It's amazing how much one book can affect people. The Malleus Maleficarum has managed to stay in print, on and off, for a little over five centuries. The frightening thing is, however, that even people who have never heard of it are able to quote it; sometimes almost word for word. We've all heard it echoing since childhood: Witches cast spells, make pacts with the devil, work to harm people; not to mention broomsticks and orgies. There are even people today who actively work to spread these rumours as if they were true. This page is meant as a tool to help understand and explain where some of these myths originated.
The Malleus Maleficarum was written by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. Both of these men were appointed Inquisitors by Pope Innocent VIII. The name means the "Witches' Hammer", or "Hammer Against the Witches". It was published in 1485, and eventually was used as The serious reference book on Witchcraft, and how to deal with it. The authors wrote in the book that "So far we have set down our opinions absolutely without prejudice and refraining from any hasty or rash judgement, not deviating from the teachings and writings of the Saints" (I, 2). One point that is not always made is that books needed to be approved for publication by the public censors at the University of Cologne. The censors refused to have anything to do with the Malleus, but undaunted, Kramer and Sprenger went ahead and forged the approbation.
Sections Covered:
1. WITCHES ARE EVIL BY NATURE
2. WITCHES ARE USUALLY WOMEN
3. WITCHES MAKE PACTS WITH THE DEVIL
4. WITCHES CAST SPELLS TO HARM PEOPLE
5. WITCHES HAVE SEX WITH THE DEVIL
6. WITCHES STOP OTHERS FROM HAVING SEX AND/OR CHILDREN
7. WITCHES KILL CHILDREN
8. WITCHES WORK AGAINST CHRISTIANS AND TRY TO GET NEW MEMBERS
9. MOST PAGANS ARE MISGUIDED BY DEVILS
1. WITCHES ARE EVIL BY NATURE
-"Witches are so called on account of the blackness of their guilt, that is to say, their deeds are more evil than those of any other malefactors. He continues: They stir up and confound the elements by the aid of the devil, and arouse terrible hailstorms and tempests. Moreover, he says they distract the minds of men, driving them to madness, insane hatred, and inordinate lusts. Again, he continues, by the terrible influence of their spells alone, as it were by a draughtor poison, they can destroy life." (I, 2)
-"Moreover, witchcraft differs from all other harmful and mysterious arts in this point, that of all superstition it is essentially the vilest, the most evil and the worst, wherefore it derives its name from doing evil, and from blaspheming the true faith". (I, 2)
-(On the Goddess of Fortune) "But to believe that there is such a goddess, or that the harm done to bodies and creatures which is ascribed to witchcraft does not actually proceed from witchcraft, but from that same goddess of Fortune, is sheer idolatry" (I, 5)
-"that sort of error in which the witches are ensnared, such as blood-shed, theft or robbery". (I, 5)
-"For it will be shown in the Second Part that they commit murders, fornications, and sacrifices of children and animals, and for their evil deeds are called witches". (I, 5)
-"For they are criminals who use witchcraft, and they are known by their works". (I, 5)
-"And that the works of witches can in some way be called miraculous, in so far as they exceed human knowledge, is clear from their very nature; for they are not done naturally". (I, 5)
-"witchcraft is not properly a human act". (I, 5)
-"whoever believes that any creature can be changed for the better or the worse or transformed into another kind or likeness, except by the Creator of all things, is worse than a pagan and a heretic".(I, 7)
2. WITCHES ARE USUALLY WOMEN
-"All wickedness is but little to the wichedness of a woman". (I, 6)
-"When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil". (I, 6)
-"women are naturally more impressionable, and more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit". (I, 6)
-"Women are intellectually like children". (I, 6)
-"she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations". (I, 6)
-"Therefore a wicked woman is by her nature quicker to waver in her faith, and consequently quicker to abjure the faith, which is the root of witchcraft". (I, 6)
-"If you hand over the whole management of the house to her, but reserve some minute detail to your own judgement, she will think that you are displaying a great want of faith in her, and will stir up strife; and unless you quickly take counsel, she will prepare poison for you, and consult seers and soothsayers; and will become a witch". (I, 6)
-"And blessed be the Highest Who has so far preserved the male sex from so great a crime: for since He was willing to be born and to suffer for us, therefore He has granted to men this privilege".(I, 6)
3. WITCHES MAKE PACTS WITH THE DEVIL
-"Moreover, it may be said that the devil makes use of a witch, not because he has need of any such agent, but because he is seeking the perdition of the witch." (I, 2)
-"And those harms which are simply evil and nothing more are brought about by the devil, who works through the medium of sorcerers and witches". (I, 2)
-"Very early did sorcerers and witches make compacts with the devil and connive with him to bring harm upon human beings". (I, 2)
-"For they are human instruments and free agents, and although they have made a compact and a contract with the devil, nevertheless they do enjoy absolute liberty". (I, 2)
-"witches and the devil always work together, and that in so far as these matters are concerned, one can do nothing without the aid and assistance of the other". (I, 2)
-"Whence withces, by the exercise of no natural power, but only by the help of the devil, are able to bring about harmful effects". (I, 2)
-"even give homage to the very devils by offering them their bodies and souls". (I, 14)
4. WITCHES CAST SPELLS TO HARM PEOPLE
-"Moreover, witches use certain images and other strange periapts, which they are wont to place under the lintels of the doors of houses, or in those meadows where flocks are herding, or even where men congregate, and thus they cast spells over their victims, who have oft-times been known to die." (I, 2)
-"Witches are so called from the enormity of their magic spells; for they disturb the elements and confound the minds of men". (I, 5)
-"But the images of witches are quite different, since always they are secretly placed somewhere by the command of the devil for the hurt of a creature; and they who walk or sleep over them are harmed, as the witches themselves confess". (I, 5)
-"they make horses go mad under their riders; they can transport themselves from place to place through the air, either in body or in imagination; they can affect Judges and Magistrates so that they cannot hurt them; they can cause themselves and others to keep silence under torture; they can bring about a great trembling in the hands and horror in the minds of those who would arrest them; they can show to others occult things and certain future events, by the information of devils". (II, i, 2)
-"they can see absent things as if they were present; they can turn the minds of men to inordinate love or hatred; they can at times strike whom they will with lightning, and even kill some men and animals; they can make of no effect the generative desires, and even the power of copulation, cause abortion, kill infants in the mother's womb by a mere exterior touch; they can at times bewitch men and animals with a mere look, without touching them, and cause death; they dedicate their own children to devils; and in short, as has been said, they can cause all the plagues which other witches can only cause in part, that is, when the Justice of God permits such things to be". (II, i, 2)
5. WITCHES HAVE SEX WITH THE DEVIL
-"But it is common to all of them to practise carnal copulation with devils". (II, i, 2)
-"A certain woman was taken, and finally burned, who for six years had had an Incubus devil, even when she was lying in bed by the side of her husband. And this she did three times a week, on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and on some of the other more holy nights". (II, i, 2)
6. WITCHES STOP OTHERS FROM HAVING SEX AND/OR CHILDREN
-"But, indeed such hatred is aroused by witchcraft between those joined in the sacrament of matrimony, and such freezing up of the geterative forces, that men are unable to perform the necessary action for begetting offspring". (I, 6)
-"Now the fact that adulterous drabs and whores are chiefly given to witchcraft is substantiated by the spells which are cast by witches upon the act of generation". (I, 8)
-"When the member is in no way stirred, and can never perform the act of coition, this is a sign of frigidity of nature; but when it is stirred and becomes erect, but yet cannot perform, it is a sign of witchcraft". (I, 8)
-"There is no doubt that certain witches can do marvellous things with regard to male organs". (I, 8)
7. WITCHES KILL CHILDREN
-"they abjure the Faith, and slay innocent children". (I, 5)
-"A third and fourth method of witchcraft is when they have failed to procure an abortion, and then either devour the child or offer it to a devil". (I, 11)
-"it is an actual offering of themselves, body and soul, to the devil, by a sacrilegiously uttered and inwardly purposed abnegation of the Faith. And not content with this, they even kill, or offer to devils, their own and others' children". (I, 16)
-(Witches who devour children) "this is the most powerful class of witches". (II, i, 2)
-"For they raise hailstorms and hurtful tempests and ligthnings; offer to devils, or otherwise kill, the children whom they do not devour". (II, i, 2)
-"they cannot devour those who have been baptized". (II, i, 2)
-"certain witches had cooked and eaten their own children". (II, i, 2)
-"Another, named Walpurgis, was notorious for her power of preserving silence, and used to teach other women how to achieve a like quality of silence by cooking their first-born sons in an oven". (II, i, 2)
-"They take the unguent which, as we have said, they make at the devil's instruction from the limbs of children, particularly of those whom they have killed before baptism, and anoint with it a chair or a broomstick; whereupon they are immediately carried up into the air, either by day or by night, and either visibly or, if they wish, invisibly; for the devil can conceal a body". (II, i, 3)
8. WITCHES WORK AGAINST CHRISTIANITY AND WORK TO GET NEW MEMBERS
-"Let us especially note too that in the practice of this abominable evil, four points in particular are required. First, most profanely to renounce the Catholic Faith, or at any rate to deny certain dogmas of the faith; secondly, to devote themselves body and soul to all evil; thirdly, to offer up unbaptized children to Satan; fourthly, to indulge in every kind of carnal lust with Incubi and Succubi and all manner of filthy delights". (I, 2)
-"We know of an old woman who, according to the common account of the brothers in that monastery even up to this day, in this manner not only bewitched three successive Abbots, but even killed them, and in the same ways drove the fourth out of this mind. For she herself publicly confessed it, and does not fear to say: I did so and I do so, and they are not able to keep from loving me because they have eatenso much of my dung-measuring off a certain length on her arm". (I, 7)
-"the novice was compelled to swear to deny the Christian religion, never to adore the Eucharist, and to tread the Cross underfoot whenever she could do so secretly". (II, i, 2)
-"A Succubus devil draws the semem from a wicked man; and if he is that man's own particular devil, and does not wish to make himself an Incubus to a witch, he passes that semen on to the devil deputed to a woman or a witch; and this last, under some constellation that favours his purpose that the man or woman so born should be strong in the practice of witchcraft, becomes the Incubus to the witch". (II, i, 4)
-"Devils, therefore, by means of witches, so afflict their innocent neigbours with temporal losses, that they are as it were compelled, first to beg the suffrages of witches, and at length to submit themselves to their counsels; as many experiences have taught us".(II, 1)
9. MOST PAGANS ARE MISGUIDED BY DEVILS
-"The devil delights in such things, and caused the illusion of the pagans who believed that men and old women were changed into beasts". (I, 10)
-"It must not be omitted that certain wicked women, perverted by Satan and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of devils, believe and profess that they ride in the night hours on certain beats with Diana, the heathen goddess, or with Herodias, and with a countless number of women, and that in the untimely silence of night they travel over great distances of land". (I, 10)
