Pope Innocent VIII (r. 1484-1492) was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church when Jacob (or James) Sprenger and Heinrich (or Henry) Kramer began formulating an idea about writing a treatise on witchcraft, witches, and how to investigate and prosecute witchcraft cases. Kramer and Sprenger were qualified authors on the subject, as they were university professors who were also Dominican friars and had experience as inquisitors involved in witchcraft trials. Pope Innocent VIII fully supported the proposed literary project of the inquisitors and formally blessed their endeavor in a Papal Bull (basically an authoritative decree) that was disseminated in 1484. In his decree, Pope Innocent gave a preview of the kind of content that would be in Kramer and Sprenger’s book. The pope included in his Papal Bull a detailed summary of 15th-century beliefs about witches, demons, spells, and their theoretical effects. Pope Innocent VIII stated:
“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, Trèves, Salzburg, and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, 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 fruits of trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vinyards, orchards, meadows, pastureland, corn, wheat, and all other cereals; these wretches furthermore afflict and torment men and women, beast of burthen, 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” (The Bull of Innocent VIII, dated 1484, trans. by Montague Summers).
Citing these medieval supernatural concerns, Pope Innocent VIII reaffirmed Kramer and Sprenger as Papal Inquisitors and bid them continue investigating, documenting, and prosecuting such cases as they went about their overarching goal of publishing their treatise on witches, witchcraft, and witch trials. In the aforementioned Papal Bull, Pope Innocent VIII wrote, “Our dear sons Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, Professors of Theology, of the Order of Friars Preachers, have been by Letters Apostolic delegated as Inquisitors of these heretical pravities, and still are Inquisitors…We decree and enjoin that the aforesaid Inquisitors be empowered to proceed to the just correction, imprisonment, and punishment of any persons…” (The Bull of Innocent VIII, dated 1484, trans. by Montague Summers). With their thorough theological education, their previous experience with witchcraft trials, and their continuing authority as re-appointed inquisitors, Kramer and Sprenger channeled their knowledge and experience into their influential text, the Malleus Maleficarum, which was published around 1487.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Tombstone monument of Pope Innocent VIII (r. 1484-1492), by Antonio Pollaiuolo, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the National Museum in Warsaw).
Sources:
- The Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, translated by Montague Summers. New York: Dover Publications, 1971.
- The Bull of Innocent VIII, in The Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, translated by Montague Summers. New York: Dover Publications, 1971.
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Malleus-maleficarum
