Malleus Maleficarum

[[File:Malleus.jpg|thumb|right|165px|The how-to guide for all your witch burning needs]]
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'''''Malleus Maleficarum''''', or '''''The Hammer of the Witches''''' in English, was a serious attempt by the [[Inquisition|inquisitor]] Heinrich Kramer to 
debunk
 rebunk a number of myths about [[witch]]es and was published in 1487. The [[Roman Catholic Church]] had previously denied the existence of witchcraft at various points during the [[Middle Ages]], relegating witch burning to a folk practice (and notably, Kramer himself had been expelled from the town of Innsbruck after a witch trial he was involved in found the "witch" innocent, as his obsession with her sexual habits and supposed guilt convinced the local bishop that Kramer had gone insane). The publication of ''Malleus'' helped launch a new [[moral panic]] over witchcraft and became a standard handbook in the prosecution and [[torture]] of "witches." It was also responsible for helping to spread [[sexism]] as it claimed that women were easily tempted into 
making a contract with Kyubey
 sleeping with the [[Devil]] and thereby being turned into 
magical girls
 witches. The book discusses recruitment practices of witches and [[Satan]], how to identify witches, and methods of 
punishment
 torture. In a possibly unrivaled-in-history instance of complete gullibility, Kramer included a 15<sup>th</sup>-century dirty joke (with the punchline, "But the biggest cock belonged to the priest") as a factual account of witchcraft:

{{quotebox|width=70%|And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil’s work and illusion, for the senses of those who see them are deluded in the way we have said. For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of the nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belongs to a parish priest.<ref>[http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/?p=39 The The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer & James Sprenger: Part II, Question I, Chapter VII]</ref>{{dead}}}}

As described in ''Malleus Maleficarum'', the methods to be used in the [[witch hunt]] fall into six parts:<ref>''The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake'' by Steven Novella et al. (2018) Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 9781538760536.</ref>{{rp|221-222}}
{{collist|2|
#"Accusation equals guilt"
#"Suspension of the normal rules of [[evidence]]"
#"Allowing spectral evidence" ([[dream]]s and visions)
#"Methods of investigation as bad as the punishment for conviction" ([[torture]] and [[death]])
#"Encouraging accusations"
#"Accusations used as a weapon"
}}

==See also==
*[[European witch-hunts]]
*[[Incubus and succubus myths]]
*[[Koro]]

==External links==
*[http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/ ''Malleus Maleficarum'' online]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{stub|Paranormal}}

[[Category:Books]]
[[Category:Paranormal]]
[[Category:Catholicism]]
[[Category:Sexism]]

Categories: Books, Paranormal, Catholicism, Sexism