The Malleus Maleficarum
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
broedel.cov 12/8/03 9:23 am Page 1 ‘Broedel has provided an excellent study, not only of the Malleus and its authors, and the construction of witchcraft The Malleus Maleficarum but just as importantly, of the intellectual context in which the Malleus must be set and the theological and folk traditions to which it is, in many ways, an heir.’ and the construction of witchcraft PETER MAXWELL-STUART, ST ANDREWS UNIVERSITY Theology and popular belief HAT WAS WITCHCRAFT? Were witches real? How should witches The HANS PETER BROEDEL be identified? How should they be judged? Towards the end of the middle ages these were serious and important questions – and completely W Malleus Maleficarum new ones. Between 1430 and 1500, a number of learned ‘witch-theorists’ attempted to answer such questions, and of these perhaps the most famous are the Dominican inquisitors Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches. The Malleus is an important text and is frequently quoted by authors across a wide range of scholarly disciplines.Yet it also presents serious difficulties: it is difficult to understand out of context, and is not generally representative of late medieval learned thinking. This, the first book-length study of the original text in English, provides students and scholars with an introduction to this controversial work and to the conceptual world of its authors. Like all witch-theorists, Institoris and Sprenger constructed their witch out of a constellation of pre-existing popular beliefs and learned traditions. BROEDEL Therefore, to understand the Malleus, one must also understand the contemporary and subsequent debates over the reality and nature of witches. This book argues that although the Malleus was a highly idiosyncratic text, its arguments were powerfully compelling and therefore remained influential long after alternatives were forgotten. Consequently, although focused on a single text, this study has important implications for fifteenth-century witchcraft theory. This is a fascinating work on the Malleus Maleficarum and will be essential to students and academics of late medieval and early modern history, religion and witchcraft studies. HANS PETER BROEDEL is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Hamilton College, New York COVER ILLUSTRATION Witches concocting an ointment to be used for flying to the Sabbath, Hans Baldung Grien, Strassburg, 1514 TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page i The Malleus Maleficarum and the construction of witchcraft TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page ii STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY This exciting series aims to publish challenging and innovative research in all areas of early modern continental history. The editors are committed to encouraging work that engages with current historiographical debates, adopts an interdisciplinary approach, or makes an original contribution to our understanding of the period. Professor Joseph Bergin,William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts Already published in the series The rise of Richelieu Joseph Bergin Sodomy in early modern Europe ed. Tom Betteridge Fear in early modern society eds William Naphy and Penny Roberts Religion and superstition in Reformation Europe eds Helen Parish and William G. Naphy Religious choice in the Dutch Republic: the reformation of Arnoldus Buchelus (1565–1641) Judith Pollman A city in conflict:Troyes during the French wars of religion Penny Roberts Witchcraft narratives in Germany: Rothenburg 1561–1652 Alison Rowlands TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page iii The Malleus Maleficarum and the construction of witchcraft Theology and popular belief HANS PETER BROEDEL Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page iv Copyright © Hans Peter Broedel 2003 The right of Hans Peter Broedel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6440 6 hardback 0 7190 6441 4 paperback First published 2003 11100908070605040310987654321 Typeset in Perpetua with Albertus by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd. Glasgow TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page v Contents Acknowledgments page vii Note on translation ix 1 Introduction: contested categories 1 2 Origins and arguments 10 3 The inquisitors’ devil 40 4 Misfortune, witchcraft, and the will of God 66 5 Witchcraft: the formation of belief – part one 91 6 Witchcraft: the formation of belief – part two 122 7 Witchcraft as an expression of female sexuality 167 Bibliography 189 Index 205 TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page vi TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page vii Acknowledgments I am much indebted to the generous assistance of a number of people on this project. I would like to thank especially Robert Stacey for his tireless assistance and encour- agement in all aspects of this work. I also owe much to Mary O’Neal’s incisive com- ments and encyclopedic knowledge of early-modern witchcraft history. I would like also to thank Henning Sehmsdorf, Fritz Levy, and Gerhild Scholz Williams who read this manuscript at various stages and offered valuable criticism. I owe special thanks to my wife, Sheryl Dahm Broedel, not only for her patience, but also for her invalu- able criticisms of my writing and ideas. TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page viii TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page ix Note on translation The popularity of the Malleus in the English-speaking world stems in large part from the ready availability of the Montague Summers translation, but, as has often been noted before, this translation suffers from serious defects. In particular, Summers relied upon very late Latin editions, which differed substantially from the original. In this book I have used as my primary Latin text the 1991 photographic reprint of the first edition of the Malleus (1487), supplemented by the 1519 Jean Marion edition. I have retained the original Latin throughout in the notes; in addition to noting appar- ent errors in the Latin, where necessary I have given the alternative Latin from the 1519 edition within brackets.The English translations are my own and are my respon- sibility, but I have benefited from the advice and assistance of Professors Barbara Gold and Carl Rubino of Hamilton College’s Classics Department, and from the dedicated revisions of the readers for Manchester University Press. TMMPR 8/30/03 5:36 PM Page x TMM1 8/30/03 5:38 PM Page 1 1 Introduction: contested categories On the morning of October 29th, 1485, dignitaries began to assemble in the great meeting room of Innsbruck’s town hall. They included Cristan Turner, licentiate in the decretals and the special representative of Georg Golser, bishop of Brixen, Master Paul Wann, doctor of theology and canon law, Sigismund Saumer, also a licentiate in the decretals, three brothers of the Dominican Order, a pair of notaries, and the inquisitor, Henry Institoris.1 They were there to witness the interrogation of Helena Scheuberin, who, along with thirteen others, was suspected of practicing witchcraft. Scheuberin would have been familiar to at least some of these men: an Innsbruck native, she had been married for eight years to Sebastian Scheuber, a prosperous burger. She was also an aggressive, independent woman who was not afraid to speak her mind, a trait which on this occasion had landed her in serious trouble. From the formal charges against her, we learn that not long after the inquisitor had first arrived in Innsbruck with the stated intention of bringing witches to justice, she had passed him in the street, spat, and said publicly, “Fie on you, you bad monk, may the falling evil take you.”2 Worse still, Scheuberin had also stayed away from Institoris’ sermons and had encouraged others to do like- wise, even going so far, as the next charge against her reveals, as to disrupt one sermon by loudly proclaiming that she believed Institoris to be an evil man in league with the devil – a man whose obsession with witchcraft amounted to heresy.3 It is possible that Scheuberin was aware that she had a reputation for harmful sorcery, and that her fear of suspicion led her unwisely to take the offensive when the inquisitor appeared. If such were the case, her tactics were spectacularly ill-conceived. Institoris was a man who treasured his orthodoxy above all things, and we may well imagine that he was deeply offended by Scheuberin’s slander; more seriously, though, her attack upon the work of the Papal Inquisition was manifest evidence that she was herself either a heretic or a witch. A searching investigation of Scheuberin’s life and character ensued, TMM1 8/30/03 5:38 PM Page 2 2 THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM producing additional charges: she had kept company with suspected heretics; she had caused a woman’s illness in order to have her husband as her lover; and, most seriously, in January of the previous year she had killed, either through witchcraft or through poison, a knight with whom she wished to have an adulterous affair.4 Scheuberin thus stood accused of using magic to cause injury and death, of causing maleficium in the jargon of the court.