The Catholics, not able to accept that solution, developed a complex theology concerning the relationship between God and the Devil, now called Satan, which rested on the weird idea that Satan was limited
in some specific ways, but very marvelous, all of his
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machinations, curses, and damnations being “by G od’s
permission” and a testimony to G od’s divine majesty.
Here we have the Catholic version o f double-double
think. Through the processes o f Aristotle’s famous
logic, as adapted by St. Thom as Aquinas, which was
the basis o f Catholic theology, it now became clear
that not to believe in the literal existence o f Satan was
tantamount to atheism. T h e evil principle, articulated
by the Manicheans and Cathari, was absorbed into
Catholicism, along with the horned figure o f the old
pagan cults, to produce the horned, clawed, sulphurous,
black, fire and brimstone Satan o f the medieval Christian iconographers.
Later Calvin and Luther also made their contributions. Luther had more personal contact with Satan than any man before or since. He proclaimed Satan
“Prince” o f this earthly realm and considered all earthly
experiences under his domination. Luther and Calvin
agreed that good works no longer counted —only divine
grace for the elect was sufficient to ensure entrance into
the Kingdom o f God. Thus Reformation Protestantism
obliterated the small measure o f hope that even
Catholicism offered. Calvin himself was a voracious
witch hunter and burner.
Although the Protestants contributed without modesty and with great enthusiasm to the witch terror, we find the origins o f the actual, organized persecutions,
not unexpectedly, in the Bull o f Innocent V III, issued
December 9, 1484. The Pope named Heinrich Kramer
and James Sprenger as Inquisitors and asked them to
define witchcraft, describe the modus operandi o f
witches, and standardize trial procedures and sen
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tencing. The papal Bull reversed the Church’s previous
position, which had been formulated by a synod in
A. D. 785:
. . . if somebody, deceived by the devil, following the
custom of the heathen, believes that some man or
woman, is a striga who eats men, and for that reason
burns her or gives her flesh to eat, or eats it, he is to
be punished by death. 6
The Church had accordingly for 7 centuries considered
the belief in witchcraft a heathen belief and the burning of alleged witches a capital crime. Pope Innocent, however, secure in papal infallibility and demonstrating a true political sensibility (leading to the consolidation of power), described the extent of his concern: It has indeed lately come to Our ears, not without
afflicting Us with bitter sorrow, that in some parts of
Northern Germany, as well as in the provinces, townships, territories, districts, and dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Saltzburg, and Bremen, many
persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi [male] and succubi
[female], and by their incantations, spells, conjurations,
and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and
horrid offenses, have slain infants yet in the mother's
womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the
produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruit
of the trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen,
herd beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pastureland, corn, wheat, and all other cereals; these wretches furthermore afflict and torment men and women, beasts of burthen,
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herd beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, with
terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases, both internal and external; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence
husbands cannot know their wives nor wives receive
their husbands; over and above this, they blasphemously renounce that Faith which is theirs by the Sacrament of Baptism, and at the instigation of the
Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink from committing and perpetrating the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses to the deadly peril of their own souls,
whereby they outrage Divine Majesty and are a cause
of scandal and danger to very many. 7
T o deal with the increasing tide o f witchcraft and
in conformity with the Pope’s orders, Sprenger and
Kramer collaborated on the Malleus Maleficarum. This
document, a monument to Aristode’s logic and academic methodology (quoting and footnoting “authorities”), catalogues the major concerns o f 15th-century Catholic theology:
Question I. Whether the Belief that there are such
Beings as Witches is so Essential a Part of the Catholic
Faith that Obstinancy to maintain the Opposite Opinion
manifestly savours of Heresy (Answer: Yes)
Question III. Whether Children can be Generated by
Incubi and Succubi (Answer: Yes)
Question VIII. Whether Witches can Hebetate the Power
of Generation or Obstruct the Venereal Act (Answer:
Yes)
Question IX. Whether Witches may work some Presti-
digitatory Illusion so that the Male Organ appears to
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be entirely removed and separate from the Body (Answer: Yes)
Question XL That Witches who are Midwives in Various Ways Kill the Child Conceived in the Womb, and Procure Abortion; or if they do not do this, Offer
New-born Children to the Devils (Answer: Yes)8
The Malleus also describes the ritual and content of
witchcraft per se, though in the tradition of paternalism indigenous to the Church, Sprenger and Kramer are careful not to give formulae for charms or other dangerous information. They write “of the several Methods by which Devils through Witches Entice and Allure the
Innocent to the Increase of that Horrid Craft and company” ; “of the Way whereby a Formal Pact with Evil is made”; “How they are Transported from Place to
Place”; “Here follows the Way whereby Witches copulate with those Devils known as Incubi, ” 9 etc. They document how witches injure cattle, cause hailstorms and tempests, illnesses in people and animals, bewitch men,
change themselves into animals, change animals into
people, commit acts of cannibalism and murder. The
main concern of the Malleus is with natural events,
nature, the real dynamic world which refused to conform to Catholic doctrine —the Malleus, with tragic wrong-headedness, explains most aspects of biology,
sexology, medicine, and weather in terms of the demonic.
Before we approach the place of women in this most
Christian piece of Western history, the importance of
the Malleus itself must be understood. In the Dark
Ages, few people read and books were hard to come by.
Yet the Malleus was printed in numerous editions. It was
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found in every courtroom. It had been read by every
judge, each o f whom would know it chapter and verse.
T h e Malleus had more currency than the Bible. It was
theology, it was law. T o disregard it, to challenge its
authority (“seemingly inexhaustible wells o f wisdom
, ” 10
wrote Montague Summers in 1946, the year I was born)
was to commit heresy, a capital crime.
Although statistical information on the witchcraft
persecutions is very incomplete, there are judicial records extant for particular towns and areas which are accurate:
In almost every province of Germany the persecution
raged with increasing intensity. Six hundred were said
to have been burned by a single bishop in Bamberg,
where the special witch jail was kept fully packed. Nine
hundred were destroyed in a single year in the bishopric of Wurzburg, and in Nuremberg and other great cities there were one or two hundred burnings a year.
So there were in France and in Switzerland. A thousand people were put to death in one year in the district of Como. Remigius, one of the Inquisitors, who was
author of Daemonolatvia, and a judge at Nancy boasted
of having personally caused the burning of nine hundred persons in the course of fifteen years. Delrio says that five hundred were executed in Geneva in
three terrified months in 1515. The Inquisition at
Toulouse destroyed four hundred persons in a single
execution, and there were fifty at Douai in a single
year. In Paris, executions were continuous. In the
Pyrenees, a wolf country, the popular form was that
of the loup-garou, and De L’Ancre at Labout burned
two hundred. 11
It is estimated that at least 1, 000 were executed in
England, and the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish were even
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fiercer in their purges. It is hard to arrive at a figure
for the whole of the Continent and the British Isles,
but the most responsible estimate would seem to be
9 million. It may well, some authorities contend, have
been more. Nine million seems almost moderate when
one realizes that The Blessed Reichhelm of Schongan at
the end of the 13th century computed the number of
the Devil-driven to be 1,758,064,176. A conservative,
Jean Weir, physician to the Duke of Cleves, estimated
the number to be only 7,409,127. The ratio o f women to
men executed has been variously estimated at 20 to 1
and 100 to 1. Witchcraft was a woman's crime.
Men were, not surprisingly, most often the bewitched. Subject to women’s evil designs, they were terrified victims. Those men who were convicted of witchcraft were often family of convicted women witches, or were in positions of civil power, or had political ambitions which conflicted with those of the Church, a monarch, or a local dignitary. Men were protected from
becoming witches not only by virtue of superior intellect and faith, but because Jesus Christ, phallic divinity, died “to preserve the male sex from so great a crime:
since He was willing to be born and to die for us, therefore He has granted to men this privilege. ” 12 Christ died literally for men and left women to fend with the
Devil themselves. Without the personal intercession of
Christ, women remained what they had always been in
Judeo-Christian culture:
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
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a woman. I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon
than to keep house with a wicked woman. And among
much which in that place precedes and follows about a
wicked woman, he concludes: All wickedness is but
little to the wickedness of a woman. Wherefore S. John
Chrysostom says on the text. It is not good to marry
(S. Matthew xix): What else is 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 nature, painted with fair colours!. . . Cicero in his second
book of The Rhetorics says: The many lusts of men lead
them into one sin, but the one lust of women leads
them into all sins; for the root of all woman’s vices is
avarice.. . . When a woman thinks alone, she thinks
evil. 13
T he word “woman” means “the lust o f the flesh. As it
is said: I have found a woman more bitter than death,
and a good woman subject to carnal lust. ” 14
Other characteristics o f women made them amenable to sin and to partnership with Satan: And the first is, that they are more credulous.. . . The
second reason is, that women 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; and since
they are weak, they find an easy and secret manner
of vindicating themselves by witchcraft.. . .
. . . because in these times this perfidy is more often found in women than in men, as we learn by actual experience, if anyone is curious as to the reason, we
may add to what has already been said the following:
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that since they are feebler both in mind and body, it
is not surprising that they should come more under the
spell of witchcraft.
For as regards intellect, or the understanding of
spiritual things, they seem to be of a different nature
from men; a fact which is vouched for by the logic of
the authorities, backed by various examples from the
Scriptures. Terence says: Women are intellectually
like children. 15
Women are by nature instruments of Satan —they are
by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the
original creation:
than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was
formed from a bent rib, that is, rib of the breast, which
is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And
since through this defect she is an imperfect animal,
she always deceives.. . . And all this is indicated by
the etymology of the word; for Femina comes from Fe
and Minus, since she is ever weaker to hold and preserve
the Faith. And this as regards faith is of her very nature.... 16
. . . This is so even among holy women, so what must it
be among others? 17
In addition, “Women also have weak memories, ” “woman will follow her own impulse even to her own destruction, ” “nearly all the kingdoms of the world have been overthrown by women, ” “the world now suffers through
the malice of women, ” “a woman is beautiful to look
upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep, ”
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“she is a liar by nature, ” “her gait, posture, and habit
. . . is vanity o f vanities. ” 18
Women are most vividly described as being “more
bitter than death” :
And I have found a woman more bitter than death,
who is the hunter’s snare, and her heart is a net, and
her hands are bands. He that pleaseth God shall escape from her; but he that is a sinner shall be caught by her. More bitter than death, that is, than the
devil.. . .
More bitter than death, again, because that is
natural and destroys only the body; but the sin which
arose from woman destroys the soul by depriving it
of grace, and delivers the body up to the punishment
for sin.
More bitter than death, again, because bodily death
is an open and terrible enemy, but woman is a wheedling
and secret enemy. 19
and also:
And that she is more perilous than a snare does not
speak of the snare of hunters, but of devils. For men
are caught not only through their carnal desires, when
they see and hear women: for S. Bernard says: Their
face is a burning wind, and their voice the hissing of
serpents.. . . And when it is said that her heart is a
net, it speaks of the inscrutable malice which reigns
in their hearts.. . .
To conclude: All witchcraft comes from carnal lust,
which is in women insatiable. See Proverbs xxx: there
are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth
thing which says not, it is enough; that is, the mouth
of the womb. 20
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Here the definition of woman, in common with the
pornographic definition, is her carnality; the essence
of her character, in common with the fairy-tale definition, is her malice and avarice. The words flow almost too easily in our psychoanalytic age: we are dealing
with an existential terror of women, of the “mouth of
the womb, ” stemming from a primal anxiety about male
potency, tied to a desire for self (phallic) control; men
have deep-rooted castration fears which are expressed
as a horror of the womb. These terrors form the substrata of a myth of feminine evil which in turn justified several centuries of gynocide.
The evidence, provided by the Malleus and the executions which blackened those centuries, is almost without limit. One particular concern was that devils
stole semen (vitality) from innocent, sleeping men —
seductive witches visited men in their sleep, and did the
evil stealing. As Ernest Jones wrote:
The explanation for these fantasies is surely not hard.