Malleus Maleficarum
What
I find most remarkable about this influential handbook of the Inquisition
(Christian heretic-hunt) is its late date: 1484. This puts it just 8 years
before the accidental encounter with the Americas, just 8 years before
the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (which does connect with this book).
One might imagine that the practical, commercial and gold-seeking conquistadors
came from a society which was mercenary in the way that Nike or Disney
have made familiar: but no: there are other layers. Ferdinand and Isabella
instituted the Inquisition in Spain: it was already there, but they
made it big. This book (the title means "the witch's hammer") was a witch-hunter's
handbook, written by two Germans: the Dominican Jacobus Sprenger
(dead 1481?) and Henry Kramer (dead 1500+). It's long, involved,
and anecdotal, having chapters with names like: "Here follows the way whereby
Witches copulate with those Devils known as Incubi" and "Here followeth
how Witches Injure Cattle in Various Ways" and "Concerning Witches who
copulate with Devils: Why is it that Women are chiefly addicted to Evil
Superstitions?" This last suggests why the book is often considered the
most anti-woman book ever published in Europe. We all know that most of
the people burned as witches were women. The edition from Dover Press is
very nice, since it's a 1928 translation by Montague Summers, who believed
in the reality (and value?) of witchcraft, and says this in his 1946 "Introduction":
"It is a work which must irresistibly
capture the attention of all men who think, all who see, or are endeavouring
to see, the ultimate reality beyond the accidents of matter, time and space."
Montague was also a scholar, however, and here's his beginning of the "Introduction":
It has been observed
that "it is quite impossible to appreciate and understand the true and
inner lives of men and women in Elizabethan and Stuart England, in the
France of Louis XIII and during the long reign of his son and successor,
in Italy of the Renaissance and the Catholic Reaction--to name but three
European countries and a few definite periods--unless we have some realization
of the part that Witchcraft played in those ages amid the affairs of these
Kingdoms. All classes were affected and concerned from Pope to peasant,
from Queen to cottage girl."
Witchcraft was inextricably mixed with politics.
Matthew Paris tells us how in 1232 the Chief Justice Hubert de Burgh, Earl
of Kent, (Shakespeare's "gentle Hubert" in King John), was... openly accused
by Peter de Roches, Bishop of Winchester, of having won the favour of Henry
III through "charms and incantations". In 1324 there was a terrific scandal
at Coventry when it was discovered that a number of the richest and most
influential burghers of the town had long been consulting with Master John,
a professional necromancer, and paying him large sums to bring about by
his arts the death of Edward II and several nobles of the court. Alice
Perrers, the mistress of Edward III, was not only reputed to have infatuated
the old King by occult spells, but her physician (believed to be a mighty
sorcerer) was arrested on a charge of confecting love philtres and talismans.
Henry V, in the autumn of 1419, prosecuted his stepmother, Joan of Navarre,
for attempting to kill him by witchcraft, "in the most horrible manner
that one could devise." The conqueror of Agincourt was exceedingly worried
about the whole wretched business, as also was the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who ordered public prayers for the King's safety. In the reign of his son,
Henry VI, in 1441, one of the... noblest ladies in the realm, Eleanor Cobham,
Duchess of Gloucester, was arraigned for conspiring with "a clerk"... "a
most notorious evoker of demons", and "the most famous scholar in the whole
world in astrology in magic", to procure the death of the young monarch
by sorcery, so that the Duke of Gloucester, Henry's uncle and guardian,
might succeed to the crown. In this plot were further involved Canon Thomas
Southwell, and a "relapsed witch", that is..., one who had previously (11
years before) been incarcerated upon grave suspicion of black magic, Margery
Jourdemayne. Bolingbroke, whose confession implicated the Duchess, was
hanged; Canon Southwell died in prison; the witch in Smithfield was "burn'd
to Ashes", since her offence was high treason. The Duchess was sentenced
to a most degrading public penance, and imprisoned for life in Peel Castle,
Isle of Man. Richard III, upon seizing the throne in 1483, declared that
the marriage of his brother, Edward IV, with the Lady Elizabeth Grey, had
been brought about by "sorcery and witchcraft", and further that "Edward's
wife, that monstrous witch," had plotted with Jane Shore to waste and wither
his body. Poor Jane Shore did most exemplary penance, walking the flinty
streets of London barefoot in her kirtle. In the same year when Richard
wanted to get rid of... Buckingham, his former ally, one of the chief accusations
he launched was that the Duke consulted with a Cambridge "necromancer"
to compass and devise his death.
One of the most serious and frightening events in
the life of James VII of Scotland (afterwards James I of England) was the
great conspiracy of 1590, organized by the Earl of Bothwell. James... feared
and hated Bothwell, who... was Grand Master of a company of more than one
hundred witches, all adepts in poisoning, and all eager to do away with
the King.
Excerpt from: Part II, Question l, Chapter
VII: How, as it were, they Deprive Man of his Virile Member
...We may summarize our
conclusions as follows: --Devils can, for their profit and probation, injure
the good in their fortunes, that is, in such exterior things as riches,
fame, and bodily health. This is clear from the case of the Blessed Job,
who was afflicted by the devil in such matters. But such injuries are not
of their own causing, so that they cannot be led or driven into any sin,
although they can be tempted both inwardly and outwardly in the flesh.
But the devils cannot afflict the good with this sort of illusions, either
actively or passively.
Not actively, by deluding their senses as they do
those of others who are not in a state of grace. And not passively, by
taking away their male organs by some glamour. For in these two respects
they could never injure Job, especially the passive injury with regard
to the venereal act; for he was of such continence that he was able to
say: I have vowed a vow with my eyes that I shall never think about a virgin,
and still less about another man's wife. Nevertheless the devil knows that
he has great power over sinners (see St. Luke xi: When a strong man armed
keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace).
But it may be asked, as to illusions in respect
of the male organ, whether, granted that the devil cannot impose this illusion
on those in a state of grace in a passive way, he cannot still do so in
an active sense: the argument being that the man in a state of grace is
deluded because he ought to see the member in its right place, when he
who thinks it has been taken away from him, as well as other bystanders,
does not see it in its place; but if this is conceded, it seems to be contrary
to what has been said. It can be said that there is not so much force in
the active as in the passive loss; meaning by active loss, not his who
bears the loss, but his who sees the loss from without, as is self-evident.
Therefore, although a man in a state of grace can see the loss of another,
and to that extent the devil can delude his senses; yet he cannot passively
suffer such loss in his own body, as, for example, to be deprived of his
member, since he is not subject to lust. In the same way the converse is
true, as the Angel said to Tobias: Those who are given to lust, the devil
has power over them.
And what, then, is to be thought of those witches
who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many
as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest, or
shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members,
and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common
report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil's work and illusion,
for the senses of those who see them are deluded in the way we have said.
For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached
a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man
to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a
nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big
one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belonged
to a parish priest.
All these things are caused by devils through an
illusion or glamour, in the manner we have said, by confusing the organ
of vision by transmuting the mental images in the imaginative faculty.
And it must not be said that these members which are shown are devils in
assumed members, just as they sometimes appear to witches and men in assumed
aerial bodies, and converse with them. And the reason is that they effect
this thing by an easier method, namely, by drawing out an inner mental
image from the repository of the memory, and impressing it on the imagination.
And if anyone wishes to say that they could go to
work in a similar way, when they are said to converse with witches and
other men in assumed bodies; that is, that they could cause such apparitions
by changing the mental images in the imaginative faculty, so that when
men thought the devils were present in assumed bodies, they were really
nothing but an illusion caused by such a change of the mental images in
the inner perceptions (sic).
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