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Passages Taken from Malleus Maleficarum

The Hammer of Witches

Heinrich Kramer (and possible James Sprenger)

1487

Malleus Maleficarum is the most influential book written about witches and their prosecution for heresy. Kramer and Sprenger were Dominican Inquisitors with papal authority to hunt, prosecute, and execute witches.  Kramer was particularly obsessed with women suspected of witchcraft, and was particularly harsh during his Inquisition trials.  At this time torture was considered an appropriate and reliable means of obtaining the truth.  Kramer, and many men during this time period, believed women were especially liable to evil seduction and witchcraft, as they are weaker (intellectually and morally) than men.  For over two centuries Malleus Maleficarum was the second bestselling printed book.

 

 

From Part One, Chapter VI, “Concerning Witches who Copulate with Devils.  Why is it Women are chiefly addicted to Evil superstitions?”

 

Let us now chiefly consider women; and first, why this kind of perfidy (treachery, infidelity, betrayal, but here used as witchcraft)) is found more in than fragile sex than in men.

 

It (that there are far more female witches than male) is indeed a fact that it were idle to contradict, since it is accredited by actual experience, apart from the verbal testimony of credible witnesses.

 

Now the wickedness of women is spoken of in Ecclesiasticus xxv: there is no head above the head of a serpent: and there is no wrath above the wrath of a woman.  I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman. . . . All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.

 

What else is a woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors?

 

(staying married rather than separating/divorcing is) a necessary torture

 

The many lusts of men lead them into one sin, but the lust of women leads them into all sins; for the root of all woman’s vices is avarice.

 

A woman either loves or hates; there is no third grade.  And the tears of woman are a deception., for they may spring from true grief, or they may be a snare.  When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil.

 

Wherefore in many vituperations that we read against women, the word woman is used to mean the lust of the flesh. (vituperations here seems to mean treatises written by church scholars attacking women; vituperation usually means bitter and abusive language)

 

Others again have propounded other reasons why there are more superstitious women found than men.  And the first is they are more credulous; and since the chief aim of the devil is to corrupt faith, therefore he attacks them. . . . The second reason is, that woman are naturally more impressionable, and more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit. 

 

The third reason is that they have slippery tongues, and are unable to conceal from their fellow-women those things which by evil arts they know . . . since they are weak.

 

But because in these times this perfidy (witchcraft) is more often found in women than in men, as we learn by actual experience, we may add . . . that since they are feebler both in mind and body, it is not surprising that they should come more under the spell of witchcraft (duh, circular logic at best)

 

Women are intellectually like children.

 

But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations.

 

When a woman weeps, she weaves snares. . . . When a woman weeps, she labors to deceive a man.

 

And it is clear in the case of the first woman that she had little faith (Eve).

 

Therefore a wicked woman is by her nature quicker to waver in her faith . . . which is the root of witchcraft.

 

No might of the flames or the swollen winds, no deadly weapon, is so much to be feared as the lust and hatred of a woman who has been divorced from the marriage bed.