In 1484 two Dominican friars, Heinrich Kraemer and Johann
Sprenger, induced Pope Innocent VIII to issue a bull authorizing
them to extirpate witchcraft in Germany; and two years later
these two mean published the Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches’
Hammer), a work that became the authoritative encyclopaedia of
demonology throughout Christendom. It was a synthesis of folk
beliefs that had hitherto been manifested in local outbursts of
witchfinding. Its authority lasted for nearly three centuries,
during the time of the European witch mania. The demonology that
the Malleus enshrined became an established and systematized
theory attributing witches’ powers to their special links with
the devil, especially their sexual relationships with him as
incubus (embodiment in masculine form) if they were women or as
succubis (embodiment in feminine form) if they were men. Though
witches in other societies personify evil in general, in
European history they became specifically identified as the
earthly representatives of the