The Malleus Maleficarum

Malleus Maleficarum 46
degli Roselli. Printed at Venice, at the Press of Giacomo de Lencho, at
the charge of Peter Liechtenstein, 27 July, 1499.
D The Shield of Defence of the Holy Roman Church against the Picards and Waldenses.
This was published when Fr. Kramer was acting as Censor of the Faith under
Alexander VI in Bohemia and Moldavia. This work is praised by the famous Dominican
writer Noel Alexandre in his Selecta historiae ecclesiasticae capita et in
loca eiusdem insignia dissertationes historicae, criticae, dogmaticae. In dealing
with the fifteenth century he quotes passages from this work. The bibliographer
Beugheim catalogues an edition of this work among those Incunabula the exact
date of which cannot be traced. Georg Simpler, who was Rector of the University
of Pforzheim, and afterwards Professor of Jurisprudence of Tubingen in the
early decades of the sixteenth century, also mentions this work with commendation.
Odorico Rinaldi quotes from this work in his Annales under the year 1500.
The Sermons of 1496 are highly praised by Antony of Siena, O.P. Antonius Possevinus,
S.J., speaks of a treatise Against the Errors of Witches. This I have never seen,
but I feel very well assured that it is no other work than the Malleus Maleficarum,
which was written in collaboration with Fr. James Sprenger, and which we have
spoken above in some detail.
In what year Fr. Henry Kramer died and to what house of the Order he was then attached
is not recorded, but it seems certain that he was living at least as late as 1500.
Thus Quòtif-Echard, but we may not impertinently add a few, from several, formal references
which occur in Dominican registers and archives. James Sprenger was born at
Basel (he is called de Basilea in a MS. belonging to the Library of Basel), probably about
1436-38, and he was admitted as a Dominican novice in 1452 at the convent of his native
town. An extract “ex monumentis contuent. Coloniens.” says that Sprenger “beatus
anno 1495 obiit Argentinae ad S. Nicolaum in Undis in conuentu sororum ordinis nostri.”
Another account relates that he did not die at Strasburg on 6 December, 1495, but
DRAFT DRAFT
at Verona, 3 February, 1503, and certainly Jacobus Magdalius in his Stichologia has “In
mortem magistri Iacobi Sprenger, sacri ordinis praedicatorii per Theutoniam prouincialis,
Elegia,” which commences:
O utinam patrio recubassent ossa sepulchro
Quae modo Zenonis urbe sepulta iacent.
Henry Kramer, who appears in the Dominican registers as “Fr. Henricus Institoris de Sletstat,”
was born about 1430. His later years were distinguished by the fervour of his apostolic
missions in Bohemia, where he died in 1505.
Although, as we have seeb, Fr. Henry Kramer and Fr. James Sprenger were men of
many activities, it is by the Malleus Maleficarum that they will chiefly be remembered.
There can be no doubt that this work had in its day and for a full couple of centuries an
enormous influence. There are few demonologists and writers upon WITCHCRAFT who
do not refer to its pages as an ultimate authority. It was continually quoted and appealed
to in the witch-trials of Germany, France, Italy, and England; whilst the methods and examples
of the two Inquisitors gained an even more extensive credit and sanction owing to
their reproduction (sometimes without direct acknowledgement) in the works of Bedin, De
Lancre, Boguet, Remy, Tartarotti, Elich, Grilland, Pons, SUCCUBIelmann, de Moura, Oberlal,
Cigogna, Peperni, Martinus Aries, Anania, Binsfeld, Bernard Basin, Menghi, Stampa,