Witch Hunters - Heinrich Kramer And Jacob Sprenger

The legal system of witch hunting in the early modern period led to the formation of professionals who committed themselves to protect society against women they saw as a threat. New published works helped to unified ideas about witchcraft as a work of evil into obvious sexualized stereotype.
Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger among others were known very well for their passionate fight against witches. This dedication created the most known witch hunt manual Malleus Maleficarum.

Heinrich Kramer

Two Dominican inquisitors are famous for publishing Malleus Maleficarum - The Witches Hammer. For that time the text became fundamental and for today valuable source of contemporary though.

Heinrich Kramer was assigned as inquisitor in 1474 for southern Germany as highly trained theologian.

Professor of theology at the University of Cologne Jacob Sprenger became an inquisitor in 1470 for Rhineland.

Both of them claimed that women are more likely to be heretical then man because they are more superstitious, impressionable and possessed with carnal lust.

During the involvement in judical proceeding against witches they met some resistance from local religious authorities so they obtain papal bull from Pope Innocent VIII to continue with persecution.

The bull accused witches of all manner of abomination:

It has indeed lately come to Our ears, not without afflicting Us with bitter sorrow, that in some parts of Northern Germany, as well as in the provinces, townships, territories, districts, and dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Salzburg, and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and bz their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother´s womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, with terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases, both internal and external; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from coceiving, whence husbands cannot know their wives nor wives receive their husbands; over and above this, they blaphemously renounce that Faith which is theirs bz the Sacrament of Baptism, and at the instigation of the Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink from committing the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses to the deadly peril of their own souls, whereby they outrage the Divine Majesty and are a cause of scandal and danger to very many.

Jacob Sprenger

The Malleus Maleficarum was published in 1486 but it was not the first manual for people involved in judging witches. Similar work was called Directorium Inquisitorum by Nicholas Eymerich published in 1376.

The Witches Hammer

The Witches´Hammer played big part in witch hunting because it educated large audience about witches and diabolic witchcraft. Before that flying witches, magic, maleficence was part of ordinary peoples´ beliefs and they did not share same world view as an educated elite.

This witch hunt manual unify the ideas about witchcraft and gave them theological support. It created stereotype of women to be seen as a witches. The biggest contribution of this work was addition of sexual element into this stereotype. It states that the word ´women´ is used to mean ´lust of flesh´. Because Eve the first woman was formed from the rib of the man, women are defective, imperfect and always deceive. Women are naturally more carnal than men, and ´all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable´.

burning of witches

The Malleus Maleficarum offers legal advice how to bring witches to trial. To start the process of trial, the notice was to be put on walls of the church or town hall.
Text offers the information about the arrest, treatment of witnesses, defense, use of torture and sentencing. Judges got warnings not to touch a witch and always carry salt that had been consecrated on Palm Sunday together with some blessed herbs enclosed in blessed wax and worn around the neck.
A witch should be led to judge backwards and he must cross himself.

Impacted of this book was limited. Spanish Inquisition was skeptical about its value.

Pope Innocent VIII did not sanction the work but he did encourage Kramer and Sprenger to hunt witches. They attached the papal bull to the front of the book to made it look as it has official approval.