francesco Hayez (1791-1882),  Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano

1522: Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540), Epistola to Erasmus: The first to call for abolishing torture

1580: Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Essays 1.22; 2.5, 11

1624: Johannes Grevius (de Greve ca. 1580-1630), Tribunal reformatum (Hamburg: 1624)

1632: <Friedrich von Spee, published anonymously>, Cautio criminalis seu de processibus contra sagas liber (Frankfurt am Main: 1632)

1682: Augustin Nicolas,  Si la torture est un moyen seur a verifier les crimes secrets: Dissertation morale et juridique (Amsterdam: Chez Abraham Wolfgang, 1682)

Mathias Schmoeckel,  Humanität und Staatsraison: Die Abschaffung der Folter in Europa und die Entwicklung des gemeinen Strafprozeß- und Beweisrechts seit dem hohen Mittelalter (Norm und Struktur: Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, 14. Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2000) especially pp. 93-186.

Lisa Silverman, Tortured Subjects: Pain, Truth, and the Body in Early Modern France (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001)