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The Malleus Maleficarum: The Prosecution Of Witches

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Witchcraft is considered to be a controversial crime and as well punishable. Due to the rise in Christa1inaity, witchcraft is regarded to be a superstition and in this wise persecution of the so called witches became common in the middle ages. The malleus Maleficarum and the other document used served as reference document in order to identify and prosecute witches, it explains the rules of evidence or acceptable procedures in which those that were suspected to be witches are subjected to torture and may eventually be put to death with proven evidence from the person involved. Women and men were usually most victims and thus were killed due to the procedures contained in the book, for reasons such as incantations, charms, conjuring and other abominable superstitions and offences, crimes e.t.c. or mainly due to false accusation. The book malleus maleficarum was a notable warning concerning situations when intolerance took over a societal setting. The Malleus was used as a judicial case book used to detect, persecute people that are suspected to be possessed with witchcrafts, it specifies rules of evidence and the laws that are connected with or allowed by the Christian Church by which suspected witches were being tortured and put to death. According to the words of Innocent VIII, the bishop emphasized that it is possible for anyone accused of being …show more content…

According to book by Nider, Peter who happens to be a secular judge in the diocese of Lausannes, his method is to torture the suspected witches and burn many of those witches and in some cases sent them to exile out of the territory of Bernese. The book does not mention if they were tried by law, instead the judge tortured suspected witches until they confess and eventually will burn them. This is saying in essence that the suspected witches were not given fair trial since they were not tried by any means and no process of examination and trials

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However, J. Barry and O. Davies argues against Barstow’s perspective and theory, that “To translate this as ‘witches’, as Montague Summers regularly does, is therefore to give the reader a false impression, because the English word ‘witch’ immediately suggests a woman.” Therefore, from Barry and Davies’ argument, it could be deduced that although misogyny could be seen throughout the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’, the intention of the book being persecution of women cannot be confirmed to be true. This detracts from Barstow’s argument as there are not much supporting evidence for her perspective that the publication of the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ had a significant impact on starting and increasing the scale of witch-hunting in Europe, as well as specifying that these witches were all women, and therefore makes her argument rather

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"In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One calls up witnesses to prove his innocence. But witchcraft is, ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be a witness to it? The witch and the victim.

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