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Malleus Maleficarum
MAL-ee-uhs mayl-FIK-uh-ruhm
noun
a how-to book on persecuting witches, originally published in 1486; literally: the witch hammer
1852Charles MacKayMemoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Volume Two It was now that the Witch Mania, properly so called, may be said to have fairly commenced. Immediately a class of men sprang up in Europe, who made it the sole business of their lives to discover and burn the witches. Sprenger, in Germany, was the most celebrated of these national scourges. In his notorious work, the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' he laid down a regular form of trial, and appointed a course of examination by which the inquisitors in other countries might best discover the guilty. The questions, which were always enforced by torture, were of the most absurd and disgusting nature. The inquisitors were required to ask the suspected whether they had midnight meetings with the devil? whether they attended the witch's sabbath on the Brocken? whether they had their familiar spirits? whether they could raise whirlwinds and call down the lightning? 1880Charles KingsleyScientific Essays and LecturesFor when he has reduced his superstition to a science, then he will reduce his cruelty to a science likewise, and write books like the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' and the rest of the witch literature of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; of which Mr. Lecky has of late told the world so much, and told it most faithfully and most fairly.1989Nancy CollinsSunglasses After DarkI searched countless volumes for information, no matter how distorted, that might shed some light on my condition. I had access to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Rabelais' Gargantua, Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Beckford's Vathek, Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, Huysmans' La Bas, and even the infamous Malleus Maleficarum.2003Dan BrownThe Da Vinci CodeMalleus Maleficarum—or The Witches' Hammer—indoctrinated the world to 'the dangers of freethinking women' and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture, and destroy them.

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