MALLEUS MALEFICARUM: The Hammer of Witches, the Fifteenth-Century Manual That Shaped Europe's Witch Trials

In 1486, two Dominican inquisitors published a manual that would shape two centuries of witch trials across Europe. This edition presents the complete text of the Malleus Maleficarum, modernized from the classic 1928 English translation by Montague Summers, in clear, readable contemporary prose.

Heinrich Kramer, writing with the authority of a papal Bull from Innocent VIII, laid out a three-part case: that witches exist and their power is real, that the Devil works through them with God's permission, and that inquisitors and judges have both the duty and the legal procedure to try, sentence, and punish them. The result was cited by prosecutors and courts for generations across Germany, France, and beyond, and it remains the single most consulted primary source for understanding how the witch trials began and why they took the shape they did.

This complete edition includes:

The Bull of Innocent VIII and the Approbation from the University of Cologne, printed exactly as they appeared in the original.

All three parts of the treatise in full: the theological case for the reality of witchcraft, the specific harms attributed to witches and the remedies against them, and the detailed legal procedure for trial, examination, and sentencing, including the use of torture.

Every one of Montague Summers' original footnotes, modernized and gathered at the end of each division rather than scattered as marginal asides, so the scholarly apparatus stays intact without interrupting the reading experience.

A glossary of the Latin and scholastic terms the text relies on, a timeline placing the Malleus in the broader history of the witch trials from the Canon Episcopi through the Salem trials and the Enlightenment's rejection of the whole framework, and a note on this edition explaining its sources and approach.

The Malleus Maleficarum is a historical document, not a statement of fact or a guide to any present-day belief. It reflects the theology, jurisprudence, and hostility toward women of its own era, and its procedures against the accused are presented here as written, without alteration, softening, or apology. This edition exists so that students of history, religious studies, and the history of law can read, in full and in their own language, the book that did more than any other to make the witch trials possible.