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On 25 August 1538 there was much discussion about witches and sorceresses who poisoned chicken eggs in the nests, or poisoned milk and butter. Doctor Luther said: "One should show no mercy to these [women]; I would burn them myself, for we read in the Law that the priests were the ones to begin the stoning of criminals." [13]
The book is rather unclear, but the impetus behind male witches seems to come more from desire for power than from disbelief or lust, as it claims is the case for female witches. Indeed, the very title of the Malleus Maleficarum is feminine, alluding to the idea that it was women who were the villains.
[1] Canon 3 of the ecumenical Fourth Council of the Lateran, 1215 required secular authorities to "exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics" pointed out by the Catholic Church, [2] resulting in the inquisitor executing certain people accused of heresy. Some laws allowed the civil government to employ punishment.
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." [2] [3]
The book defended Mather's role in the witchhunt conducted in Salem, Massachusetts. It espoused the belief that witchcraft was an evil magical power. Mather saw witches as tools of the devil in Satan's battle to "overturn this poor plantation, the Puritan colony", and prosecution of witches as a way to secure God's blessings for the colony.
According to Mar, witch spells really aren't much different than conventional prayers. "If you believe, like many do, that prayer is meaningful and can even be effective, and you can pray for any ...
The 1647 book, The Discovery of Witches, soon became an influential legal text. The book was used in the American colonies as early as May 1647, when Margaret Jones was executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts, [66] the first of 17 people executed for witchcraft in the Colonies from 1647 to 1663. [67] lithograph depicting Salem witch trials, 1892
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