The 'Malleus Maleficarum' and the Construction of Witchcraft by Hans Broedel

The 'Malleus Maleficarum' and the Construction of Witchcraft by Hans Broedel

What was witchcraft? Were witches real? How should witches be identified? How should they be judged? Towards the end of the middle ages these were serious and important questions - and completely new ones. Between 1430 and 1500, a number of learned 'witch-theorists' attempted to answer such questions, and of these perhaps the most famous are the Dominican inquisitors Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches. The Malleus is an important text and is frequently quoted by authors across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. Yet it also presents serious difficulties: it is difficult to understand out of context, and is not generally representative of late medieval learned thinking. This, the first book-length study of the original text in English, provides students and scholars with an introduction to this controversial work and to the conceptual word of its authors. Like all witch-theorists, Institoris and Sprenger constructed their witch out of a constellation of pre-existing popular beliefs and learned traditions. Therefore, to understand the Malleus, one must also understand the contemporary and subsequent debates over the reality and nature of witches. This book argues that although the Malleus was a highly idiosyncratic text, its arguments were powerfully compelling and therefore remained influential long after alternatives were forgotten. Consequently, although focused on a single text, this study has important implications for fifteenth-century witchcraft theory. This is a fascinating work on the Malleus Maleficarum and will be essential to students and academics of late medieval and early modern history, religion and witchcraft studies.

Broedel has provided an excellent study, not only of the Malleus and its authors, but just as importantly, of the intellectual context in which the Malleus must be set and the theological and folk traditions to which it is, in many ways, an heir

Peter Maxwell-Stuart, St Andrews University

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Hans Peter Broedel is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Hamilton College, New York

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780719064418
ISBN 10	0719064414
Title	The 'Malleus Maleficarum' and the Construction of Witchcraft
Author	Hans Broedel
Series	Studies In Early Modern European History
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Manchester University Press
Year published	2003-11-13
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.