The Malleus Maleficarum
Recently an acquaintance tried to convince me that the Witch Trials were totally due to social forces. Of course there were social forces at work, but in the end the Evils that occurred during that time frame were the final chapter in the Church’s 600-year war on Serpent Knowledge . She had been completely blinded to some very important concepts. First, this was Christians murdering people, not “social forces” in the abstract. Read the Malleus Maleficarum , the infamous “Hammer of Witches” that the Inquisitors used to determine whether a person was a witch and what to do when the Inquisitors found out they were. It was written by two Dominican priests. In predomininantly Catholic areas, the Inquisitors killed Protestants. In countries that were about equally Catholic and Protestant, they killed Jews. There was a huge collaboration between kings and the Church to get rid of anyone who was inconvenient. This is a good argument for the separation of ...