Malleus maleficarum

The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin: Hammer of the Witches) is probably the most important treatise ever published in the context of the persecution of witches in the Renaissance.^{[citation needed]}

It was written and compiled by two German Dominican monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger.

It is a comprehensive book on the witch hunt that after being published in Germany in 1487 went through dozens of new editions, spread throughout Europe and had a profound impact on witch trials on the continent for nearly 200 years. This work is notorious for its use in the period of witch-hunt hysteria, which reached its peak from the mid-16th century until the middle of the 17th century.

The main authors and great demonologists such as the Italian inquisitor Bernardo Rategno da Como, the Spanish-Belgian Jesuit Martín del Río and the French jurist Jean Bodin constantly referred to the authority of the Malleus Maleficarum.

History

In 1184 the Inquisition was founded in Languedoc (south of France) to fight against the Albigensian heresy settled there. This first episcopal inquisition (depending on the bishop of each diocese) was replaced by a papal inquisition (depending directly on the pope) in 1231. Although the belief in witchcraft predates even Christianity, it is not until 1484 that Pope Innocent VIII officially records the official belief of the Catholic Church in its existence through the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus.^{[citation required]}

The Malleus Maleficarum is the most famous of all books on witchcraft, probably written in 1486 and published in 1487, although the leading theologians of the Inquisition at the Cologne Faculty condemned the book for recommend unethical and illegal procedures, while also being inconsistent with Church doctrines on demonology.

The Malleus Maleficarum made the concept of demonological witchcraft accessible to a broad public, contributing to the witch hunt by attributing authority and credibility to existing witchcraft trials.

At the end of the Middle Ages, very abrupt changes were taking place in the way of life in Europe: it was a time in which new lands were being discovered (which made Europeans face cultures that until then were totally alien to the thought of Christianity), the popular consciousness began to awaken among the peasants of Germany, who possessed rudimentary religious knowledge mixed with ancestral superstitious knowledge, the printing press appeared, which opened the possibility of a great diffusion of existing ideas, especially those new ways of interpreting the Bible, there were complicated pseudo-scientific studies to read the stars, and there was a firm belief in both esoteric astrology and magic. There were many books on talismanic magic and alchemical secrets.

The Malleus Maleficarum or Hammer of the Witches was compiled and written by two Dominican inquisitor monks, Heinrich Kramer, also known as Heinrich Institoris, and Jacob Sprenger.

Heinrich Kramer was born in Schlettstadt (Sélestat), a city in lower Alsace to the southeast of Strasbourg, and at an early age he entered the Order of Saint Dominic. He later became Prior of the Dominican House of his hometown. He was a general preacher and teacher of sacred theology. Before 1474 he was appointed Inquisitor for Tyrol, Salzburg, Bohemia, and Moravia.

Jakob Sprenger was born in Rheinfelden (Switzerland), entered the Dominican House as a novice in 1452, graduated as Master of Theology and was appointed Prior and Regent of Studies of the Cologne convent. In 1480 he was appointed dean of the University's Theological Faculty and in 1488 he was appointed Provincial of the entire German province.

Pope Innocent VIII collaborated in the campaign against witchcraft.
In a papal decree of December 5, 1484, the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, Innocent VIII recognized the existence of witches, thus repealing the Canon Episcopi of 906, where the Church held that belief in witches was heresy. It mentions Sprenger and Kramer by name (Iacobus Sprenger and Henrici Institoris) and calls on them to fight witchcraft in northern Germany.

The Malleus Maleficarum was preceded by an authentic papal bull beginning with the words Summis desiderantes affectibus by which it is known.

The bull was authentic but some historians still dispute whether Kramer falsified the recommendation of the University of Cologne.

Both Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger were appointed inquisitors with special powers by the papal bull of Innocent VIII to investigate witchcraft crimes in the northern German provinces. The Malleus Maleficarum is the final and authoritative result of those investigations and studies.

Kramer and Sprenger presented the Malleus Maleficarum to the Theological Faculty of the University of Cologne on May 9, 1487. Sprenger was an inquisitor in Germany who founded the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary in devotion to the Virgin Mary in 1475. The influence of the Malleus maleficarum was increased by the printing press.

The date 1487 is generally accepted as the date of publication, although earlier editions of the work may have been produced in 1485 or 1486.

Between the years 1487 and 1520, the work was published 13 times. After about 50 years, it was published again, between 1574 and the Lyons edition of 1669, a total of 16 times. The text became so popular that it sold more copies than any text other than the Bible until John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was published in 1678.

The effects of the Malleus Maleficarum spread far beyond the borders of Germany, causing great impact in France and Italy, and to a lesser degree in England. Estimates of the number of women burned by witches vary from 60,000 to two and five million according to different authors.

Some authors maintain that the Pope could not have known what Kramer and Sprenger were going to say in the Malleus Maleficarum and that he had only published the bull to express that he shared their concern about the problem of witches. However, the position of the Church with respect to witches aggravated the persecution crisis and gave it its particular aspect, increasing hatred towards women, as well as covering up the massacres. The first great waves of witch-hunts are a direct consequence of the Malleus Maleficarum due to the great publishing success of the book. Although the Church never officially approved the witch hunt, it was in 1657 that it prohibited such persecutions in the bull Pro formandis.

The witch hunt was an organized campaign, whose main source of inspiration was the Malleus Maleficarum for three hundred years, for both Catholics and Protestants.

During the 15th century the Inquisition burned more heretics than witches and when feudal states were organized as monarchies Independent of the Pope, punitive power shifted from the Inquisition to the lay judges of these monarchies, who continued the Church's task of burning witches into the XVIII, with the Malleus Maleficarum as a pocket book.

Contemporary translations of the work include a 2000 German one, by Professors Jerouscheck and Behringer, entitled Der Hexenhammer (Schmidt's 1906 translation is considered very poor), and one in English (with introduction) by Montague Summers in 1928, which was reprinted in 1948 and is still available today as a 1971 reprint from Dover Publications. A new translation, fully annotated by Christopher S. Mackay, was made in November 2006 by Cambridge University Press.^{[citation needed]}

Contents

The book is divided into three sections, each of which asks specific questions and sets out to answer them through counterarguments. There is little original material in the book; it is mostly a compilation of pre-existing beliefs and practices with copious parts taken from earlier works such as Nicolau Aymerich's Directorium Inquisitorum (1376) or Formicarius (1435) by Johannes Nider.

Part I sought to prove that witchcraft or wizardry exists. It details how the Devil and his followers, witches and wizards, perpetrate a plethora of evils "with the permission of Almighty God ". Rather than explain this as punishment, as many church authorities of the time did, the authors of this book proclaim that God allows these acts, as long as the Devil does not gain unlimited power and destroy the world.

The title of the book itself contains the word maleficarum, the feminine form of the noun, and the writers state (incorrectly) that the word femina (woman) is a derivation of fe+minus, without faith (or unfaithful, or disloyal).

Part II of the Malleus Maleficarum describes the forms of witchcraft. This section details how witches cast spells, and how their actions can be prevented or remedied. Strong emphasis is placed on the Pact with the Devil and the existence of witches is presented as a fact. Much of the information in the book about spells, pacts, sacrifices, and copulation with the Devil was obtained (supposedly) from inquisitorial trials conducted by Sprenger and Kramer.

Part III details methods of detecting, prosecuting, and sentencing or destroying witches. Torture in witch detection is seen as something natural; if the sorcerer or witch did not voluntarily confess her guilt, torture was applied as an incentive to do so. Judges were instructed to deceive the accused if necessary, promising mercy for the confession.

This section also discusses the reliance that can be placed on witness testimony and the need to eliminate malicious accusations, but also argues that public hearsay is enough to get a person to trial and that too vigorous a defense it is evidence that the defender is haunted. There are rules about how to prevent authorities from being haunted and the consolation that, as God's representatives, investigators are protected from all witches' powers.

Summary of Beliefs

The current stereotype of the witch as an older woman, who flies on a broomstick accompanied by a cat, who participates in nocturnal covens worshiping the devil, who is part of a clandestine group that performs human sacrifices and sacrilegious rites, and who knows all kinds of magic potions and curses dates back to Antiquity. Christians were accused of such acts at the time of the Roman Empire: during the II century they were accused of holding meetings clandestine in which they slit the throats of children and had unconventional sexual relations and worshiped animals. In other times, the Jews were accused of practicing this type of covens. It was always about minority groups seen with bad eyes by the majority and the rulers. The Malleus Maleficarum was a compendium of all these fantasies. The witches, mostly women, were accused of being responsible for all the ills of society.

The Malleus Maleficarum helped create the appropriate breeding ground to persecute thousands of people, mostly women: witches, sorcerers, healers, midwives and doctors until the XVII. Between 1450 and 1750 the so-called witch hunt takes place, one of the most terrible events in the history of Europe.

Misogyny

Both Kramer and Sprenger were prolific writers and part of the Malleus Maleficarum is a summary of an exhaustive manuscript on witchcraft written by Kramer. Generally based on the Biblical phrase “Sorcerers will not be left alive” (Exodus 22:18), the book also draws on works from Aristotle, the Bible, Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas. to back up. The book's sexism and misogyny are undeniable: the authors' belief that women were more innocent and emotional creatures, making them a prone target of witches. That is why he characterizes her by saying that a virtuous woman is better than any man can be, but a wicked woman becomes worse than a wicked man. The misogyny of the book rests on the Christian tradition. Despite the fact that it is the first time that a direct link between women and the heresy of witchcraft has been established, for this they bring together a series of already existing but scattered ideas about women that they take from the Old Testament and the New Testament, from the classical antiquity, medieval Catholic authors and the fathers of the Church. For Christianity, virginity has always been an ideal and according to the Malleus Maleficarum women are dangerous because of their sexuality, despite being necessary for reproduction.

According to the Malleus Maleficarum all witchcraft comes from the carnal appetite that in women is insatiable. Superstition is found above all in women, and the greatest number of sorcerers are of the then understood as "fragile sex" because women are "more gullible, more prone to maliciousness and liars by nature." The sin that was born of woman destroys the soul by stripping it of grace, and all the kingdoms of the world have been brought down by women. There are three general vices that have a special domain among wicked women: infidelity, ambition and lust.

Taken as a whole, the Malleus Maleficarum states that some things confessed by witches, such as transformations into animals, were mere illusions induced by the Demon to entrap them, while other acts, such as example flying, causing storms and destroying plantations, were real. The book goes into detail about the licentious and promiscuous acts committed by witches, their ability to create sexual impotence in males, and even raises the question of whether demons could be the parents of witches' children. The narrative style is serious and completely humorless: even the most dubious facts are presented as reliable information.

On the one hand are the aggressive witches and, on the other, the men threatened in their ability to erect and reproduce. There are entire chapters dedicated to telling how witches take their male members from men, as well as chapters where they explain how men and women suffer from diseases due to witchcraft, and the way in which it could be cured.

The controversy about the reality of witchcraft

Spanish Inquisition

Although the Spanish Inquisition was not especially active in the persecution of witchcraft, it is as a result of the processes of Zugarramurdi when this persecution reached its zenith to quickly be discredited by the internal investigations of the Council of the Supreme Inquisition embodied in the report by Alonso de Salazar y Frías where both the methods for obtaining the confessions and these themselves were criticized:

I have found no certainty or even indication that [you can] collegiate any act of witchcraft that has actually and bodilyly passed. [...] And so I also have by the way that in the present state, not only do they care for new edicts and prorrogations from those granted, but also that any way of venturing these things in public, with the aqueous state it has, is harmful and could be of as much and of greater harm as the one they already suffer. There were no witches or haunted in the place until it began to treat and write of them.

The instructions of the Supreme Court of August 29, 1614, due in large part to Salazar, according to the Spanish anthropologist Carmelo Lisón Tolosana,

mark the end of Satanic witchcraft in Spain. But not in Europe... Curious paradox: the flexibility and moderation that, together and comparatively, characterized the performance of the Supreme against the witches had little to do with the brutal treatment to which the authorities of all kinds subjected them in Western Europe and, however, the Spanish Inquisition has become in that same Europe the symbol of terror and unbounded evil, of supreme perversity, of Evil.

Perhaps one of the causes of such a belief lies in issues such as the last death sentence for heresy by the Tribunal de la Fe —a substitute for the Spanish Inquisition after it was not reinstated by King Ferdinand VII after 1823—, the of Cayetano Ripoll (although he was executed by the secular arm ), was produced in Spain on a date, also jointly and comparatively, as late as 1826.

The Italian Renaissance

Some Renaissance philosophers, such as Marsilio Ficino, believed in the reality of witchcraft, but there were others, such as Pietro Pomponazzi, who questioned it. More forceful in his challenge to the Malleus... was the lawyer Gian Francesco Ponzinibio, who based on the Canon Episcopi denies the flights of witches and other fantasies attributed to them. His criticisms of the belief in witches were rejected by the inquisitor Bartolommeo de Spina who accused him of heresy. The ecclesiastic Samuel de Cassini, in a booklet published in Milan in 1505, also denied the reality of the acts of which witches were accused, which was immediately answered by the Dominican of Pavia Vicente Dodo. The same inquisitorial line of Spina and Dodo was defended by Paolo Grillandi in a book on sorcery, heresy and carnal intercourse, in which he recounted cases of witchcraft in which he had served as a judge in southern Italy, such as in the Duchy of Spoleto, and the alleged meetings held by the witches in Benevento. But Grillandi's work and that of others who defended the reality of witchcraft was criticized by Andrea Alciato, Girolamo Cardano, Andrea Cesalpino and Giambattista della Porta.

The experience of Dr. Laguna in Metz

Andrés Laguna, Doctor of the Chamber of the Emperor Carlos V, philosopher and famous humanist.

In Metz, doctor Andrés Laguna carried out an experiment around 1545 to demonstrate that the accusation of witchcraft against an elderly couple, imprisoned for having caused a serious illness to the Duke of Lorraine, of whom Laguna was his doctor, had no basis. He took the strong-smelling green ointment that had been discovered in the place where the two supposed witches lived and applied it to a patient of his who suffered from insomnia. Then the woman fell into a deep sleep during which she dreamed crazy things, which convinced Dr. Laguna that what the sorcerers and witches were saying was the product of hallucinations. However, his "experiment" he failed to convince the judges, and the alleged witch was burned and her husband died shortly after under mysterious circumstances. Soon after, the duke died and Laguna left Metz.

Holy Roman Empire

The Malleus had an immediate reply from a lawyer from Constance, Ulrico Molitor, who published De lamiis et phitonicis mulieribus, in which he denied the reality of the flights of witches and other prodigies attributed to them, inspired by the doctrine of the Canon Episcopi. The book went through several editions and was highly regarded for its engravings, which depicted the alleged actions of witches. However, the lawyer was of the opinion that they should be punished for their apostasy and corruption.

For their part, the reformers Luther, Melanchthon and others firmly believed in the power of curses, in the presence of the Devil and in the reality of the flights and metamorphoses of witches.

The doctor Johann Wier, a disciple of Heinrich Cornelio Agrippa, wrote in French a book published in Paris in 1579 in which he collected all the opinions contrary to the reality of the acts attributed to witches, and even to demons. According to Caro Baroja, Wier & # 34; denies that the Devil himself puts his power at the service of these [the alleged witches] and that, therefore, his purposes are really verified and that the mutual pact takes place agreement. The only thing the Devil does is deceive them, taking over his spirit. Now, it is understandable that for this he chooses the most propitious people, that is, the weak, melancholic, ignorant, malicious, etc. And since these abound more among women than among men, it is also natural that among them there are more captured".

Historical importance of the Malleus Maleficarum

With the Malleus Maleficarum it is the first time in history that criminology, that is, the origin of evil, appears integrated in the same writing, with criminal law, that is, the manifestations of evil and criminalistics, that is, the data necessary to discover evil in practice.^{[citation required]}

It is the first time in history that a theory about the origin of crime appears in a systematic way, that is, an etiology of crime.

This discursive structure that legitimizes the violence of punitive power remains without major changes to the present, the only thing that is modified in each new generation are its internal contents. In almost all historical massacres in police states where legal rights and constitutional guarantees are lost, the discursive structure inherited from the Malleus Maleficarum is reproduced.

Since the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum to this day, inquisitorial discursive instruments with the same structure continue to appear: it is an emergency and, as it is an extraordinary threat that poses a risk to the foundations of our entire culture and humanity as a whole, extraordinary measures must be taken to combat it.^{[citation needed]}

The aforementioned emergency is a way of legitimizing the unbridling of punitive power that, by eliminating the supposed danger, and all its accomplices, manages to increasingly verticalize social power, generating the foundations of a state of collective paranoia that allows the to be able to exercise it without brakes or limits, eliminating any opponent. If anyone doubts that the accused is a witch, it is because she is also possessed by Satan.^{[citation needed ]}

The result of the inquisitorial discourse imposed by the Malleus Maleficarum is that the fear of an emergency is used by the punitive power to eliminate any obstacle that comes its way. Anyone who opposes this punitive power will be accused of being an accomplice of evil, an enemy of the homeland or an idiot useful to foreign interests and will be sentenced without guarantees or the right to defense.

The structure of the speech of the Malleus Maleficarum is as follows:

1. This crime is the most serious of all known so far, and the frequency of witches is so alarming today that we are facing an emergency that can only be fought through a war.
2. Anyone who doubts the existence of this emergency will be considered heretic, accomplice, sorcerer.
3. Inquisitors are infallible and pure and the enemies are inferior.
4. The conviction is sufficient proof of guilt.
5. Anything that gets out of the usual will be suspicious. The continuation of the massacre is guaranteed through torture aimed at delating accomplices who, in turn, will be tortured to delate.

The result is that legal power or legal right ends up being reduced to direct coercion or police administrative law because against Evil, against the enemy, anything goes and if excesses are committed, they are forgivable for the sake of that objective above all else which is to save humanity.