The Malleus Maleficarum usually translated as Hammer of Witches is the best known and the most important treatise on witchcraft. It was written by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Krämer (under his Latinized name Henricus Institoris) and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1487. It endorses extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a detailed legal and theological theory that is misogynistic. It was a bestseller, second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years.
Misogynistic:
Broedel (2003), p. 175: "Institoris and Sprenger's innovation was not their insistence that women were naturally prone to practice maleficium – in this they were simply following long-standing clerical traditions. Rather, it was their claim that harmful magic belonged exclusively to women that was new. If this assertion was granted, then the presence of maleficium indicated decisively the presence of a female witch. In the Malleus, the field of masculine magic is dramatically limited and male magicians are pointedly marginalized; magic is no longer seen as a range of practices, some of which might be more characteristic of men, some of women, and some equally prevalent among both sexes. Instead, it was the effects of magic that mattered most, and harmful magic, the magic most characteristic of witches, belonged to women. Men might be learned magicians, anomalous archer wizards, or witch-doctors and superstitiosi, but very seldom did they work the broad range of maleficium typical of witches."
Broedel, Hans Peter (2003). The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief. Manchester University Press
Pavlac (2009), p. 57: "Many historians also blame Krämer for encouraging witch hunters to target women more than men as witches. Even his spelling of "maleficarum," with an a in a feminine gender instead of the usual masculine-gender "maleficorum" with an o, seems to emphasize his hostility toward women. Krämer's misogynistic arguments list many reasons why women were more likely to be witches than men. They were less clever, vainer, and more sexually insatiable. While these were not new criticisms against women, Krämer helped to entrench them in strixological literature."
Pavlac, Brian (2009). Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials. ABC-CLIO.
Guiley (2008), p. 223: "Kramer in particular exhibited a virulent hatred toward women witches and advocated their extermination. The Malleus devotes an entire chapter to the sinful weakness of women, their lascivious nature, moral and intellectual inferiority and gullibility to guidance from deceiving spirits. In Kramer's view, women witches were out to harm all of Christendom.
- Scholars have debated the reasons for Kramer's misogyny; he may have had a fear of the power of women mystics of his day, such as Catherine of Siena, who enjoyed the attentions of royalty as well as the church."
Guiley, Rosemary (2008). The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca. Checkmark Books.
Brauner (2001), pp. 35-36: "Kramer and Sprenger present an array of observations from the Bible, the church fathers, and the poets and philosophers of antiquity to support their contention that women are by nature greedy, unintelligent, and governed by passions. They argue that the evil of women stems from their physical and mental imperfections, a notion derived from Aristotle's theory that matter, perfection, and spirituality are purely expressed in the male body alone, and that women are misbegotten males produced by defective sperm. Women speak the language of idiots, Aristotle contends; like slaves, they are incapable of governing themselves or developing into the 'zoon politicon'. Thomas Aquinas adapted these views to Christianity, arguing that because woman is less perfect than man, she is but an indirect image of God and an appendix to man. Citing such views, Kramer and Sprenger find that women are 'intellectually like children,' credulous and impressionable, and therefore easily fall prey to the devil. 'Since [women] are feebler both in mind and body,' the Malleus concludes, 'it is not surprising that they should come more [than men] under the spell of witchcraft.
Lack of intelligence prevents women not only from distinguishing good from evil, but from remembering the rules of behavior. Amoral and undisciplined, women are governed primarily by passion. 'And indeed,' Kramer and Sprenger declare, 'just as thorough the first defect in their intelligence women are more prone to abjure the faith; so through their second defect of inordinate affections and passions they search for, brood over, and inflict various vengeances, either by witchcraft, or by some other means.' [...] 'Wherefore it is no wonder that so great a number of witches exist in this sex,' concludes the Malleus."
Brauner, Sigrid (2001). Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany. University of Massachusetts Press.
Britannica: 'By 1435–50, the number of prosecutions had begun to rise sharply, and toward the end of the 15th century, two events stimulated the hunts: Pope Innocent VIII's publication in 1484 of the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus ("Desiring with the Greatest Ardour") condemning witchcraft as Satanism, the worst of all possible heresies, and the publication in 1486 of Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger's Malleus maleficarum ("The Hammer of Witches"), a learned but cruelly misogynist book blaming witchcraft chiefly on women. Widely influential, it was reprinted numerous times."
Lewis, I. and Russell, J. (2016). witchcraft. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/witchcraft#ref414830 [Accessed 8 Oct. 2016].
http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/downloads/MalleusAcrobat.pdf
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