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Witchcraft Past and Present
written on the subject and what should be done about it. Innocent’s was
different in that it was much more widely read than earlier ones. Thanks
to the European invention of movable-type printing by Johannes
Gutenberg around 1432 (it had been used in China many centuries
earlier) it was easy for the Church to issue many copies of Innocent’s
bull.Without it, each copy would have had to be laboriously handwritten
by monks.
All over Europe, priests read that clergy and laymen and women were
not treating the threat posed by witchcraft seriously enough. Innocent
insisted that it was the duty of every Roman Catholic (and that meant
almost everyone, for the Church was so powerful) to help his inquisitors
search out witches.
While it is true that there were men and women who were practising
witchcraft as a black art – worshipping Satan and weaving malevolent
spells – most of the people who came under the inquisitors’ suspicious
eyes were innocent men and women. They were people who believed
that remedies that had been handed down from generation to generation
worked. They were often country people who were more in tune with
the forces of nature than their urban cousins. It is more than possible, in
fact it is almost certain, that some of these folk remedies and the way
that nature’s powers were harnessed were survivals of Druid customs
and rituals.
Innocent’s bull encouraged two monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob
Sprenger to publish the Malleus Malleficarum, or Witche’s Hammer,
which was essentially a witch-hunter’s manual. It explained why
witchcraft was such a terrible thing, why it was the duty of all good
Catholics to stamp it out and how to tell if someone was practising the
black arts.
In their rant against witchcraft, Kramer and Sprenger, who were
inquisitors themselves, list the types of witch. They accused witches of
having sexual relationships with the Devil and working with him to
spread his dark ways.
The book detailed how a trial should proceed, beginning with a notice
that was to be fixed to the walls of the parish church (or town hall). It
was worded:
Whereas we, the Vicar of . . . do endeavour with all our might
and strive to preserve the Christian people entrusted to us in unity
and happiness of the Catholic Faith and to keep them far removed
from every plague of abominable heresy . . .
Therefore, we the aforesaid Judge to whose office it belongs, to the
glory and honour of the worshipful name of Jesus Christ and for
the exaltation of the Holy Orthodox Faith, and for the putting
down of the abomination of heresy especially in all witches in
general and in each one severally of whatever condition.
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