Related Research Articles
The Inquisition was a judicial procedure and a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, apostasy, blasphemy, witchcraft, and customs considered deviant. Violence, torture, or the simple threat of its application, were used by the Inquisition to extract confessions and denunciations from heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but convictions of unrepentant heresy were handed over to the secular courts, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment. The Inquisition had its start in the 12th-century Kingdom of France, with the aim of combating religious deviation, particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, include the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites, and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.
The Malleus Maleficarum, usually translated as the Hammer of Witches, is the best known treatise purporting to be about witchcraft. It was written by the German Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1486. Some describe it as the compendium of literature in demonology of the 15th century. Kramer presented his own, somewhat idiosyncratic views as the Roman Catholic Church's position.
The Roman Inquisition, formally Suprema Congregatio Sanctae Romanae et Universalis Inquisitionis, was a system of partisan tribunals developed by the Holy See of the Catholic Church, during the second half of the 16th century, responsible for prosecuting individuals accused of a wide array of crimes according to Catholic law and doctrine, relating to Catholic religious life or alternative religious or secular beliefs. It was established in 1542 by the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Paul III. In the period after the Medieval Inquisition, it was one of three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition, the other two being the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition.
Heinrich Kramer, also known under the Latinized name Henricus Institor, was a German churchman and inquisitor. With his widely distributed book Malleus Maleficarum (1487), which describes witchcraft and endorses detailed processes for the extermination of witches, he was instrumental in establishing the period of witch trials in the early modern period. Professor Malcolm Gaskill has described Kramer as a "superstitious psychopath."
Jacob Sprenger was a Dominican inquisitor and theologian principally known for his association with a well-known guide for witch-hunters from 1486, Malleus Maleficarum. He was born in Rheinfelden, Further Austria, taught at the University of Cologne, and died in 1495 in Strasbourg.
A Witches' Sabbath is a purported gathering of those believed to practice witchcraft and other rituals. The phrase became especially popular in the 20th century.
Ulrich Molitor was a lawyer who wrote a treatise offering qualified support, joined to clarifications and methodological critiques derived Canon Law, to the recent witch-phobic efforts by Heinrich Kramer represented in Krämer's then-recently-published manual for the interrogation and prosecution of witchcraft Malleus Maleficarum.
Summis desiderantes affectibus, sometimes abbreviated to Summis desiderantes, was a papal bull regarding witchcraft issued by Pope Innocent VIII on 5 December 1484.
The Formicarius, written 1436–1438 by Johannes Nider during the Council of Florence and first printed in 1475, is the second book ever printed to discuss witchcraft. Nider dealt specifically with witchcraft in the fifth section of the book. Unlike his successors, he did not emphasize the idea of the Witches' Sabbath and was skeptical of the claim that witches could fly by night. With over 25 manuscript copies from fifteenth and early sixteenth century editions from the 1470s to 1692, the Formicarius is an important work for the study of the origins of the witch trials in Early Modern Europe, as it sheds light on their earliest phase during the first half of the 15th century.
The Aix-en-Provence possessions were a series of alleged cases of demonic possession occurring among the Ursuline nuns of Aix-en-Provence in 1611. Father Louis Gaufridi was accused and convicted of causing the possession by a pact with the devil, and he was tortured by strappado and his bones dislocated. He was then executed on April 1611 by strangulation and his body burned. This case provided the legal precedent for the conviction and execution of Urbain Grandier at Loudun more than 20 years later. This event led to possessions spreading to other convents and a witch burning in 1611.
In the early modern period, from about 1400 to 1775, about 100,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and British America. Between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed, almost all in Europe. The witch-hunts were particularly severe in parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Prosecutions for witchcraft reached a high point from 1560 to 1630, during the Counter-Reformation and the European wars of religion. Among the lower classes, accusations of witchcraft were usually made by neighbors, and women made formal accusations as much as men did. Magical healers or 'cunning folk' were sometimes prosecuted for witchcraft, but seem to have made up a minority of the accused. Roughly 80% of those convicted were women, most of them over the age of 40. In some regions, convicted witches were burnt at the stake, the traditional punishment for religious heresy.
Northern Moravia witch trials, also known as Boblig witch trials was a series of witch trials which occurred in the Jeseník (Freiwaldau) and Šumperk area in the present-day Czech Republic, between 1622 and 1696. They are among the largest and most well known Czech witch trials.
The Four Naked Women, or The Four Witches, or The Four Sorceresses or Scene in a Brothel, are titles given to a 1497 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. It is one of his earliest signed engravings and shows four exuberant nude women gathered conspiratorially in a circle in a confined interior setting, perhaps a bathhouse, which appears to have entrances from either side. Although the image is clearly erotic, a small horned demon in the left-hand portal, perhaps representing temptation, looks out and holds what may be a hunting object, engulfed in flames.
Throughout the era of the European witch trials in the Early Modern period, from the 15th to the 18th century, there were protests against both the belief in witches and the trials. Even those protestors who believed in witchcraft were typically sceptical about its actual occurrence.
Nicholas Jacquier was a French Dominican and Inquisitor. He became known as demonologist and proponent of witch-hunting.
Various feminist interpretations of witch trials in the early modern period have been made and published throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These interpretations have evolved with popular feminist ideologies, including those of the first-wave, second-wave feminism, and socialist feminist movements.
Strixology is a genre of writing about the reality and dangers of witches, their origins, character and power; often in the context of theology or of demonology.
The Witches is a chiaroscuro woodcut by German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung. This woodcut depicts witches preparing to travel to a Witches' Sabbath by using flying ointment. This is the first woodcut produced by Baldung after leaving the studio of his mentor, Albrecht Dürer, and one of the first Renaissance images to depict both witches that fly and a Witches' Sabbath.
In the Holy Roman Empire, witch trials composed of the areas of the present day Germany, were the most extensive in Europe and in the world, both to the extent of the witch trials as such as well as to the number of executions.
The German Inquisition was established by Pope Gregory IX in 1231, and the first inquisitor was appointed in the territory of Germany. In the second half of the 14th century, permanent structures of the Inquisition were organized in Germany, which, with the exception of one tribunal, survived only until the time of the Reformation in the first half of the 16th century. In combating heretics in Germany, the Inquisition always played a secondary role compared to the ecclesiastical courts.
References
- ↑ Brauner, Sigrid (2001). Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany. Univ of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1558492976.
- ↑ Kessler, Matthias (2012-12-21). Das Schicksal der Hexe Helena: Ein MysteryKrimi basierend auf wahren Begebenheiten (in German). Allpart Media. ISBN 9783862145119.
- ↑ Heinrich Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, trans. from Latin to English by Christopher S. Mackay, p401 n435. While Kramer does discuss the trial in the book, in this note Mackay is quoting Kramer's record held by the court.
- 1 2 Broedel, Hans P. "The Malleus Maleficarum and the construction of witchcraft: theology and popular belief", Manchester University (2003) ISBN 9780719064418
- ↑ Mackay, Christopher S. (July 10, 2020). "Record of the Proceedings against the Seven Accused, October 29 and 31 and November 3, 1485". "An Unusual Inquisition". Brill. pp. 203–215. doi:10.1163/9789004423800_016. ISBN 9789004423800. S2CID 234610693 – via brill.com.
  | This Austrian biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |