THE MALLEUS MALIFICARUM

of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

Part II

This section is interesting in that it discusses specific cases, including the people's names, and towns. Most are in Germany.

• page( 90) ... For example, a judge named Peter, whom we have mentioned before, wished his officials to arrest a certain witch called Stadlin; but their hands were seized with so great a trembling, and such a nauseous stench came into their nostrils, that they gave up hope of daring to touch the witch. (lived at Boltingen, a town in the ducy and diocese of Lausanne. John Nider sat as assessor at his trial.)
• page( 90) ... Not long ago in the town of Ratisbon the magistrates had condemned a witch to be burned, and were asked why it was that we Inquisitors were not afflicted like other men with witchcraft.
• page( 91) ... ..the window of their prison, which was so high that no one could reach it without the longest of ladders;
• page( 91) ... There lived in a town of Wiesenthal a certain Mayor who was bewitched with the most terrible pains and bodily contortions.
• page( 96) ... We know of a stranger in the diocese of Augsburg, who before he was forty-four years old lost all his horses in succession through witchcraft. His wife, being afflicted with weariness by reason of this, consulted with witches, and after following their counsels, unwholesome as they were, all the horses which he bought after that (for he was a carrier) were preserved from witchcraft.
• page( 96) ... And how many women have complained to us in our capacity of Inquisitors, that when their cows have been injured by being deprived of their milk, or in any other way, they have consulted with suspected witches, and even been given remedies by the, on condition that they would promise something to some spirit; and when they asked what they would havbe to promise, the witches ansered that it was only a small thing, that they should agree to exectue the instructions of that master with regard to certain observances during the Holy Offices of the Church, or to observed some silent reservations in their confessions to priests.
• page( 97) ... Two witches were burned in Ratisbon, as we shall tell later where we treat of their methods of raising tempests. And one of them, who was a bath-woman, and confessed among other things the following:
• page( 97) ... Another virgin living in the diocese of Strasburg confessed to one of us..
• page( 98) ... There is a place in the diocese of Brixen...
• page( 98) ... A certain high-born Count in the ward of Westerich, in the diocese of Strasburg..... He went to the State of Metz....
• page( 99) ... There were such witches lately, thirty years ago, in the district of Savoy, towards the State of Berne, as Nider tells in his Formicarius. And there are now some in the country of Lombardy, in the domains of the Duke of Austria, where the Inquisitor of Como, as we told in the former Part, caused forty- one witches to be burned in one year; and he was fifty-five years old, and still continues to labour in the Inquisition.
• page( 100) ... We Inqusitors had credible experience of this method in the town of Breisach in the diocese of Basel... an Inquisitor of the diocese of Edua...Botlingen....State of Berne
• page( 102) ...Similarly, after they have confessed their crimes under torture they always try to hang themselves; and this we know for a fact; for after the confession of their crimes, guards are deputed to watch them all the time, and even then, when the guards have been negligent, they have been found hanged with their shoe-laces or garments. This is exemplified by certain events which took place hardly three years ago in the dioceses of Strasburg and Constance, and in the towns of Hagenau and Ratisbon. For in the first town one hanged herself with a trifling and flimsy garment. Another named Walpurgis, was notorious for her power of preserving silence, and used to teach other women how to achieve a like quality of silence by cooking their first-born sons in an oven.
• page( 104) ... Similarly, in the diocese of Basel, in the village called Buchel, near the town of Gewyll..
• page( 114) ... But with regard to any bystanders, the witches themselves have often been seen lying on thier backs in the fields or the woods, naked up to the very navel, and it has been apparent from the disposition of those limbs and members which pertain to the venereal and and orgasm, as also from the agitation of their legs and thighs, that, all invisibly to the bystanders, they have been copulating with Incubus devils; yet sometimes, albeit this is rare, at the end of the act a very black vapour, of about the stature of a man, rises up into the air from the witch. And the reason is that that Schemer knows that he can in this way seduce or pervert the minds of girls or other men who are standing by. ...in the town of Ratisbon and on the estate of the nobles of Rappolstein, and in certain other countries.
• page( 116) ...And now bad Christians imitate these corruptions, turning them to lasciviousness when they run about at the time of Carnival* with masks and jests and other superstitions. Similarly witches use these revelries of the devil for their own advantage, and work their spells about the time of the New Year in respect of the Divine Offices and Worship; as on S. Andrew's Day and at Christmas.
  "Carnival." These Pagan practices are sternely reprobated in the "Liber Poenitentialis" of S. Theodore, seventh Archbishop of Canterbury. In Book XXXVII is written: "If anyone at the Kalends of January goeth about as a stag of a bull-calf, that is, making himself into a wild animal, and dressing in the skins of a herd animal, and putting on the heads of beasts; those who in such wise transform themselves into the appearance of a wild animal, let them do penance for three years, because this is devilish."...The Council of Auxerre in 578 (or 585) forbade anyone "to masquerade as a bull-calf or a stag on the first of January or to distribute devilish charms.
• page(116) ... In a town which it is better not to name, for the sake of charity and expediency, when a certain witch received the Body of Our Lord, she suddenly lowered her head, as is the detestable habit of women, placed her garment near her mouth, and taking the Body of the Lord out of her mouth, wrapped it in a handkerchief; and afterwards, at the suggestion of the devil, placed it in a pot in which there was a toad, and hid it in the ground near her house by the storehouse, together with several other things, by means of which she had to work her witchcraft. ... And when she was taken and questioned, she discovered her crime, saying that the Lords's Body had been hidden in the pot with a toad, so that by means of their dust she might be able to cause injuries at her will to men and other creatures.
  ...The toad constantly appears as a familiar. In 1579 at Windsor "one Mother Dutton dwellyng in Cleworthe Partishe keepeth a Spirite or Feende in the likeness of a Toade, and fedeth the same Feende liying in a border of greene Hearbes, within her garden, with blood whiche she causeth to issue from her owne flancke." Ursley Kemp, a S. Osyth witch (1582), had a familiar, Pygine, "black like a Toad." Ales Hunt of the same coven nourished two familiars, "the which she kept in a little lowe earthen pot." Margerie Sammon, another S. Osyth's witch, "hath also two spirites like Toads, the one called 'Tom' and the other 'Robbyn.'" When Ursley Kemp peeped through Mother Hunt's window she "espied a spirite to looke out of a porcharde from unver a clothe, the nose therof being browne like unto a Ferret."
• page( 143) ...when her husband, after copulating with her, says, I hope a child will come of it; and she answers, May the child go to the devil! How much greater must be the punishment when the Divine Majesty is offended in the way we have described!
• page( 149) although it was in the torture chamber, she fully laid bare all the crimes which she had committed. ... But (and this is remarkable) when on the next day the other witch had at first been exposed to the very gentlest questions, being suspended hardly clear of the ground by her thumbs, after she had been set quite free, she disclosed the whole matter without the slightest descrepancy from what the other had told; ... Accordingly, on the third day they were burned. And the bath-woman was contrite and confessed, and commended herself to God, saying that she would die with a willing heart if she could escape the tortures of the devil, and held in her had a cross which she kissed. But the other witch scorned her for doing so.
• page(167) .. For by taking ants' eggs in drink, or the seeds of spurge or of the black pine, an incredible amount of wind and flatulence is generated in the human stomach.
• page(189) .. On the first of May before sunrise the women of the village go out and gather from the woods leaves and branches from the willow trees, and weave them into a wreath which they hang over the stable door.
• page(193) Again in Duteronomy xxii: God says that men shall not put on the garments of women, or conversely; because they did this in honour of the goddess Venus, and others in honour of Mars or Priapus.

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