Approbation and Signatures of the Doctors of the Illustrious University of Cologne
from THE HAMMER OF WITCHES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2015
Summary
IN the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let all those who will read, see or hear the present public document know that in the year since the Birth of Our Lord 1487, in the fifth indiction, on Saturday, the nineteenth day of May, at five in the afternoon or thereabouts, in the third year of the Pontificate of Our Lord, the Most Holy Father in Christ, Lord Innocent VIII, by Divine Providence Pope, in the presence of my notary public and of the witnesses written below who had been specifically summoned and asked for this purpose, the venerable and religious Brother Henricus Institoris, Professor of Holy Theology and member of the Order of Preachers, who was appointed as Inquisitor into Heretical Depravity by the Holy See along with his colleague, the venerable and religious Brother Jacobus Sprenger, also a Professor of Holy Theology and Prior of the Convent of Preachers in Cologne, explained and stated on behalf of himself and his aforementioned colleague that the present Supreme Pontiff (the aforementioned Lord Innocent the Pope) by a Bull Patent entrusted to these Inquisitors, the aforementioned Henricus and Jacobus, members of the Order of Preachers and Professors of Holy Theology, gave permission to conduct an inquisition by Apostolic authority into any heresies whatsoever, but especially into the Heresy of Sorceresses, which is flourishing in the present day, particularly throughout five archbishoprics, namely Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Salzburg and Bremen, granting them full permission to conduct proceedings against such people until their final extermination according to the text of the Apostolic Bull that he had in his hands and that was whole, intact, unharmed and unvitiated and lacked any grounds for suspicion at all. The text of this Bull begins, “Bishop Innocent, servant of the servants of God, to preserve the memory of this act.
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- The Hammer of WitchesA Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 74 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009