Of Strixology and Sin: Witchcraft, Witchfinders, and Witch Hunts

Our little anachronistic escapade may be fiction, but just barely. Bridget Bishop indeed was accused of witchcraft and hanged in 1692. She is among the twenty-five people who fell victim to the Salem witch trials of 1692-93, where nineteen were executed by hanging, five died in jail due to inhumane conditions, and one– Giles Corey– was pressed to death. However, the fear of “witches,” or of others (usually women) who were outside or perceived to be outside the Christian faith, is far older than the sinister happenings of Salem. No, the epicenter of that evil, or at least its prime mover, was published in Europe in 1487– the Malleus Maleficarum.

Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for “Hammer of Witches”) is one of history’s most infamous witch-hunting manuals, responsible for mass witchcraft hysteria and countless executions of innocents throughout history. Despite this, the Malleus itself doesn’t look particularly murderous or menacing, even upon close inspection. The Lilly Library’s copy is quite worn, and loosely bound in limp vellum, with the spine repaired with a more recent leather support. Sets of two small, corresponding tabs on the front and back boards indicate that this book once possessed leather ties.

Additionally, the Lilly’s copy is laboriously notated and is brimming with marginalia (i.e. notes or embellishments left in the margins of a book). Loyal manicules point their fingers on pages 159, 259, 268, 286, and 413. Many passages, words, and sentences are underlined and marked with delicate linework, preserving the history of at least one owner of this book. Both front and back boards have faded inscriptions written upon them, and are littered with holes, the evidence and handiwork of woodworms. The front endpaper displays at least one mark of ownership– though, at one point in time– this was marked out with much darker ink. Within the text, historiated, zoomorphic, and simple initials are scattered throughout.  

The Malleus Maleficarum technically has two authors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. However, Sprenger did not appear as a coauthor until 1519, and his name often falls to the wayside– with some even debating his involvement. Meanwhile, Kramer’s name became irrevocably connected to the Malleus, and the horrors it unleashed upon the world. Kramer was born around 1430 in Schlettstadt (modern day Sélestat, Alsace, in northeastern France). According to Hans Broedel in his book The ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ and the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief, Heinrich Kramer (also known by his Latinized name Henricus Institoris) was “capable of inspiring profound animosity in those he met” and had an “aggressive zeal for the faith” (10-11). Kramer joined his local convent as a young man and soon ascended through the ranks, eventually garnering the title of inquisitor in 1474, which came with all sorts of dangerous “privileges,” such as the right to prosecute those accused of witchcraft (Broedel 12-14). Unsurprisingly, he felt a “righteous wrath” toward those he deemed as heretics or enemies of Christianity, especially witches (Broedel 11).

What image do you see when you read the word– witch? A hag cackling over a bubbling cauldron, black hellcat in tow? If so, you can thank Kramer, for it was his pen that permanently altered the perception of that word. A glaringly blatant play for misogynistic power, Kramer used the Malleus to demonize femininity, while ignoring male practitioners of magic, whom he deemed as wise and innately gifted “magi” or “superstitiosi” (Broedel 1). Within the Malleus, Kramer classifies witches as unnatural malefici, dangerous and devil-touched (Broedel 1). During his tenure as an inquisitor, Kramer met the contributing author of the Malleus, Jacob Sprenger, who shared his hazardous beliefs. Broedel explains that “Witches, in their view, were entirely more likely to be women than men. The experience of the next two hundred years appeared to vindicate this judgment” (167).

As one can expect, the women who fell victim to the Malleus’s influence were innocent, and to rub salt in the already gaping wound, they were usually healers. Versed well in herbal remedies and cures, these martyrs of the “established Church” were misunderstood and reviled by men who could not stand to see them prosper (Maggio 1).

The Malleus, despite its horrendous power, was challenged in its time. One such text includes Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et phitonicis mulieribus: Teutonice Vnholden vel Hexen. Molitor, a minor official under Archduke Sigismund of Austria and a lawyer in Innsbruck, published his treatise on witchcraft in 1489, only a few years after the Malleus was published (Behringer and Jerouschek 7). The De lamiis is a conversational text in which Molitor positions himself as an opponent to an overzealous believer in witchcraft. He also outright rebukes the notion of witches possessing supernatural abilities of flight and shapeshifting, as well as the existence of witches’ Sabbats with the Devil (7). Molitor’s work was often reprinted together with Kramer’s Malleus, giving readers varying viewpoints on the dangers of witches. Molitor likely witnessed some of Kramer’s inquisitions and mass witch hunts conducted in Austria and Germany, and his open opposition to the Malleus presumably stemmed from his knowledge of Kramer and his extremist methods (7).

While Molitor sought to prevent further witch hysteria, others joined Kramer and Sprenger in fanning the flames. One such fanatic was Joseph Glanvill, an English Puritan author, clergyman, and philosopher. Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus, or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions seeks to reinforce the belief that witches possess supernatural powers and criticizes disbelievers. In the text, Glanvill equates non-believers with the Sadducees (Hebrew: צְדוּקִים, Ṣəḏūqīm), a historical Jewish sect active in Judea during the Second Temple period that did not believe in the afterlife or immortality of the soul. Unsurprisingly, Glanvill’s work heavily influenced fellow Puritan Cotton Mather, who would even model his own Wonders of the Invisible World after the Saducismus Triumphatus.

Fun Fact: In H. P. Lovecraft’s 1925 short story “The Festival,” the narrator comes upon a pile of accursed books, which includes the Necronomicon and “the terrible Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvill, published in 1681″ (Lovecraft 171). Yikes.

Kramer and his manual for witch-hunting wrought ruin on Europe, but its bloodshed was not done yet. The blood would seep across the pond about a hundred years later, with Increase Mather keeping a personal copy of the Malleus in his library (Tarter 1). Increase Mather even cites the Malleus in his An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, referring to “inſtances [instances] in Sprenger” (Mather 198). Illustrious Providences, in turn, had a profound and perilous effect on Increase’s son, Cotton Mather, who would go on to use witch-hunting techniques promulgated within the Malleus in the Salem witch trials.

As Debra Merskin describes in her article, “By the Book: The Malleus Maleficarum, Witch-Hunts, and Persecution of the Other,” witch-hunts did not arise because of the Malleus alone, but the book brought fuel to an already hungry fire. Merskin states that “Whereas Witchcraft persecutions occurred before the publication of the Malleus, afterward a resource existed that described in minute detail how and why to do them by the book” (3).

In closing, Heinrich Kramer may never have set foot in Salem, Massachusetts, but through the evil emanations of the Malleus Maleficarum, his shadow was able to fall far from European soil. The Malleus is a symbol of patriarchal oppression and intolerance of the other, and as scholars of books and their history, we cannot forgive or forget the scars that the Malleus and other works like it inflicted upon the world. Luckily, Kramer, Sprenger, and the Mathers were unsuccessful in their overzealous pursuits. Women, witches, and the queer community endured, as they will continue to do.

For example, Dr. Leo Louis Martello, an American gay author, Wiccan priest, gay rights activist, and founder of the Strega Tradition, authored multiple zines in the 1970s. One such zine is What It Means to Be a Witch: and Astro Witchcraft!, in which he retells his experience of “coming out of the broom closet,” as well as speaking on his witch identity and the reclamation of witchcraft. Post-Stonewall, Martello became a founding member of the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA), where he authored the “The Gay Witch,” a regular column in its newspaper.