The Malleus Malificarum.

[Danustouch]

An informative link about that dreaded document " The Malleus Malificarum", including text, and lots of introductory comments.

http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/

[mol]

Thanks for posting all of these links. I enjoy reading them, when I actually get a chance to sit and read something...

[Danustouch]

*BUMP*

[kblackthorne]

~laughing~

Ah, good grief! This is the EXACT copy I have! And boy, was Montague Summers (the translator, who wrote 2 introductions) a scary dude!

Ah, well, thanks for trying! :)

A few years ago, I saw a really "cool" copy in a "used & antique" bookstore. Black leather cover, nice quality paper... And for some stupid reason I didn't buy it. (Knowing me, some stupid reason like lack of cash.) I wonder now if that was also Montague Summers, or if it was someone else translating.

Ah, well, I guess I'll plod through the tortured sentence-structure. I've read worse -- I was just hoping I wouldn't have to. :)

[Danustouch]

Sorry. I didn't remember who the author was when I bumped the thread

[kblackthorne]

That's OK -- I asked you to! :) (Well, indirectly, but I still asked!)

But when I saw the same orange cover that was -- at that moment -- sitting on top of one of my printers.... I just busted up. :lol:

And, unexpectedly, I tend to laugh around the Malleus anyway.

I really didn't expect that -- it's always been held up as this book of great evil. And I certainly agree that it is. But it's so full of absurdities... Like their discussion of basilisks. Or their use of "logic" and "reason"... "X cannot possibly be so, therefore X is clearly true."

You have to laugh. Or pull your hair out. And the latter would make my husband very upset, so I go with the former.

Ah, well, maybe it's a healthy response after all. As they say, "The devil cannot abide to be mocked." :rotfl:

[Danustouch]

I'm either totally misundertanding you, or I really don't get what you mean.

The Malleus was the book which supposedly showed people how to detect witches. Thus, in the Christian mindset in the era of that books fame, it wasn't an "evil" book at all.

If you are talking about evil in the Pagan/Wiccan/Heathen mindset...well.....I simply don't believe in pure evil anyway..and *most* pagans and wiccans I know, don't either...heh. So..i'm kind of confused as to what your last post meant.

As for laughing out loud at the Malleus...it's been my experience that MOST people in these modern times DO laugh at the Malleus. Even most Christians, and Christian ministers that i've met find it laughable. It's just another book of meaningless superstitions in their minds.

So you're not alone in your chuckling, to say the least.

[kblackthorne]

I mean in the sense that most modern people would consider the practices prescribed in it "Evil".

(Laying aside the whole Wiccan outlook on whether absolute Evil exists.)

Heck, take this book to a Catholic priest, and see what he says about it! In Catholic school, I was taught about the Inquisition... and it was presented as a time when the Church was largely corrupt, and great evil (torture, murder, etc.) were done in the name of a God who despised such things.

Then I became Wiccan. And so much of what happened in the Witch Craze can be laid at the feet of these two men.

And a mere century before, they would have been considered dangerous heretics for their views.

[kblackthorne]

And, too, I suppose in the sense that most Wiccans I know react to the book as if it were a poisonous snake about to bite them.

It's really, in some senses a "boogie man" in the modern Wiccan psyche.

[Danustouch]

Yep..i've noticed that too. I think dramatic people take the malleus as just another reason to act dramatically.

I've also seen many people do the same thing with the necronomicon...even though that's a pure work of fiction, imo..and peoples fear and awe of it, boggles me.

a reference as to the Necronomicon, and it's truth or fiction, for those who would like me to back up my statement...

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mnecromicon.html

[kblackthorne]

Yeah, I've met a few people who talked in hushed, awed tones of the Necronomicon.

It was hard to keep a straight face. After all, I own a "Miskatonic U" t-shirt.

[Theres]

many people (even Pagans) have the same reaction to anything with Crowley's name attached to it.
and, since i consider all 'evil' to me man-made, then the Hammer can be considered that. the horrors that were committed after this book was released are unforgivable. but i don't think that it was all do to the MM. Kramer and Sprenger were only responding to a Papal Bull of two years earlier, Pope Innocent VIII's 'Bull Against Witches' (1484 i believe). what was needed to implement this edict was a definitive way to identify these offending witches. when you give such a responsibility to two paranoid, misogynistic zealots as these two misguided monks, the 'Malleus Mallificarum' is going to be the result.

[Danustouch]

The problem is..that the Protestant Christians ...the Puritans, could not look to the "Papal Bull"....because they were anti-papists. They needed a book of their own, to answer to the fears and superstitions of the people :(

[Theres]

but wasn't the 'Hammer' written quite awhile before the Reformation?

[Danustouch]

Yes..and that's my point. The Puritans could not accept the Papal Bull..but they COULD accept the Malleus, as it wasn't a dictate from the Pope himself.