Heinrich Kramer (1430-1505) and Malleus Malleficarum
1519
St. Thomas Aquinas was quoted more than one hundred times in what is arguably the most influential work to discuss the evils of witchcraft, Malleus Maleficarum [Hammer of Witches], published in Germany in 1486. Its author, Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican monk and inquisitor, used the power of the new Gutenberg printing press to help spread what were generally considered at that time, in the context of the canon Episcopi, heretical views about witchcraft. Although Malleus Maleficarum was banned by the Church soon after its initial publication (it appeared on a list of such books in 1490), it was nonetheless printed 13 times between 1486 and 1520, and another 16 times between 1574 and 1669. It influenced many other works about witchcraft, including those by, among others, Jean Bodin in France and Martin Del Rio in the Low Countries. After its publication, witchcraft came to be more widely accepted as a real and dangerous phenomenon. The Church would eventually identify witchcraft as the greatest of crimes and sins and elevate it to the level of heresy; as a result, prosecutions and penalties became increasingly brutal and severe.
Malleus Maleficarum was designed as both a manual for the investigation and persecution of witches, as well as a defense of Kramer’s ideas about the persecution of witches; these had been criticized during his first attempts at witchcraft trials in Germany, at which time he had been dismissed by a local bishop as senile and crazy.
The book is divided into three parts. First, a theoretical examination of the concept of witchcraft that specifically addresses the question of whether witchcraft is real or imaginary; it concludes that it is real because the Devil is real, and witches enter into pacts with the Devil to allow them to perform magical acts. Second, a discussion of how witches recruit. And third, a discussion of the prosecution of witches that also laid out arguments that could be used by lay magistrates.