Malleus Malificorum - The Inquisition and Witchcraft or Heresy

by Jani Farrell Roberts. c2000 - mistress of this webspace

An extract from her book "Seven Days: Tales of Magic, Sex and Gender."

In 1484 Pope Innocent 8th, well known for giving his illegitimate children splendid Vatican weddings, had come to so fear the influence of witches over his sexual progress that he appointed as Inquisitors into witchcraft two German Dominicans, Jakov Sprenger, and Heinrich Kramer. The Pope said their appointment was because of reports that in the dioceses of Cologne, Mainz, Trier and Salzburg many women and some men were engaging in sorcery "to make the conjugal act impossible."

Witches and devils were supposed to have special power over human sexuality because Augustine and other Fathers had taught that this was the most corrupted part of human behaviour. A man sainted by the Catholic church, Bonaventure (d 1274), a famous Franciscan theologian, taught "because the sexual act has been corrupted (though original sin) and has become, so to speak, stinking and because human beings besides are for the most part too lustful, the devil has so much power and authority over them." He justified this by quoting the biblical book Tobit that Jerome had doctored to make it pro celibacy.

Sprenger was deeply devoted to a miraculously pure and powerful woman and mother who was said to have never known carnal pleasure, the Virgin Mother Mary. He founded the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary in her honour. He was also highly influenced by an earlier Dominican, St Thomas Aquinas, who had ruled that Satan had particular control over human sexuality because "of the loathsome nature of the act of generation, and because through it original sin is transmitted to all men." (Iq. 3: q. 10)

In the resulting book "Maleus Maleficorum" which meant "Hammer of Evil Doers" (mistranslated popularly as "Hammer of the Witches"), Sprenger and Kramer demanded the death sentence for all witches who caused impotence. Their views on contraception outdid the current anti-abortion extremists in the US who are shooting doctors who do abortions. They taught that wasting human seed by sex outside the vagina (which they called "the ordained vessel") was worthy of a death sentence - as were all acts of contraception. They justified this by quoting particularly St Thomas Aquinas. They also used mock science: 'there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in the contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives.... All witchcraft comes from carnal lust which in women is insatiable" Their book went through 19 editions and was a principle text for the Inquisition.

They based many of their arguments on documents written by the Fathers of the Church in the first centuries of the Christian era.. These documents were so well used that it was as if these Fathers had lived only a few years earlier rather than a thousand years before. The theory that women were allied with Satan and thus could use magic to give cause involuntary erections was now put to use to explain why women had power over the medieval phallus. Yet despite the reliance of the persecutors on the Fathers of the early church, Ronald Hutton, who has written much of value on the pagan history of the British Isle, has surprisingly exonerated the early Church from blame for the witchtrials. He wrote: "Certainly the early Church cannot be held responsible for the mass burnings of heretics which commenced seven centuries after its installation in power or the great witch hunt that commenced eleven centuries later.") - P257 The pagan religions of the British Isles.

Women were said to be practising witchcraft when they "charmed" men " and inclined " the minds of men to inordinate passion" (MM) (Thus if a man raped a woman, she may be to blame because she must have "enchanted" him.) We still use the words the witch-hunters used when we speak of the power of a beautiful woman. A glamorous woman is casting an illusion. A "glamour" was an illusion created by a woman's spell. A beautiful woman is said to "enchant", "charm", "bewitch" us. These words were first used to deny that the beauty of women was naturally attractive to men. They said it was not her beauty that attracted men, but her use of diabolical pagan magic to attract men. Many men loved this theory because it meant they never needed to acknowledge any woman as more talented or spiritually powerful than they. If they did feel a woman was superior, she must be literally bewitching them. (P32)

The authors of Malleus Mallificorum were very grateful they were not women. They thankfully prayed: "Blessed be the Highest who has so far preserved the male sex from so great an evil." Despite this, these authors had no doubt that the magic of women entailed a female talent for using the powers of nature. They agreed that witches could do wondrous things without supernatural help for "the most extraordinary and miraculous events came to pass by the workings of the powers of nature." (P13) and witches cannot operate "except through the medium of the natural powers". (p40) (something I agree with utterly.) Of course they added that women did not naturally have great magical powers. Women, they said, were weak and thus could only do major acts of magic by putting themselves under the command of devils.

A pact with the devil was an essential part of witchcraft in the minds of these Inquisitors. This attitude has modified in more recent Catholic teachings. In 1999 the Catholic Encyclopaedia On-line defined the magic of witchcraft as "the production of effects beyond the natural power of man by agencies other than the Divine." This definition still relies on the existence of a supernatural world separate from nature - a distinction not accepted by most modern "witches' who see magic as entirely based on nature. (I exclude those who practice "high magic" as they normally call themselves magicians, not witches.)

The authors of "Hammer of the Witches" extraordinarily targeted midwives. Kramer and Sprenger declared that: "no one does more harm to the Catholic Church than midwives." A question that excited them was why "the witch-midwives exceed all other witches in deeds of shame" (III q 34) If a baby was still-born or aborted, they said the midwife present could have killed the child to steal its soul. This was based on Augustine's teaching that unbaptised babies belong to the devil. They also suspected midwives because of a ruling of St Thomas Aquinas that it would be a heresy to deny there were witches with power over human conception. They also accused midwives of dedicating children to the devil. These charges lead to the deaths of many midwives by "incineration" - the word used by these authors.

The Inquisition gave the "Medical Doctors" trained by the universities and sanctioned by the Church, the power of life or death over all female healers or midwives. If any woman was accused of 'healing' before a witchcraft tribunal, the presumption was that she had cured through witchcraft. But to be doubly sure, the authors of Malleus Mallificorum said that the question of how the woman had healed the patient should be put to a "Qualified Medical Doctor". If he said she had cured through witchcraft, then she would die. (P41) According to some recent scholarship, up to 20% of those killed as witches were healers.

Sprenger and Kramer had a blind faith in these new male doctors. They recommended them for cures for witch-induced impotency. (P157) "Although some of their remedies seem to be vain and superstitious cantrips and charms [for] everybody must be trusted in his profession." The operative word here is "his". No such trust was extended to female midwives and healers - unless one be a bishop. They noted that one bishop had received a dispensation to go to a witch to have removed from him an illness inflicted by another witch - and that witches offering to do such magic were so common at that time that they could be found "every German mile or two" along the highways. It is likely that other witches survived by offering services against those who did black magic.

Catholic authorities thought that the resistance shown to torture by the women accused of witchcraft was so extraordinary that it must be due to supernatural help from the Devil - or from other witches. (It has been suggested by some witchcraft authorities such as Dorleen Valiente that this help was more likely given by sister herbalists in the forms of painkilling preparations.) The current Catholic Encyclopaedia, in its entry on Witchcraft trials, stated that the most surprising element was that many women who were not tortured still maintained that they were witches even when on the scaffold. This suggested that they were proud of being witches.

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