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| Malleus Maleficarum | |
|---|---|
| Hammer of Witches | |
 Title page 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." (Generally translated into English as The Hammer of Witches which destroyeth Witches and their heresy as with a two-edged sword).[1] | |
| Full title | Malleus Maleficarum |
| Also known as | Hammer of Witches |
| Author(s) | Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger |
| Language | Latin |
| Date | 1486 |
| Date of issue | 1487 |
The Malleus Maleficarum[2] usually translated as Hammer of Witches[3][a] is the best known and the most important treatise on witchcraft[6][7] first published in German city Speyer in 1486[8] and written by Catholic clergymen Heinrich Krämer (Henricus Institoris) and most likely Jacob (Jacobus) Sprenger[9][10][11][12][b][14] who were professors of theology and inquisitors. It endorses extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a comprehensive legal and theological framework[15] that is misogynistic.[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] It was a bestseller, second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years.[23]
Malleus elevates sorcery to the criminal status of heresy and prescribes inquisitorial practices for secular courts in order to extirpate witches. The recommended procedures include torture to effectively obtain confessions and death penalty as the only sure remedy against evils of witchcraft.[24][25] At that time, it was typical to burn heretics alive at the stake[26] and Malleus encouraged the same treatment of witches.
The book had enormous influence in its time that continued for a couple of centuries. Amongst the authors on witchcraft it had an ultimate authority[27][28] and even 17th century "dominican chroniclers, such as Quétif and Échard, number Kramer and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their Order".[29] Malleus was ubiquitous, but at the end of the 16th century its role as a theoretical authority was superseded by Demonolatry by witch-hunter Nicholas Rémy and Magical Investigations by Jesuit Martin del Rio.[30]
There is no consensus to what extent Sprenger contributed to the work.
- ^ The English translation is from this note to Summers' 1928 introduction.
- ^ Translator Montague Summers consistently uses "the Malleus Maleficarum" (or simply "the Malleus") in his 1928 and 1948 introductions. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-07-18. Retrieved 2016-02-05.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-06-07. Retrieved 2007-06-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ In his translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, Christopher S. Mackay explains the terminology at length – sorcerer is used to preserve the relationship of the Latin terminology. '"Malefium" = act of sorcery (literally an act of 'evil-doing'), while "malefica" = female performers of sorcery (evil deeds) and "maleficus" = male performer of evil deeds; sorcery, sorceress, and sorcerer."
- ^ Guiley (2008), p. 223'.
- ^ Mackay (2009).
- ^ Mackay (2009), p. 1.
- ^ Summers (2012), p. vii, Introduction to 1948 edition: "It is hardly disputed that in the whole vast literature of witchcraft, the most prominent, the most important, the most authoritative volume is the Malleus Maleficarum" (The Witch Hammer) of Heinrich Kramer (Henricus Institioris) and James Sprenger."
- ^ Ruickbie (2004), 71, highlights the problems of dating; Ankarloo (2002), 239
- ^ Russell (1972), p. 230: "The careers of these notorious Inquisitors are well known. Their great work, the Malleus Maleficarum, the "Hammer of Witches," derives its title from one often bestowed upon Inquisitors: "Hammer of heretics." It was written in 1485 or 1486, printed in the latter year with the Summis desiderantes of Innocent VIII as a preface, and immediately achieved broad popularity among Inquisitors and throughout Church. Institoris was the chief author of the Malleus, Sprenger's role being relatively minor."
- ^ Mackay (2009), p. 5: "The argument is frequently made that the description of the work as a joint composition is a falsehood perpetrated by Institoris, who in fact wrote the whole thing himself. For this claim, there is little solid evidence. [...] Later scholars have attempted to add small pieces to the argument, but it is fundamentally nugatory. [...] In any event, what good would it do Institoris? He was clearly a man of no little prominence in his own right as both inquisitor and theologian, and he did not need to steal the name of a scholar from Cologne who was most noted for his propagation of the Rosary to validate his work about sorcery."
- ^ Broedel (2003), pp. 18–20: "Although Sprenger certainly wrote the Apologia auctoris which prefaces the Malleus, and did so in terms that strongly suggest his active participation in its writing, nonetheless because the work is of one piece stylistically (and Institoris definitely wrote the third part of the text single-handedly), and because the Malleus throughout reflects Institoris’ known preoccupations, it is likely that beyond lending the work the prestige of his name, Sprenger’s contribution was minimal. [...]
Institoris and Sprenger wrote the Malleus with several stated objectives: first, it was to refute critics who denied the reality of witchcraft and hindered the persecution of witches; second, it was to provide arguments, exempla, and advice for preachers who had to deal with witchcraft on the pastoral level; and third, to lend detailed assistance to judges engaged in the difficult work of combating witchcraft through legal prosecution." - ^ Britannica: "The Malleus was the work of two Dominicans: Johann Sprenger, dean of the University of Cologne in Germany, and Heinrich (Institoris) Kraemer, professor of theology at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and inquisitor in the Tirol region of Austria."
- ^ Summers (2012), p. viii, Introduction to 1948 edition.
- ^ Brauner (2001), p. 48: "Sprenger, the prior of the Dominican monastery in Cologne, enthusiastically supported conservative church reform. Appointed by his order to supervise the Dominican reform movement in Germany, he advocated monasticism and strict observance of clerical celibacy and ascetism. [...] He joined Kramer to write the Malleus out of a shared commitment to papal supremacy and ascetic monastic reform at a time when the Holy See was under growing attack from humanists, theologians, and popular social and religious movements. By proving the existence of witchcraft, the Malleus was designed to reaffirm the need for the entire political and spiritual apparatus of the church."
- ^ Britannica
- ^ Broedel (2003), p. 175: "Institoris and Sprenger’s innovation was not their insistence that women were naturally prone to practice maleficium – in this they were simply following long-standing clerical traditions. Rather, it was their claim that harmful magic belonged exclusively to women that was new. If this assertion was granted, then the presence of maleficium indicated decisively the presence of a female witch. In the Malleus, the field of masculine magic is dramatically limited and male magicians are pointedly marginalized; magic is no longer seen as a range of practices, some of which might be more characteristic of men, some of women, and some equally prevalent among both sexes. Instead, it was the effects of magic that mattered most, and harmful magic, the magic most characteristic of witches, belonged to women. Men might be learned magicians, anomalous archer wizards, or witch-doctors and superstitiosi, but very seldom did they work the broad range of maleficium typical of witches."
- ^ Pavlac (2009), p. 57: "Many historians also blame Krämer for encouraging witch hunters to target women more than men as witches. Even his spelling of “maleficarum,” with an a in a feminine gender instead of the usual masculine-gender “maleficorum” with an o, seems to emphasize his hostility toward women. Krämer’s misogynistic arguments list many reasons why women were more likely to be witches than men. They were less clever, vainer, and more sexually insatiable. While these were not new criticisms against women, Krämer helped to entrench them in strixological literature."
- ^ Guiley (2008), p. 223`: "Kramer in particular exhibited a virulent hatred toward women witches and advocated their extermination. The Malleus devotes an entire chapter to the sinful weakness of women, their lascivious nature, moral and intellectual inferiority and gullibility to guidance from deceiving spirits. In Kramer's view, women witches were out to harm all of Christendom.
Scholars have debated the reasons for Kramer's misogyny; he may have had a fear of the power of women mystics of his day, such as Catherine of Siena, who enjoyed the attentions of royalty as well as the church." - ^ Burns (2003), p. 160`: "One element distinguishing Malleus Maleficarum from other demonologies is its obsessive hatred of women and sex, which seems to reflect Kramer's own twisted psyche.
[...] Kramer's interpretation of why women were more likely to be witches also differed somewhat from the standard. Kramer did accept the standard argument of misogynist demonologists that the female propensity for witchcraft was in part due to female weakness. He even derived the Latin word for woman, femina, from fe minus — 'less in faith.' He placed more emphasis on supposedly insatiable female sexuality than on female weakness, however. Kramer saw sex as the root of all sin, as that for which Adam and Eve originally fell. [...] He also suspected that the reluctance of many great ones in the land to prosecute witches was caused by their reception of demonic sexual favors. Kramer also discussed witch-caused impotence at length, going so far as to claim that witches had the ability to steal men's penises through illusion." - ^ Brauner (2001), pp. 35–36: "Kramer and Sprenger present an array of observations from the Bible, the church fathers, and the poets and philosophers of antiquity to support their contention that women are by nature greedy, unintelligent, and governed by passions. They argue that the evil of women stems from their physical and mental imperfections, a notion derived from Aristotle's theory that matter, perfection, and spirituality are purely expressed in the male body alone, and that women are misbegotten males produced by defective sperm. Women speak the language of idiots, Aristotle contends; like slaves, they are incapable of governing themselves or developing into the 'zoon politicon'. Thomas Aquinas adapted these views to Christianity, arguing that because woman is less perfect than man, she is but an indirect image of God and an appendix to man. Citing such views, Kramer and Sprenger find that women are 'intellectually like children,' credulous and impressionable, and therefore easily fall prey to the devil. 'Since [women] are feebler both in mind and body,' the Malleus concludes, 'it is not surprising that they should come more [than men] under the spell of witchcraft.
Lack of intelligence prevents women not only from distinguishing good from evil, but from remembering the rules of behavior. Amoral and undisciplined, women are governed primarily by passion. 'And indeed,' Kramer and Sprenger declare, 'just as thorough the first defect in their intelligence women are more prone to abjure the faith; so through their second defect of inordinate affections and passions they search for, brood over, and inflict various vengeances, either by witchcraft, or by some other means.' [...] 'Wherefore it is no wonder that so great a number of witches exist in this sex,' concludes the Malleus." - ^ Britannica: "By 1435–50, the number of prosecutions had begun to rise sharply, and toward the end of the 15th century, two events stimulated the hunts: Pope Innocent VIII’s publication in 1484 of the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (“Desiring with the Greatest Ardour”) condemning witchcraft as Satanism, the worst of all possible heresies, and the publication in 1486 of Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger’s Malleus maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”), a learned but cruelly misogynist book blaming witchcraft chiefly on women. Widely influential, it was reprinted numerous times."
- ^ Levack (2006), p. 145: "Explanations for the predominance of women as witches often focus on the treatises written by demonologists, many of which comment on the fact that most witches were women. This literature is in most cases intensely misogynistic, in the sense that it is demeaning, if not blatantly hostile, to women. The common theme in these demonological treatises is that women were more susceptible to demonic temptation because they were morally weaker than men and more likely, therefore, to succumb to diabolical temptation. This idea, which dates from the earliest days of Christianity, is expressed most forcefully in the Malleus Maleficarum, but it can be found in many places, even in the sceptical demonological treatise of Johann Weyer."
- ^ Guiley (2008), p. 223: "Published first in Germany in 1486, the Malleus Maleficarum proliferated into dozens of editions throughout Europe and England and had a profound impact on European witch trials for about 200 years. [...] It was second only to the Bible in sales until John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was published in 1678"
- ^ Brauner (2001), pp. 33–34.
- ^ Broedel (2003), p. 33: "Ultimately, however, the bewitched cannot hope for an infallible remedy, for the power of witches is too strong. There is only one completely reliable way to combat witchcraft, and this is to eliminate the witches, the course of action Institoris and Sprenger endorse in one of the most impassioned passages of the Malleus [...]"
- ^ Mackay (2009), p. 28: "but it was understood by everyone that the heretic was to be executed (normally by being burned alive) in accordance with secular laws against heresy"
- ^ Summers (2012), p. xxxviii, Introduction to 1928 edition: "There can be no doubt that this work had in its day and for a full couple of centuries an enormous influence. There are few demonologists and writers upon witchcraft who do not refer to its pages as an ultimate authority."
- ^ Broedel (2003), p. 7`: "The simple presence of a comprehensive, authoritative guidebook created a certain uniformity of discourse in subsequent witchcraft debate. Almost immediately, authors of witch-treatises began to refer to Institoris and Sprenger as accepted authorities on the subject."
- ^ Summers (2012), p. ix, Introduction to 1948 edition: "The dominican chroniclers, such as Quétif and Échard, number Kramer and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their Order"
- ^ Burns (2003), p. 160: "In the Catholic world, the works of Nicholas Remy and Martin del Rio replaced the Malleus as a theoretical authority in the late sixteenth century. Its ubiquity, however, must have made it an important contributor to the ideas that many educated people held of witches and the proper way to deal with them.
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