page_title: Malleus Maleficarum
section_title: Victims
hierarchical_section_title: Malleus Maleficarum / Theological foundations and major themes / Victims
context_page_description: The Malleus Maleficarum, usually translated as the Hammer of Witches, is the best known treatise on witchcraft. It was written by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1486. It endorses extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a detailed legal and theological theory. It has been described as the compendium of literature in demonology of the fifteenth century. The top theologians of the Inquisition at the Faculty of Cologne condemned the book as recommending unethical and illegal procedures, as well as being inconsistent with Catholic doctrines of demonology.
  The Malleus elevates sorcery to the criminal status of heresy and recommends that secular courts prosecute it as such in order to eliminate witches. The recommended procedures include torture to effectively obtain confessions and the death penalty as the only sure remedy against the evils of witchcraft. At that time, it was typical to burn heretics alive at the stake and the Malleus encouraged the same treatment of witches. The book had a strong influence on culture for several centuries.
context_section_description: The treatise describes how women and men become inclined to practice witchcraft. The text argues that women are more susceptible to demonic temptations through the manifold weaknesses of their gender. It was believed that they were weaker in faith and more carnal than men. Michael Bailey claims that most of the women accused as witches had strong personalities and were known to defy convention by overstepping the lines of proper female decorum. After the publication of the Malleus, it seems as though about three quarters of those individuals prosecuted as witches were women. 
  Witches were usually female. The reasons for this is the suggestion that women are "prone to believing and because the demon basically seeks to corrupt the faith, he assails them in particular." They also have a "temperament towards flux" and "loose tongues". They "are defective in all the powers of both soul and body" and are stated to be more lustful than men. 
  The major reason is that at the foundation of sorcery is denial of faith and "woman, therefore, is evil as a result of nature because she doubts more quickly in the faith." Men could be witches, but were considered rarer, and the reasons were also different. The most common form of male witch mentioned in the book is the sorcerer-archer. The book is rather unclear, but the impetus behind male witches seems to come more from desire for power than from disbelief or lust, as it claims is the case for female witches.
  Indeed, the very title of the Malleus Maleficarum is feminine, alluding to the idea that it was women who were the villains. Otherwise, it would be the Malleus Maleficorum (the masculine form of the Latin noun maleficus or malefica, 'witch'). In Latin, the feminine maleficarum would only be used for women, while the masculine maleficorum could be used for men alone or for both sexes if together. The Malleus Maleficarum accuses male and female witches of infanticide, cannibalism and casting evil spells to harm their enemies as well as having the power to steal a man's penis. It goes on to give accounts of witches committing these crimes.
  
  Arguments favoring discrimination against women are explicit in the handbook. Those arguments are not novel but constitute a selection from the long tradition of Western misogynist writings. However, according to Brauner, they are combined to produce new meanings and result in a comprehensive theory. It mixes elements borrowed from Formicarius (1435), Preceptorium divinae legis (1475) and Lectiones super ecclesiastes (1380).
  Kramer and Sprenger develop a powerful gender-specific theory of witchcraft based on a hierarchical and dualistic view of the world. Everything exists in pairs of opposites: God and Satan, Mary and Eve, and men (or virgins) and women. Each positive principle in a pair is delineated by its negative pole. Perfection is defined not as the integration or preservation of opposites, but rather as the extermination of the negative element in a polar pair. Because women are the negative counterpart to men, they corrupt male perfection through witchcraft and must be destroyed.
  Although authors give many examples of male witchery in the second part of the handbook, those witchcraft trials that are independently confirmed and that were led by Kramer himself are related to persecution of women almost exclusively. They took place in Ravensburg near Constance (1484) and Innsbruck (since 1485). According to Brauner, trial records confirm that Kramer believed that women are by nature corrupt and evil. His position was in harmony with the scholastic theory at the time. 
  
  In contrast, Sprenger never conducted a witch trial though he was consulted in a few cases. Kramer and Sprenger use a metaphor of a world turned upside down by women of which concubines are the most wicked, followed by midwives and then by wives who dominate their husbands. Authors warn of imminent arrival of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible and that men risk bewitchment that leads to impotence and sensation of castration. Brauner explains authors' prescription on how a wom
caption: The execution of alleged witches in Central Europe, 1587
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