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The Malleus Maleficarum, [a] usually translated as the Hammer of Witches, [3] [b] is the best known treatise about witchcraft. [6] [7] It was written by the German Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer (under his Latinized name Henricus Institor) and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1486.
Witch characters—women who work powerful evil magic—appear in ancient Roman literature from the first century BC onward. They are typically hags who chant harmful incantations; make poisonous potions from herbs and the body parts of animals and humans; sacrifice children; raise the dead; can control the natural world; can shapeshift ...
His work on witchcraft was The Discoverie of Witchcraft, wherein the Lewde dealing of Witches and Witchmongers is notablie detected, in sixteen books … whereunto is added a Treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Devils, 1584. Scot enumerates 212 authors whose works in Latin he had consulted, and twenty-three authors who wrote ...
In the seventeenth century, Russia experienced a period of witchcraft trials and persecution that mirrored the witch hysteria occurring across Catholic and Protestant countries. Orthodox Christian Europe joined this phenomenon, targeting individuals, both male and female, believed to be practicing sorcery, paganism, and herbal medicine.
In response to the Bishop's criticism, Kramer began to write a treatise on witchcraft that later became the Malleus Maleficarum (commonly translated as "The Hammer of Witches"). The bull Summis desiderantes , which gave him the authority of prosecuting and investigating cases of sorcery, was included in the forefront of the book, first ...
Ancrene Wisse - MS Cleopatra in the British Library. Ancrene Wisse (/ ˌ æ ŋ k r ɛ n ˈ w ɪ s /; also known as the Ancrene Riwle [note 1] / ˌ æ ŋ k r ɛ n ˈ r iː ʊ l i / [1] or Guide for Anchoresses) is an anonymous monastic rule (or manual) for anchoresses written in the early 13th century.
The history or legend of the witches of Benevento is folklore dating from at least the 13th century, and one reason for the fame of Benevento, an ancient Samnite city. The popular belief—that Benevento would be the Italian witches' gathering place—has abundant implications, blurring the border between reality and imagination.
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.