Book contents
Chapter 5
from Question 1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2015
Summary
AS for how they taint other creatures of either sex and the fruits of the earth, several things should be noted with regard to the methods by which they act: first, how they do so to humans, second, to animals, and third to the fruits of the earth. With reference to a human, the first topic is how they impede the force of procreation (the sexual act) with acts of sorcery, | intending to prevent the woman from conceiving or the man from carrying out the act. The second is how this act is sometimes impeded in respect to one woman but not another. The third is how male members are taken away as if they have been altogether torn out of the body. The fourth is how to distinguish if any of the preceding events happen through the power of a demon inflicting it by himself and not through a sorceress. The fifth is how sorceresses transform humans of either sex into beasts through the art of conjuring. The sixth is how midwife sorceresses kill fetuses in the mother's womb in various ways, and how they offer the babies to the demons when they do not kill the fetuses.
To make sure that these statements are not considered unbelievable, decisions about them were reached in Part One of the work through the questions and solutions to the arguments, and if necessary the doubtful reader can return to them to track down the truth. For the present, only deeds and events that were discovered by us or that were narrated by others in writing are to be described as a public indication of the revulsion felt for so great a crime. The intention is that if perchance the preceding questions are difficult for someone to understand, he may take faith from the things that are related in the present Part Two and recoil from the error by which he held the view that there was no sorceress in the world or that no acts of sorcery could happen.
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- The Hammer of WitchesA Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 315 - 320Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009