Malleus Maleficarum

Malleus Maleficarum
Hammer of Witches
Title page of the seventh Cologne edition of the Malleus Maleficarum, 1520 (from the University of Sydney Library). The Latin title is "MALLEUS MALEFICARUM, Maleficas, & earum hæresim, ut phramea potentissima conterens." (Generally translated into English as The Hammer of Witches which destroyeth Witches and their heresy as with a two-edged sword).
Full title	Malleus Maleficarum
Also known as	Hammer of Witches
Author(s)	Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger
Language	Latin
Date	1486
Date of issue	1487

The Malleus Maleficarum, usually translated as Hammer of Witches, is the best known and the most important treatise on witchcraft. It was written by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer (under his Latinized name Henricus Institoris) and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1487. It endorses extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a detailed legal and theological theory. It was a bestseller, second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years.

Malleus elevates sorcery to the criminal status of heresy and prescribes inquisitorial practices for secular courts in order to extirpate witches. The recommended procedures include torture to effectively obtain confessions and death penalty as the only sure remedy against evils of witchcraft. At that time, it was typical to burn heretics alive at the stake and Malleus encouraged the same treatment of witches. The book had a strong influence on culture for several centuries.

Jacob Sprenger's name was added as an author beginning in 1519, 33 years after the book's first publication and 24 years after Sprenger's death; but the veracity of this late addition has been questioned by many historians for various reasons.

Kramer wrote the Malleus following his expulsion from Innsbruck by the local bishop, due to charges of illegal behavior against Kramer himself, and because of Kramer's obsession with the sexual habits of one of the accused, Helena Scheuberin, which led the other tribunal members to suspend the trial.

It was later used by royal courts during the Renaissance, and contributed to the increasingly brutal prosecution of witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Magical acts and witchcraft had long been forbidden by the Church, whose attitude towards witchcraft was explained in the canon Episcopi written in about 900 AD. It stated that witchcraft and magic were just delusions and that those who believed in such things "had been seduced by the Devil in dreams and visions". However, in the same period supernatural intervention was accepted in the form of ordeals that were later also used during witch trials.Possessions by the Devil are considered real even in present times by some Christians and it is a part of doctrine that demons may be cast out by appropriate sacramental exorcisms. In Malleus, exorcism is, for example, one of the five ways to overcome the attacks of incubi.Prayer and transubstantiation are traditionally excluded by Christians from the category of magical rites.