Dominican inquisition and witch-trial theology

Heinrich Kramer

1430 – 1505

Heinrich Kramer was a German Dominican friar and papal inquisitor appointed to investigate sorcery across the Holy Roman Empire who is the primary author of the Malleus Maleficarum (1486/1487) — the infamous witch-hunting manual that systematized demonological theory and provided legal and theological justification for the prosecution of witchcraft across Europe. The Malleus went through nearly thirty editions between 1486 and 1600, making it one of the most widely distributed texts of the early modern period and profoundly shaping European attitudes toward magic, diabolism, heresy, and gender. As the foundational document of the witch-hunt era, it is an indispensable primary source for the history of Western demonology and the persecution of alleged practitioners of magic.