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The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. Written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theological discussion, illustrative anecdotes and useful advice for those involved in suppressing witchcraft, the treatise's influence on witchcraft studies has been extensive. The only previous translation into English, that by Montague Summers in 1928, is full of inaccuracies. It is written in a style almost unreadable nowadays, and is unfortunately coloured by Institoris's personal agenda. This new edited translation, with an introductory essay setting witchcraft, Institoris and the Malleus into clear English, corrects Summers' mistakes and offers an unvarnished version of what Institoris actually wrote. It will undoubtedly become the standard translation of this controversial late medieval text.
convenience, included here the provisions of Dominican provincial chapters, which cast interesting light on relations between ordinary Dominican brothers and Dominican inquisitors. These are of course a very different sort of document from the ecclesiastical councils or Raymond VII’s Edict; but it can be said that all are concerned with setting out rules to be obeyed. As they do so, they reveal as much about the concerns of those in authority as they do about the subsequent outcomes and behaviour of those subject to the rules
This section presents Part I of The Malleus Maleficarum, one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches, written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris. Part I is addressed to fellow theologians, and is devoted to showing that the conspiratorial pact between workers of harmful magic and evil spirits is no fantasy but a present reality, and that the cause of the increasing numbers of witches lies in the sexual relations between women and evil spirits. It is thus an extended essay in demonology rather than a handbook.
This section presents Part IIII of The Malleus Maleficarum, one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches, written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris. Part III is indeed more like a manual. Addressed to judges both ecclesiastical and secular, it covers a large number of technical points anent the arrest, examination, and sentencing of workers of harmful magic, offering examples of the appropriate formulae to be used in whatever circumstance the examining and sentencing judge might fi nd himself. This part could, in fact, almost be detached from the rest of the treatise without affecting the other two.
The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. It was written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theological discussion, illustrative anecdotes, and useful advice for those involved in suppressing witchcraft, its influence on witchcraft studies has been extensive.
The only previous translation into English, that by Montague Summers produced in 1928, is full of inaccuracies. It is written in a style almost unreadable nowadays, and is unfortunately coloured by his personal agenda. This new edited translation, with an introductory essay setting witchcraft, Institoris, and the Malleus into clear, readable English, corrects Summers’ mistakes and offers a lean, unvarnished version of what Institoris actually wrote. It will undoubtedly become the standard translation of this important and controversial late-medieval text.
This section presents Part II of The Malleus Maleficarum, one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches, written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris. Part II is intended for preachers and certainly contains a large number of anecdotes and instances which they could use in their sermons, but it is far from being a mere collection of useful stories. Its constant thrust not only repeats the messages of Part I, but also makes clear an important step in Institoris’s general argument – that the many popular beliefs and practices there presented, in one form or another, show that one cannot distinguish between a practitioner of magic of whatever kind she or he might be and a heretical devotee of Satan.
theory. Nowell was learned; he had read King James and William Perkins, and probably recent accounts of English witch trials. He may well have known the Malleus Maleficarum , the baleful encyclopaedia of the demonic written in 1486 by the Dominican inquisitors Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer and endorsed by papal bull. 20 The paradigms in Nowell’s mind were those anecdotes about witches which had swirled round the northern foothills of the Alps in the late fifteenth century and which, under the influence of Dominican inquisitors, had crystallised into the doctrine
’700 (Modena: Mucchi, 1986), pp. 51–95. Biondi notes too a significant decline in the number of charges from the 1750s, in the last twenty years of Inquisitorial activity (1766–85). During these years there were only seven registered proceedings. 11 Siegmund, The Medici State, p. 405. 12 Ibid., 411. 13 ASMoFI Editti e Decreti 1550–1670, busta 270. VII. See also the edict issued in Bologna on 6 June 1733, signed by Father de Andujar, the Dominican Inquisitor of Bologna, which listed dozens of restrictions on Jews, including a ban on hiring either male or female
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. In an extensive treatise written in the early sixteenth century, the Dominican inquisitor Sylvester Prieras treats the Malleus throughout as the authoritative witchcraft text, and refers to Institoris as a vir magnus.10 At about the same time, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola praises the Malleus at length in his dialogue on witchcraft, and lists its authors along with Augustine and
] 24. URBAN IV, REGARDING FRANCISCAN INQUISITORS IN PROVENCE (BULL OF 25 NOVEMBER 1263) What little is known about inquisition in south-eastern France has been put together by Jacques Chiffoleau. 42 Dominican inquisitors are glimpsed before the resumption of inquisition by bishops (1249–55), but from the 1260s the inquisitors in these areas were Franciscans. Their activities can be traced mainly through papal bulls rather than through inquisition acts. The transition between the two orders is