Malleus Maleficarum: The Hammer Of Witches

In response to The Hammer of Witches and the papal bull issued by Pope Innocent VIII, major witch hunts broke out in Europe. Moreover, these were aided by new technology, the printing press, which helped to spread the mania, even across the Atlantic to America. It is not surprising that the witch hunt started around the13-15th century. During this time, Europe was overpopulated and in a poor condition with dirty streets, crime and diseases everywhere. There had to be a scapegoat for all of the mess which the church decided was witchcraft. A complex social matrix was created once an accusation was made: the accusers would try to prove the source of what had been troubling them, and ideally to gain control over that source by forcing her to back away and remove the

One of the many old belief systems is witchcraft and sorcery. It is often believed that

It is important to understand the meaning of witchcraft to be able to identify what caused the massive witch-hunt in Europe. During the medieval to the early modern period witchcraft was identified as the practice of harmful, black or maleficent magic caused by a witch (Levack, 1987, p. 4). They also describe them as evildoers that associate with the Devil, kidnap children, and murder others. These accusations were untrue rumors made by the Catholic Church to promote Christianity and punish those who did not follow the church beliefs. (Levack, 1987, p. 7)

Before the 1500s, prosecution of witches was rare. Trials were conducted against those who were seen as suspects of “practicing harmful magic and occasional mass trials" (Bever, 2009, p. 263). These accusations were often made by children and that of their imagination. The decline; however, occurred not through the prosecutions but through its “suppressing roles” and the overall “decline in witch beliefs” (Bever, 2009, p. 285). The title of the article is “Witchcraft Prosecutions and the Decline of Magic” and it is written by Edward Bever. Bever is the Associate Professor of History, SUNY College at Old Westbury.

Witchcraft was defined for the masses by the publication of the Malleus Maleficarium also known simply as the Handbook. Written by two Dominican friars in 1486 it’s purpose was to be used as a handbook to identify, capture, torture, and execute suspected witches. Opinions stated as facts and written in the Malleus Maleficarium, “handbook”, were based their faith, church doctrine, and the Bible. No doubt a religious masterpiece in it’s time this handbook is a neatly woven together a group of beliefs, experiences, wisdom of ancient writers, religious ideas, and God inspired writings that justify it’s purpose. Written by and used by Catholics this handbook proved useful for Protestants as well. Based on biblical interpretation and ideas the handbook provided Protestant Church leaders biblical authority to prosecute witchcraft as well. Translated into today’s vernacular phrases such as, “everybody knows that women are feeble minded” or “everybody knows that women are more superstitious than men” and “all women have slippery tongues” are included in the handbook and presented to the reader as foregone conclusions. Specific

During the late fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, thousands of individuals were persecuted as witches. It was thought that these individuals practiced black magic and performed evil deeds, the deeds of the devil. This all happened during a time of great change in Europe, during the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the consolidation of national governments. They were persecuted for a variety of reasons, but three major ones were religious reasons, social prejudices, and the economic greed of the people. Religious leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin influenced the ideas of their followers. Religion dominated the time period and it’s easy to see how many opinions

The Puritan belief in witchcraft extends as far back as early Mesopotamia, as Hammurabi’s Code expresses the death penalty for any convicted witch (Goss 1). Judaism as witchcraft as a means to “place a curse upon a neighbor or telling the future”, to which the latter was seen as “strictly restricted to the realm of God who only spoke through His holy prophets”; “any other type of prophesying or fortune-telling...necessitated the establishment of a relationship between a human and an unholy spirit” (Goss 1). As Judaism and Christianity spread, so did the fear of witches and alliances with unholy beings. Christianity looked to the Old Testament law for teaching on what witches were and how to deal with them. The expansion of Christianity lead

Witchcraft is the use of magical powers. Witchcraft is often regarded as “black” magic. The article called “The Salem Witch Trials: 1692-1693” states that “[s]ince the early fifteenth century, so-called witch panics had periodically swept across Europe, causing witch hunts, accusations, trials and executions” (“Salem” 1). Although some children and males were accused, the greater part of the arraigned individuals were female (“Salem” 1). A debatable amount of around forty thousand individuals were implicated and executed as witches between fourteen hundred and seventeen hundred and fifty (“Salem” 1). Although the causes of the witchcraft hysteria are debatable, there are three widespread and favored explanations for the hysteria within

Witchcraft wasn't new to the world, it had been occurring in Europe for hundreds of years. From the 14th-16th century, 40,000- 50,000 individuals in Europe were executed for the suspicion of witchcraft. Religion was very pertinent to the people of this era. Anything that was written in the bible or created by the church was law, it says in Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." By the year of 1231, Pope Gregory IX declared that it was legal to expose and punish any belief different from Roman Catholic doctrine. Pope Innocent the VIII deemed witchcraft a heresy, with the punishment being death. Everyone followed this decree as witchcraft was wrongful in the eyes of the church. ("Search")

From the 1400’s to the 1800’s, around forty thousand individuals were executed for witchcraft, most of which occurred throughout central Europe. Constant religious and political upheaval caused elites to attempt to harness control over populations, which led to multiple laws being passed in regards to witchcraft. Torture was allowed and women and children were called to testify in the court room. Individuals who were seen to be outcasts on the outer edge of society were immediately targeted and easily suspected of sorcery. The Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663 gives its readers an inside perspective of the many different attitudes that existed towards witchcraft at the time. Because 17th century Brunswick townspeople were driven by deep Christian beliefs, they greatly feared all forms of magic, thinking them to come from the devil. Yet despite these fears, they did not completely reject witchcraft as they often sought out purported “witches” for magical solutions.

For thousands of years, Christian societies throughout Europe deemed witchcraft as a critical threat and imagined it as summoning evil powers. Witches were seen by the Christian community as “a conspiracy organized under the leadership of the devil.” There are quite a few references to witchcraft and sorcery in the Bible, the two most famous being Exodus 22:18 and Deuteronomy 18:9-14. These two verses have been used over the past centuries to solidify Christian belief that witchcraft is

The witchcraft phenomenon of the Renaissance period was shaped by a wide range of cultural factors; witchcraft was not necessarily subject to a single cohesive idea or concept, and it was often instead a conglomeration of many different societal concerns, concerns which spanned through all spheres of society. Textual evidence from this period provides insight into the way in which witches were conceived, and how witches were dealt with, while visual images present a companion visualisation of the tensions, which influenced created the witch, and the imagery, which came to be associated with witchcraft.

Witch hunts blazed across Europe over the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries not just killing innumerable innocent people, but stripping women of much of the power they had once held, and changing society's perceptions of women all together. The economic hardships, religious rivalries, and troubled politics of the time made accusing your neighbors of witchcraft convenient. Where there was war and poverty, or merely bad luck, peasants would assume witchcraft and rush to blame an old, defenseless woman in trials which involved unbelievable cruelty and horrible sadism. As religion and the Catholic Church began to complement and perpetuate the increasing hysteria, European society as a whole could do nothing but

Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican friar, wrote the Malleus Maleficarum in 1486. He believed witches to be “members of a vast conspiracy directed against Christian society that was allowed by God to cause immense physical and spiritual hardship” (Behringer 716). Therefore, Kramer believed the real way to rid witches was through physical eradication. The start of the manuscript came from his experience in witchcraft trials in Upper Germany.

Prior to the 11th century the Catholic Church did not even acknowledge the existence of Witches. To accuse or take action against one suspected of being a "dark witch", Vampire or other supernatural being was punishable by cannon law. It was only towards the