Description
In the spirit of the season, we return to the infamous 1486 demonological witch-hunting manual, the Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer, specifically Book 2, Chapter 7 which focuses on a very peculiar but prevalent aspect of witch belief in 15th century Germany: the theft and collection of virile members.
You can read the Montague Summers translation quoted here for free (https://sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/index.htm), but I more strongly recommend the edition by Christopher S. Mackay (available here: https://amzn.to/3Ud9vh3) for serious research into Kramer's text.
Addendum: In hindsight, something I feel like I did not emphasize enough in this video is how overrated the Malleus Maleficarum is in terms of being a *cause* for the witch craze. We need to think of it instead as a *symptom.* This is a work of Dominican polemic, not something that was widely used by inquisitors or even secular magistrates outside of southern Germany (though they did use Eymeric's work, large chunks of which constitute the third book of the Malleus, the book concerned with conducting actual witch trials). I should also specify that Innocent VIII's 1484 bull of papal approval 'Summis desiderantes' was for Kramer's inquisitorial jurisdiction, not exactly for the Malleus itself, which was written two years later.
Much of the Malleus' significance actually emerges in the 20th century, when it was popularized by Montague Summers and turned into a 'witchfinder's bible' of sorts, but its actual impact on fueling the witch craze in the 16th and 17th centuries is limited. So to re-emphasize the point: the Malleus is more a symptom than a cause of the witch craze, a point that, if I had infinite time, I could make into a video all on its own. The causes for the witch craze are extremely complex and numerous, and demonology certainly played a role, but we should turn to someone like Johannes Nider (working from the reports of secular magistrates in Germany) to find a text that had more immediate impact in his own day.
#medievalhistory #medieval #witchcraft #witches #malleusmaleficarum #witchcraze #history
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