Fe+Minus

...‘I have endeavoured to show the witch as she really was – an evil liver: a social pest and parasite: the devotee of a loathly and obscene creed: an adept at poisoning, blackmail, and other creeping crimes: a member of a powerful secret organisation inimical to Church and State: a blasphemer in word and deed, swaying the villagers by terror and superstition: a charlatan and a quack sometimes: a bawd: an abortionist: the dark counsellor of lewd court ladies and adulterous gallants: a minister to vice and inconceivable corruption, battening upon the filth and foulest passions of the age’ …

Extract from ‘The History of Witchcraft and Demonology’ (1926), by Augustus Montague Summers.’

The Latin term Malleus Maleficarum translates to "hammer of the witches" in English. It is likely the most important and best-known witch-hunt manual ever written concerning the persecution of women labelled as "witches" throughout the Renaissance. It was written in the 15th century by the inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger and first published in Germany in 1484, and translated into English by an eccentric clergyman - Montague Summer in 1929.

The Malleus Maleficarum was the first modern, organic criminological discourse, meticulously constructed, describing the sources of evil, its forms of manifestation, its symptoms, and the method to combat it.

It also provides the process for witchcraft prosecution, defines witchcraft as a crime, defends its existence, and justifies why its perpetrators are predominantly women. Therefore, this book contributed to the justification and popularisation of brutality against women and the invention of witchcraft as heresy and a sin against God.

The book targets women as the weaker sex, weaker in faith, lusty and easy by nature, and so easy prey for Satan's persuading. In the English translation, they even went so far as to claim that "Femina" (Latin for "woman") derives its derivation from "Fe" (Latin for "faith") + "minus" (Latin for "less"), which is totally erroneous.

The Malleus justified its severe punishment of witches with an extract from Exodus 22:18: ˜thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” It served as a basis for seeing witchcraft as a perilous and heretical practice of allying with the Devil rather than as a superstition, and as a severe threat to both society and the church.

Despite being an ancient book, produced more than 500 years ago in a completely different era with a magical cultural context, it however has a strong relevance today. Because, it has a lot to do with stereotypes, issues of punitive power, the scapegoats of the enemy in criminal law, and the hunting for someone who always has all the blame.

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I have endeavoured to show the witch as she really was – an evil liver: a social pest and parasite: the devotee of a loathly and obscene creed: an adept at poisoning, blackmail, and other creeping crimes: a member of a powerful secret organisation inimical to Church and State: a blasphemer in word and deed, swaying the villagers by terror and superstition: a charlatan and a quack sometimes: a bawd: an abortionist: the dark counsellor of lewd court ladies and adulterous gallants: a minister to vice and inconceivable corruption, battening upon the filth and foulest passions of the age’…
 (introduction, xiv)
 Extract from ‘The History of Witchcraft and Demonology’ (1926), by Augustus Montague Summers.

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum" [ ....A human being transformed into an animal, by using the art of illusion or trickery (Prestigiosa Arte) , or thinking that he or she is an animal and must go along with animals. In these cases, the exterior senses are subjected to illusion and are being invaded by means of the interior senses. By the power of evil spirits, you see illusory impressions which are capable of being apprehended by the senses....]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...Experience makes it clear that witches' daughters along with those like them, have always been slandered as imitators of their mother’s crimes, and indeed that virtually their whole offspring is tainted. The reason for this, and for everything I have said before, is that they are always obliged to leave behind a survivor and, because of the pact they have entered into with an evil spirit, to make every effort to increase their treachery (which is witchcraft)...]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...Under instruction from an evil spirit, they make an ointment from the body parts of children, particularly those they have killed before they have been baptized. They smear it on a chair or a piece of wood, and when they have done this, they are carried at once into the air, day or night, in full sight of everyone or (if this is what they want) invisible” This happens because an evil spirit can prevent one body from being seen by another in the path of someone’s sight...]

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Extracts from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...Tells the story of a man who used to think he was being turned into a wolf, and at these times he would hide in caves. he went there on one particular occasion and although he stayed there all the while without moving, he had the impression he had become a wolf and was going around, devouring children; although in fact, it was only an evil spirit who had possessed a wolf and was doing this, [the man] mistakenly thought while he was dreaming that he was prowling around. He was deranged in this fashion for a long time until he was carried away and found lying in a wood. [..…..Those who are indisputably witches are accustomed against the inclination of human nature-, indeed, contrary to the temperament of every animal (at least with the exception of the wolf) to devour and feast on young children....]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...When they don’t kill the children, they take the babies out of the room, lift them up in the air, and offer them to evil spirits...]

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Extracts from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...Satanas has a thousand ways and techniques of inflicting harm, and ever since the Fall has done his best to ruin the Church and Humanity,..] [...With a handshake she (witch) promises to be his slave, the evil spirit immediately adds that it is not enough, that she will belong to him, soul and body, forever, and that she will be ready to bring into his circle of associates many others of both sexes she can...]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...The woman should be brought in with her back towards the judge and his assistant, and he should protect himself by making the sign of the cross and advancing towards her courageously- and with God‘s help, the strength of the ancient snake will be broken in pieces. ..]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [... Institoris provides a standard formula for making such an abjuration in public, which includes the statement that a- Jesus and all the saints hate the heresy of witches and that all those who follow it or adhere to it will be tortured forever in everlasting fires along with with the devil and his angels...]

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Extracts from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...In the third part of this work, I must deal with the destruction of witches, which is the final remedy. This is the Church’s last recourse and is a legal obligation clearly imposed upon her, as I have said before, by divine command. ‘Do not allow workers of harmful magic to live upon the earth...] [...they know how to cause every kind of thing which will bring death and disaster. Every kind of witch, however, practises carnal filthiness with evil spirits...] [...Women are inclined to be credulous and because the main aim of the Evil Spirit is to pervert and destroy the faith, he prefers to attack them. They are made naturally prone to leak and this renders it easier for individual spirits to make an impression upon them by giving them revelations. This constitutions of their means that, when they use it well, many women are good; but when they are wicked, [it makes them] worse...]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...But it does not seem to be enough to punish witches in these ways, since they are not heretics pure and simple, but apostates. Moreover, in their very apostasy, they do not deny the Faith for fear of people or because of the delights of the flesh, but because, in addition to denying [the Faith], they fulfil [their pact] by offering the Evil spirits their homage, bodies, and souls. This makes it clear enough that however penitent they may be, and however much they turn back to the Faith, they should not be committed to perpetual imprisonment as other heretics are, but must suffer the ultimate penalty because of the temporal damages they inflict in various ways on human beings and the beast of burden...]

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Witch swimming was the practice of tying up and dunking the accused into a body of water to determine whether they sink or float. Sinking to the bottom indicates that the accused was innocent while floating indicated a guilty verdict. (Kittredge, p. 232.)

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...There are three kinds of people who have been blessed by god, whom that most wicked class (of individuals) cannot hurt with their acts of harmful magic: 1-Those who administer public justice against them or prosecute them in a public capacity.
 2-Those who legitimately use the traditional, revered rituals of the Church, such as sprinkling holy water, eating consecrated salt, carrying a candlestick on the day of the Purification (of the Blessed Virgin) and consecrated palm leaves on Palm Sunday.
 3-Those who in an immense number of different ways, are blessed by holy angels...]

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Extracts from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [..A woman's voice is like the deadly song of the Sirens and kills men by emptying their purses, removing their strength and forcing them to lose God. A woman’s gait, posture, and way of dressing are designed to seduce men. Everything I have been talking about happens because of fleshly lust, which in women is never satisfied...] […So, women are more likely to abjure the Faith, and their tendency to emotional excess makes them seek retribution for wrongs through acts of harmful magic. ‘Therefore it is not a matter for astonishment that there is such a great number of witches in this sex’. Women have a defective memory which means they are impulsive and lack a sense of duty...] […Therefore it is not a matter for astonishment if the world now suffers because of women’s wickedness’. Without women’s lust and wickedness, the world would be a better and safer place...]

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A third nipple (also called supernumerary nipple) or ‘witch's mark’ [...The officers get ready to begin the torture, and then they should strip the accused. If the accused is a woman, she should first be taken to the penal cells and stripped by other, respectable women who have a good reputation. The reason for this is that she may have sewn into her clothes some kind of magical apparatus, such as they often make from the body parts of an unbaptised child ( under instruction from evil spirits)... While this apparatus is being disposed of, the judge should begin the interrogation, asking questions himself and having other good men who are zealous for the Faith (ask them too), to get the accused to confess the truth willingly. If the accused is unwilling to confess, the judge should order the officers to blind her with ropes and tie her to one piece of equipment...] [..certain instruments of harmful magic (certa meleficia) which are intended to enable them to keep silent, under torture]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...It should not be called the heresy of men who do works of harmful magic [maleficorum] but of women who do works of harmful magic [maleficarum] so that the derivation is taken from the party with the better claim to it.
Blessed be the Most High who continues to preserve the male sex from such a great disgrace right up to the present day. For He was willing to be born and suffer for us as a man...]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...One of us inquisitors discovered that a certain town had been more or less abandoned because its people were dying. a rumour was flying around, that a woman who had been put in her grave was gradually swallowing the linen cloth in which she had been buried, and that the plague could not cease until she had eaten the whole cloth and swallowed it down into her stomach. So a council was held, he dug up the gave and found that she had eaten about half of the cloth, which had made its way through her mouth and throat into her stomach. At this sight, the Stadtammann was shaken. He drew his sword, cut off her head and threw it out of the pit and, as a result, the plague ceased all of a sudden..]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [..But to a distinct conclusion, namely, that “a witch is either old and barren, or she is not. If she is, he (evil spirit) assaults the witch in her private parts without having detached any semen, since it would not be able to do anything, and an evil spirit always avoids wasting material in his operations as much as he can. If she is not barren, however, he assaults her in order to make her take pleasure (in the act). Moreover, if her body is in a state of readiness for impregnation, if he can, without difficulty, get hold of semen which has been detached from a man, he does not hesitate to assault her with it in order to infect her offspring. (it is unlikely, however, that he uses the semen from nocturnal emissions since this lacks the necessary generative power). But I cannot altogether deny that a married witch who has been impregnated by her husband can have her fetus infected by an incubus who missed someone else’s semen (with that of her husband)”...]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...The reason determined by nature is that [a woman] is more given to fleshly lusts than a man, as is clear from her many acts of carnal filthiness. One notices this weakness in the way the first woman was moulded, formed from a curved rib, from a chest rib, which is bent and (curves) as it were in the opposite direction from (that in) a man, and from this weakness one concluded that, since she is an unfinished animal, she is always being deceptive.”...]

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Extract from the book " The Malleus Maleficarum": [...Now, after they have entered into an express pact with evil spirits they are no longer in possession of their own liberty, as we have heard from the confession of these women. ( I am speaking of silly women [mulierculae] who have been burned). They are driven to many, many acts of harmful magic if they want to escape the lashes of evil spirits, cooperate with them and remain bound by the first profession of vows whereby they willingly subject themselves to the evil spirits....] [...Witches more than any criminals in the world, deserve very severe punishment. As heretics and apostates...]

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