Malleus Maleficarum : The Hammer of Witchcraft

First printed in the late 1480s, this Latin treatise is a handbook on the existence, crimes, and prosecution of witches. The opening part argues from theology and canon law that witches make pacts with demons and that to deny witchcraft is itself error. The second describes spells, weather magic, midwifery, and sexual congress with incubi. The third instructs ecclesiastical and secular judges in accusation, interrogation, torture, and sentence, with model procedures for German-speaking courts. The book is a scholastic and legal manual of persecution, not a collection of folk tales and not a modern history of the trials.

Bound in black cloth with a design in silver and metallic red by Fiona Campbell. Grey endleaves. Mottled grey slipcase.