Malleus Maleficarum

Cover of the seventh Cologne edition of the Malleus Maleficarum, 1520 (from the University of Sydney Library). The Latin title is "MALLEUS MALEFICARUM, Maleficas, & earum hæresim, ut phramea potentissima conterens." (English: The Hammer of Witches which destroyeth Witches and their heresy as with a two-edged sword.)

The Malleus Maleficarum or Das Hexenhammer (Latin/German for "The Hammer of Witches") is arguably the most infamous medieval European treatise on identifying, characterizing, and combating witchcraft, and has likely been the cause of more pain, torment and death than virtually any other book in the Christian textual corpus. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger with the explicit endorsement of Pope Innocent VIII, who desired "that all heretical depravity should be driven far from the frontiers and bournes of the Faithful," and was first published in Germany in 1487. Though it was eventually banned by the Vatican, it remained a popular tome among both Catholic and Protestant witch-hunters, eventually selling out over thirty editions throughout the two hundred years that it was in print.

It was the culmination of a long history of medieval theological treatises on witchcraft, the most famous (of these earlier works) being the Formicarius by Johannes Nider in 1435-1437. The main purpose of the Malleus was to systematically refute all arguments against the reality of witchcraft, refute those who expressed even the slightest skepticism about the propriety of the inquisition, to prove that witches were more often woman than men, and to educate magistrates on the procedures that could "unmask" and convict these demonic heretics.

Composition

In the late medieval period (1100-1500 C.E.), the Roman Catholic Church was riven by controversy. Various antipopes vied with the Vatican for ecclesiastical legitimacy, theological positions branded as heretical (including those held by the Catharites, Waldenses and Hussites) were vigorously persecuted, and, in general, the spiritual malaise that came to prompt the Protestant Reformation was becoming steadily more pronounced. One response to these various (and related) crises was an overall shift towards conservatism, insularity and a type of religious xenophobia, which culminated in the persecution of various individuals and groups deemed dangerous by the religious authorities. It was in this context that, on December 5, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus ("Desiring with Supreme Ardor"), which authorized two zealous German Inquisitors (Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger) to act as they saw fit in combating the scourge of heresy, witchcraft, and immorality:.

Wherefore We, as is Our duty, being wholly desirous of removing all hindrances and obstacles by which the good work of the Inquisitors may be let and tarded, as also of applying potent remedies to prevent the disease of heresy and other turpitudes diffusing their poison to the destruction of many innocent souls, since Our zeal for the Faith especially incites us, lest that the provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, and territories of Germany, which We had specified, be deprived of the benefits of the Holy Office thereto assigned, by the tenor of these presents in virtue of Our Apostolic authority We decree and enjoin that the aforesaid Inquisitors [Kramer and Sprenger] be empowered to proceed to the just correction, imprisonment, and punishment of any persons, without let or hindrance, in every way as if the provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, territories, yea, even the persons and their crimes in this kind were named and particularly designated in Our letters. Moreover, for greater surety We extend these letters deputing this authority to cover all the aforesaid provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, territories, persons, and crimes newly rehearsed, and We grant permission to the aforesaid Inquisitors, to one separately or to both, as also to Our dear son John Gremper, priest of the diocese of Constance, Master of Arts, their notary, or to any other public notary, who shall be by them, or by one of them, temporarily delegated to those provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, and aforesaid territories, to proceed, according to the regulations of the Inquisition, against any persons of whatsoever rank and high estate, correcting, mulcting, imprisoning, punishing, as their crimes merit, those whom they have found guilty, the penalty being adapted to the offence.

This bull, whose promulgation had been indirectly requested by Heinrich Kramer, prompted the composition of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1486. The text has traditionally been ascribed to Heinrich Kramer (Latinized as "Heinrich Institoris") and Jacob Sprenger, who were both members of the Dominican Order employed as Inquisitors by the Catholic Church. Despite the text's official attribution, modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little (if anything) to the work besides his illustrious name.

Kramer (and possibly Sprenger) submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology in 1487, hoping for an endorsement that would lend the text a further air of legitimacy. Instead, the faculty condemned it as being both unethical and illegal. In spite of this rebuff, Kramer proceeded to insert a fraudulent endorsement from the University into subsequent print editions of the text. In a similar manner, most versions of the Malleus also include the full text of the Summis desiderantes affectibus bull, an inclusion that implies papal sanction, despite the fact that the papal statement predated the text itself.

Regardless of less-than-stellar reception the text received upon its initial publication, it gradually became one of first (and most influential) handbooks for Protestant and Catholic witch-hunters in late medieval and early modern Europe. Between the years 1487 and 1520, the work sold out a total of sixteen editions, which led to an additional sixteen being printed and sold in the following hundred and fifty years.

Contents

The Malleus Maleficarum asserts that three elements are necessary for witchcraft: the evil-intentioned witch, the help of the Devil, and the Permission of God . The treatise is divided up into three sections. The first section refutes critics who denied the reality of witchcraft, thereby hindering its persecution. The second section describes the actual forms of witchcraft and its remedies. The third section is to assist judges confronting and combating witchcraft. However, each of these three sections has the prevailing themes of what is witchcraft and who is a witch. The Malleus Maleficarum can hardly be called an original text, for it heavily relies upon earlier works such as Visconti, Torquemada and, most famously, Johannes Nider's Formicarius (1435) .

Section I

Section I argues that because the Devil exists and has the power to do astounding things, witches exist to help, if done through the aid of the Devil and with the permission of God . The Devil’s power is greatest where human sexuality is concerned, for it was believed that women were more sexual than men. Loose women had sex with the Devil, thus paving their way to become witches. To quote the Malleus “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.”

Section II

In section II of the Malleus Maleficarum, the authors turn to matters of practice by discussing actual cases. This section first discusses the powers of witches, and then goes into recruitment strategies . It is mostly witches as opposed to the Devil who do the recruiting, by making something go wrong in the life of a respectable matron that makes her consult the knowledge of a witch, or by introducing young maidens to tempting young devils . This section also details how witches cast spells and remedies that can be taken to prevent witchcraft or help those that have been affected by it .

Section III

Section III is the legal part of the Malleus that describes how to prosecute a witch. The arguments are clearly laid for the lay magistrates prosecuting witches. Institoris and Sprenger offer a step by step guide to the conduct of a witch trial, from the method of initiating the process and assembling accusations, to the interrogation of witnesses, the formal charging of the accused . Women who did not cry during their trial were automatically believed to be witches .

Major themes

Misogyny runs rampant in the Malleus Maleficarum. The treatise singled out women as witches as specifically inclined for witchcraft, because they were susceptible to demonic temptations through their manifold weaknesses. It was believed that they were weaker in faith and were more carnal than men . Most of the women accused as witches had strong personalities and were known to defy convention by overstepping the lines of proper female decorum . After the publication of the Malleus, most of those who were prosecuted as witches were women . Indeed, the very title of the Malleus Maleficarum is feminine, which alludes to the fact that it was women who were the evildoers. Otherwise, it would be the Malleus Maleficorum, the masculinized version of the Latin noun maleficium.

The Malleus Maleficarum was heavily influenced by humanistic ideologies. The ancient subjects of astronomy, philosophy, and medicine were being reintroduced to the west at this time, as well as a plethora of ancient texts being rediscovered and studied. The Malleus often makes reference to the Bible, Aristotelian thought, and is heavily influenced by the philosophies of Neo-Platonism . It also mentions astrology and astronomy, which had recently been reintroduced to the West by the ancient works of Pythagoras .

Reasons for popularity in the Late Middle Ages

The Malleus Maleficarum was able to spread throughout Europe so rapidly in the late fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century due to the innovation of the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century by Johannes Gutenberg. That printing should have been invented thirty years before the first publication of the Malleus which instigated the fervor of witch hunting, and, in the words of Russell, "the swift propagation of the witch hysteria by the press was the first evidence that Gutenberg had not liberated man from original sin." The Malleus is also heavily influenced by the subjects of divination, astrology, and healing rituals the Church inherited from antiquity .

The late fifteenth century was also a period of religious turmoil, for the Protestant Reformation was but a few decades in the future. The Malleus Maleficarum and the witch craze that ensued took advantage of the increasing intolerance of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe where the Protestant and Catholic camps each zealously strove to maintain the purity of faith .

Consequences

In between 1487 and 1520, twenty editions of the Malleus were published, and another sixteen editions were published between 1574 to 1669 . Popular accounts suggest that the extensive publishing of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487 launched centuries of witch-hunts in Europe, in which www.malleusmaleficarum.org [3] estimates that between 600,000 to 9,000,000 people (mostly women) were killed because they were accused as witches. However, this attributes (at the low end of these estimates) to this one book 1500% of the currently accepted scholarly estimate of the total death toll of all the witch trials in Europe between 1450 and 1700. Also, as some researchers have noted, the fact that the Malleus was popular does not imply that it accurately reflected or influenced actual practice; one researcher compared it to confusing a "television docu-drama" with "actual court proceedings." Estimates about the impact of the Malleus should thus be weighed accordingly.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bailey, Michael David. Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. Pennsylvania State University Press. University Park, PA. 2003
• Broedel, Hans Peter. The Malleus Maleficarum: and the construction of Witchcraft, Theology and Popular Belief. Manchester University Press. New York, NY. 2003
• Flint, Valerie. The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ. 1991
• Hamilton, Alastair (May 2007). Review of Malleus Maleficarum edited and translated by Christopher S. Mackay and two other books. Heythrop Journal 48 (3): 477-479.
  (payment required)
• Henningsen, Gustav. The Witches' Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition. University of Nevada Press. Reno, NV. 1980
• Institoris, Heinrich and Jakob Sprenger (1520). Malleus maleficarum, maleficas, & earum haeresim, ut phramea potentissima conterens. Coloniae: Excudebat Ioannes Gymnicus. 

This is the edition held by the University of Sydney Library. [4]

• Jolly, Karen Louise. Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia, PA. 2002
• Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, England. 2000
• Mackay, Christopher S. (2006). Malleus Maleficarum (2 volumes). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521859778.  (Latin) (English) (bibrec) (editor's home page)

Volume 1 is the Latin text of the first edition of 1486-7 with annotations and an introduction. Volume 2 is an English translation with explanatory notes.

• Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1972 repr. 1984). Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801492890.  (bibrec)
• Summers, Montague (1948 repr. 1971). The Malleus Maleficarum of Kramer and Sprenger, ed. and trans. by Summers, Dover Publications. ISBN 0486228029. 
• Thurston, Robert W. (Nov 2006). The world, the flesh and the devil. History Today 56 (11): 51-57. (payment required for full text)

External links

• Malleus Maleficarum - Online version of Latin text and scanned pages of Malleus Maleficarum published in 1580 (Retrieved July 16, 2007)
• Malleus Maleficarum - Full text of the 1928 English translation by Montague Summers. His 1948 introduction is also included. (Retrieved July 16, 2007)

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