The book was later used by royal courts during the Renaissance, and contributed to the increasingly brutal prosecution of witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries. Kramer wrote the Malleus following his expulsion from Innsbruck by the local bishop, due to charges of illegal behavior against Kramer himself, and because of Kramer's obsession with the sexual habits of one of the accused, Helena Scheuberin, which led the other tribunal members to suspend the trial.
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Jacob Sprenger's name was added as an author beginning in 1519, 33 years after the book's first publication and 24 years after Sprenger's death but the veracity of this late addition has been questioned by many historians for various reasons. The book had a strong influence on culture for several centuries. At the time of its publication, heretics were frequently punished to be burned alive at the stake and the Malleus encouraged the same treatment of witches. The Malleus suggests torture to effectively obtain confessions and the death penalty as the only certain remedy against the evils of witchcraft. The Malleus elevates sorcery to the criminal status of heresy and recommends that secular courts prosecute it as such. The top theologians of the Inquisition at the Faculty of Cologne condemned the book as recommending unethical and illegal procedures, as well as being inconsistent with Catholic doctrines of demonology. It has been described as the compendium of literature in demonology of the 15th century. It was written by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer (under his Latinized name Henricus Institor) and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1486.
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The Malleus Maleficarum, usually translated as the Hammer of Witches, is the best known treatise on witchcraft.
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Title page of the seventh Cologne edition of the Malleus Maleficarum, 1520 (from the University of Sydney Library).