THE MALLEUS MALIFICARUM - 
      A Commentary

      © Stephanie du Barry 1994
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      In 1486 two Dominican monks, Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer penned their famous work, the Malleus Malificarum. This work was written to address the growing concern of the certain church members, and members of the intellectual elite, over the increasing power of the Devil to endanger Christian society, a concern which had been constantly growing over the centuries1. The late medieval church had lost the optimism it had enjoyed in its early existence and after the calamities which had hit Europe over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, plague, war and their consequences, churchmen were constantly struggling with dualism (the timeless struggle between Good and Evil personified in God and the Devil) and were now becoming fearful that the Devil was wining2. The Devil, they believed, was constantly being helped by increasing numbers of human beings who devoted their lives to his cause - namely witches. This was the intellectual environment in which scholastic demonology was conceived and out of which the Malleus was born.

      In the second half of the fifteenth century there appeared a number of writings establishing the reality of a diabolical conspiracy against Christendom and the Malleus provides a comprehensive study of the confessions gained at hundreds of witch trials throughout Germany/Switzerland. It aimed to demonstrate exactly what witches were doing and how they could be stopped3 by attempting to interpret the confused and conflicting beliefs of and practices of semi-Christianised peasants, gained often through torture, in terms of a coherent doctrine on witchcraft4.

      The Malleus Malificarum was written in three parts, Part 1 treating the three necessities of witchcraft as it was believed, ie. the Devil, the witch and the permission of almighty God, and this part contains the basic arguments of the Malleus. Part 2 treats the methods by which witches operate and how their "spells" can be counteracted while Part 3 relates to the judicial proceedings against witches (and all heretics - because witchcraft was seen as being a heresy) in both ecclesiastical and civil courts.

      These basic arguments are that:

      • witchcraft exists and it is a heresy to believe otherwise5
      • the Devil has interfered in human affairs since the beginning of the world and his interference is incessant
      • God allows the Devil to do as he will, and witches to perform their misdeeds as part of his universal plan 6.
      The witch of the Malleus is typically a female using peasant sorcery of spells and charms as part of this organised diabolical conspiracy over Christendom. Women are the weaker sex, imperfect having been created from the bent rib of Adam7 and "the root of all woman's vices is avarice"8 Kramer and Sprenger, drawing from their sources (and probably from their own monkish misogyny) name three general vices which "appear to have special dominion over wicked women, namely infidelity, ambition and lust"9 and the third is given the most emphasis. Apart from this very general description of the witch, the authors make no real attempt to define the word malefica taking for granted the existence universally defined "witch" drawn from concrete examples within a specific region of what is today Germany/Switzerland10.

      The Devil is tireless in enticing and alluring the innocent to increase his own fold but human lust is exploited most by the Devil in order to bring harm to humankind and since women are naturally more lustful than men11, he exploits them the most in this way. God, on the other hand, permits the Devil in this exploitation because sex was the first way in which the Devil was able to make man his slave. By which ever means the Devil employs to recruits his agents, however, they must formally renounce their Christian beliefs and make a formal pact with Evil. The belief in this compact allowed inquisitors such as Kramer and Sprenger to differentiate between witchcraft and heresy because "all other simple heresies have made no open compact with the devil", 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"12.

      So what do witches do? Question 1 of Part 2 of the Malleus is devoted to answering this question, in vivid colour, and makes clear that the witch can perform any number of evil deeds which may otherwise have been wrongly assumed to have been the result of natural causes, eg. raising hailstorms and lightning, causing sterility in men and animals, offering to devils infants who have died before baptism (those whom they have not devoured themselves), throwing children into water when their parents aren't looking, making horses go mad under their riders to name but a few. In fact, the authors methodically dispose of competing explanations for such misfortunes and conclude that many such cases must be attributed to the work of witches. Different "degrees" of witches are granted different powers but "it is common to all of them to practice carnal copulation with devils"13 . This witch of the Malleus combines many aspects of local peasant folklore with the characteristics of Medea, Circe, Kassandra and the baby-eating Thebans.

      Kramer and Sprenger state that in the practice of witchcraft, four particular points are required:

      • profanely renouncing the Catholic faith
      • devoting themselves "body and soul to all evil"
      • offering up unbaptised children to Satan
      • indulgence in "every kind of carnal lust with Incubi and Succubi and all manner of filthy delights"14.
      Kramer and Sprenger's obsession with the sexual nature of the relationship that witches have with the Devil, or with demons in the form of incubi and succubi, is justified by their belief that this kind of lust is particularly onerous because:
      • female witches copulate with incubi, absorbing seminal fluid which has been drawn from a human male by means of a succubi and thereby be impregnated by the Devil (genetically confusing?) and give birth to another generation of carefully instructed witches15 to carry on their evil work - increasing the population of the Devil's own
      • and, most importantly,
      that these women satisfy their filthy lusts not only in themselves, but even in the mighty ones of the age ... causing by all sorts of witchcraft the death of their souls through the excessive infatuation of carnal love, in such a way that for no shame or persuasion can they desist from such acts. And through such men, since the witches will not permit any harm to come to them either from themselves or from others once they have them in their power, there arises the great danger of the time, namely, the extermination of the Faith. And in this way do witches everyday increase.16

      So witchcraft is seen as a conspiracy in which the witches themselves are protected by their influential lovers, thereby increasing in their own powers17.

      Clerical fear (and male fear in general) of women and lust is evident in the claims made upon witches' power to interfere with the natural procreative activities of human beings. Witches, it is claimed, have the power (through the Devil, of course) to render any man impotent at any time with any woman, whether it be his lawful wife or his lover/mistress. Thus a man may be rendered able to "perform" for his wife but not for his mistress or vice-versa.18. She is able to make a man's penis appear to disappear or to disappear entirely and reappear in a bird's nest or box19. Indeed, "There is no doubt that certain witches can do marvellous things with regard to male organs"20!

      This general obsession with interference in natural procreation reveals a deep seated fear, held by the church and many members of the intellectual elite, that the Devil, through witches, may prevent the conception of normal, legitimate Christian children whilst the population of a diabolically conceived second generation witches would increase thereby giving rise to the "extermination of the Faith".

      The document itself, and its basic arguments, is extremely confused because of the necessity of the writers to allow God to come up on top, ie God must not be allowed to be seen as losing this perennial fight with the Devil. The Devil, at the same time, cannot be seen to acting entirely without the will of God otherwise he could destroy everything that God created - and God also created the Devil therefore the Devil must exist, and perform, entirely with the permission of God Himself. The problem is a complex one and the writers draw upon the writings of the church fathers and notable classical writers such as Aristotle for their conclusions.

      The authors believed that witchcraft was a phenomenon as ancient as mankind itself and they argue in Part 1 that until relatively recent times the Devil had recruited servants against their will but in recent times large numbers of people actually volunteered for the Devil's work21. Kramer and Sprenger explained this by claiming that people had become more sinful so more susceptible to the Devil's temptation. As for the Devil, he preferred to work his evil through witches not only for his own gain, the perdition of souls, but also because since witches, humans, were God's creation, the insult to God was greater and that when God is thus offended, he permits the devil even more power to injure men22.

      The arguments within the Malleus are circular, built upon the assumption that God permits the Devil to perform his evil work through humans. Therefore, since the Devil and witches exist only through God's grace and act only on God's permission, are they really sinning? Kramer and Sprenger never really address this question but cite the Scriptures, the church fathers and Aristotle in stating that God uses the Devil and witches to punish evil. All rather confusing!

      The problem of free will is not resolved satisfactorily either. Human beings have the choice between good and evil and if he chooses evil then it can only be because of the Devil, whose will is entirely evil -"the motive of the will is something perceived through the senses or the intellect, both of which are subject to the power of the devil"23 for evil abides everywhere. Later, however, the authors state that the act of the will is governed solely by God while the act of the intellect is governed by an Angel (presumably a "good" Angel or an "evil" Angel/demon)24. But since the Devil and all his evil angels, and witches themselves are acting by God's permission does it not follow that God's will, too, is at times evil? For "evil angels may and do perform the will of God"25. With regard to divine permission and free will, the Malleus leaves more questions unanswered than otherwise.

      The third part of the Malleus, dealing with judicial proceedings, looks at three ways of initiating a case against an accused witch:

      • firstly, direct accusation by a person, before a judge, of the crime of heresy
      • secondly, denouncing a person anonymously, "not as an accuser but as an informer"26 or thirdly
      • inquisition.
      The first method is specifically advised against because "it is not actuated by motives of faith" and is "full of danger to the accuser because of the penalty of talion" and (probably most importantly) "it is very litigious"27. The second method also is very "litigious", so the third method stands out because it "is the commonest and most usual one, because it is secret, and no accuser or informer has to appear"28. And, of course, it is easier for all concerned to proceed as they will towards the desired outcome, ie the conviction. The justification, not surprisingly, came down to the will of God - for the Devil could not defame the innocent and neither would God punish them or even permit them to be punished on suspicion of witchcraft29.

      The Malleus was not the first such treaties on witchcraft but the scholastic origin probably imposed a uniformity on witchcraft belief, by placing hundreds of separate beliefs, the results of hundreds of inquisitions, under the one cover as it were, thus the Malleus conveyed a seal of orthodoxy on the fact of "witchcraft"30.

      Kramer and Sprenger did not, however, put as great an emphasis on the Sabbat, the devil's mark or the osculum infame as later demonologists would, nor does their pornography include the reference to homosexual practices either at witch meetings (or with incubi) which was common amongst accusations made against non-conformist groups such as Jews and heretics. Indeed, Kramer and Sprenger deny that even the Devil himself (or his demons) was involved in "the act wrongfully performed outside the rightful channel"31.

      The authors did not make any real contribution to the development of witch belief but the Malleus was novel in it's overemphasis on the susceptibility of women to succumb to the crime. None of the ideas in the Malleus were particularly new but they were now consolidated into one volume and printed which helped to disseminate these collective beliefs about witches. It also provided a sound theological background to the ideas it was promulgating along with legal advice on how to bring the accused to trial along with the claim that it was heretical to deny the reality of witchcraft32.

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      FOOTNOTES:

      1. Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, Paladin, 1976, p 17
      2. GR Quaife, Godly Zeal and Furious Rage - The Witch in Early Modern Europe, Croom Helm, London & Sydney, 1987, p.21
      3. Sydney Anglo, "Evident Authority and Authoritative Evidence: The Malleus Malificarum" in Sydney Anglo (Ed.), The Damned Art - Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Henley and Boston, 1977, p 15
      4. Christopher Baxter, "Jean Bodin's De La Demonomanie Des Sorceriers: The Logic of Persecution" in Sydney Anglo, op. cit. pp 76 - 105
      5. Kramer & Sprenger, Malleus Malificarum (Part 1 Quest I), Translated with an Introduction, Bibliography and Notes by the Rev. Montague Summers, The Hogarth Press, London, 1928, p 4
      6. ibid, (Part 1 Quest XII) p. 66
      7. ibid, (Part 1 Quest VI) p 44
      8. ibid, p 43
      9. ibid, p 47
      10. Elliot Rose, A Razor for a Goat, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1989, p31
      11. Kramer & Sprenger, op. cit. p 47
      12. ibid, (Part 1 Quest II), p 26
      13. ibid, (Part 2 Quest 1 Chap II), p 109
      14. ibid, p 27
      15. ibid, (Part 1 Quest III), p. 22, and (Part 2 Quest 1 Chap IV), p111
      16. ibid, (Part 1 Quest VI), p 48 (my emphasis)
      17. Sydney Anglo, op. cit p. 17-18
      18. Kramer & Sprenger, op. cit, (Part 1 Quest VIII), p.55
      19. ibid, (Part 2 Quest 1 Chap VII), p 121
      20. ibid, (Part 1 Quest IX), p 58
      21. ibid, (Part 1 Quest V, p 31 in Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1985, p 45
      22. ibid, (Part 2, Chap VII, p 122
      23. ibid, p 32
      24. ibid, p 35
      25. ibid, (Part 1 Quest 1), p 8
      26. ibid, (Part III, Quest 1), p206
      27. ibid, p 205
      28. ibid, p 207
      29. Sydney Anglo, op. cit, p 38 and Kramer & Sprenger, op. cit. p136
      30. Elliott Rose, op. cit, p 33
      31. Kramer & Sprenger, op. cit, (Part 1 Quest 4) p 30
      32. Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, Longman, London, 1987, pp 49 - 50.

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      ANGLO, Sydney, (Ed.), The Damned Art - Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Henley and Boston, 1977

      COHN, Norman Europe's Inner Demons, Paladin, 1976

      KRAMER, H, & SPRENGER, J, Malleus Malificarum , Translated with an Introduction, Bibliography and Notes by the Rev. Montague Summers, The Hogarth Press, London, 1928

      LEVACK, Brian, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, Longman, London, 1987

      QUAIFE, GR, Godly Zeal and Furious Rage - The Witch in Early Modern Europe, Croom Helm, London & Sydney, 1987

      ROSE, Elliot , A Razor for a Goat, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1989