Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

The Hammer of Witches

But there was one other way in which words played into the mob's madness. And that was through the book that came to symbolize the Great Hunt, The Malleus Maleficorum (The Hammer of the Witches).

“Women are by nature instruments of Satan,” says this gem. “They are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation.”¹¹

The Malleus Maleficorum was largely written by Heinrich Kramer, an inquisitor whose fascination with the sex life of the witches had already led one bishop to shut down a trial, claiming that the only devil around was inside Kramer. The man apparently suffered from the delusion that his private parts were capable of wandering around at midnight, and he devoted seven chapters of his opus to the grotesque things he thought witches were liable to do to them. Nonetheless, he somehow managed to forge a recommendation from the Inquisition's theologians—who had actually condemned the book. It was enough to fool the civil courts. They took up The Malleus with so much glee that when witch burning hit full stride in the middle of the sixteenth century, it was the manual that witch hunters automatically reached for, becoming one of the hottest items off the new presses and skewing the views of generations of historians.

The Malleus was so drenched with Kramer's sexual obsessions that it made readers believe the trials were run by perverts. And it fed the imaginations of prosecutors and witches, many of whom regurgitated its obscene ...