lves, that
in some parts of Higher Germany ... very many persons of both
sexes, deviating from the Catholic faith, abuse themselves with
the demons, Incubus and Succubus; and by incantations, charms,
conjurations, and other wicked _superstitions_, by criminal acts
and offences have caused the offspring of women and of the lower
animals, the fruits of the earth, the grape, and the products of
various plants, men, women, and other animals of different kinds,
vineyards, meadows, pasture land, corn, and other vegetables of
the earth, to perish, be oppressed, and utterly destroyed; that
they torture men and women with cruel pains and torments,
internal as well as external; that they hinder the proper
intercourse of the sexes, and the propagation of the human
species. Moreover, they are in the habit of denying the very
faith itself. We therefore, willing to provide by opportune
remedies according as it falls to us by our office, by our
apostolical authority, by the tenor of these presents do appoint
and decree that they be convicted, imprisoned, punished, and
mulcted according to their offences.... By the apostolic rescript
given at Rome.'

This, in brief, is an outline of the proclamation of Innocent
VIII., the principles of which were developed in the more
voluminous work of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,'[73] or Hammer of
Witches, five years later. In the interval, the effect of so
forcible an appeal from the Head of the Church was such as might
be expected. Cumanus, one of the inquisitors in 1485, burned
forty-one witches, first shaving them to search for 'marks.'
Alciatus, a lawyer, tells us that another ecclesiastical officer
burned one hundred witches in Piedmont, and was prevented in his
plan of daily _autos-da-fe_ only by a general uprising of the
people, who at length drove him out of the country, when the
archbishop succeeded to the vacant office. In several provinces,
even the servile credulity of the populace could not tolerate the
excesses of the judges; and the inhabitants rose _en masse_
against their inquisitorial oppressors, dreading the entire
depopulation of their neighbourhood. As a sort of apology for the
bull of 1484 was published the 'Malleus'--a significantly
expressive title.[74] The authors appointed by the pope were
Jacob Sprenger, of the Order of Preachers, and Professor of
Theology in Cologne; John Gremper, priest, Master in Arts; and
Henry Institor. The work is divisible, according to the title,