Witch Hunting Manual
In 1481 the Catholic Church charged two Dominican monks, James Sprenger and Henry Kramer, with the task of writing a manual for hunting witches. The manual, Malleus Maleficarum, took 5 years to create.
The Malleus Maleficarum is the best known of the witch-hunt manuals. Originally written in Latin, the title is translated as “The Hammer of Witches”. Used for more than three hundred years, it was the justification for the witch trials in Europe and Colonial America.
The document specified rules of evidence and procedures by which suspected witches should be detected, tortured and put to death.
Buy your own copy of the Malleus Maleficarum or Read the Malleus Maleficarum online.
Witch hunts continue today. In Nigeria, religious leaders in extremist Christian churches are “identifying” some children as witches. The children are then subjected to horrible purifying rituals. Children have been hacked to death, poisoned and buried alive in an attempt to drive out Satan.
‘Child-witches’ of Nigeria Seek Refuge (Telegraph UK)
Its shocking that this kind of thing still goes on in Africa.