HST 532 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Pope Innocent Viii, Scientific Revolution, Renaissance Magic
7 Nov 2017
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In the medieval church, witches and witchcraft were viewed as pagan superstition. In 785, the council of paderborn declared belief in witchcraft to be a heresy. In spite of that, many christians believed in the existence of both white and black magic. This is why there was not a huge amount of fear or prosecutions about witchcraft in the. Medieval period, because there are both kinds of witches. In 1487, two dominican monks published malleus maleficarum (the hammer of witches), one of the most influential books on how to identify a witch: they claimed official support for their book, but in fact the church condemned malleus. Interestingly, the identification of witchcraft with heresy was weak in england they do not view witchcraft as a religious crime, but a secular crime therefore, the punishments in england are different than the punishments on the continent. In the continent, witches were burned at the stake.
