Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger: Malleus maleficarum

Impact

German presses printed eight editions of the Malleus maleficarum in the first ten years after it was composed in 1486. Sixteen further printings occurred in France and Italy, the last in 1669. The Malleus maleficarum seems to have had little practical application as a handbook used by later inquisitors or influence in sparking widespread fears about witches, for the period of the witch hunts began a good century after the Malleus maleficarum’s publication. Written in Latin, it was not translated into modern languages until the early twentieth century, with the first English translation completed in 1928. It is of religious and historical importance because Institoris and Sprenger’s work has subsequently become the foundational text for scholars examining the so-called witch hunts that occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe and up through the eighteenth century in the American colonies.