Career
Even before his ordination he was famed for his preaching powers. Foreign over forty years he labored in the Archduchy of Austria. To Scherer, in part, it owes the retention of the faith.
In 1577 he was Court preacher to the Archduke Matthias.
He retained the post until 1600. Scherer was a man of boundless energy and rugged strength of character, a strenuous controversialist, a genuinely popular orator and writer
He vigorously opposed the Tübingen professors who meditated a union with the Greek Schismatics, refuted Lutheran divines like Osiander and Heerbrand, and roused his countrymen against the Turks. Believing like his contemporaries that the State had the right to put witches to death, he maintained, however, that since they were possessed, the principal weapons used against them should be spiritual ones, e.g.exorcisms or prayer.
His eloquence and zeal made many converts, amongst them the future Cardinal Khlesl.
In 1583, Scherer played a role in Vienna"s one and only case of witch-burning. When Anna was 17 her father, Elise"s Catholic son-in-law, took custody and moved with Anna to Saint Pölten. Anna and Elise were brought to Vienna, where Scherer conducted a rigorous "investigation" (exorcisms combined with interrogation) at Saint Barbara"s Church in Fleischmarkt.
Over the course of several days, Scherer claimed to have discovered 12,652 demons inhabiting Anna"s body and spirit.
Elise was taken to the notorious Rogues" House (Malefizhuas) at 10 Rauhensteingasse for interrogation under torture. Her eventual confession was so unconvincing that the mayor of Vienna appealed to Emperor Rudolf II to overturn it, but Scherer brought ecclesiastical pressure to bear and the Emperor declined the petition.
Elise Plainacher was burned at the stake and her ashes thrown into the Danube on 28 September 1583. Scherer died in Linz of apoplexy.