The Enemy Within by John Demos Page B

with fervent conviction, they offered their answer. Women, they declared—invoking long-familiar stereotypes—are “more credulous” and “more impressionable” and “feebler in mind and body” than men; these qualities, separately and together, naturally invite the attentions of the Devil. But this is just the beginning. A woman has a “slippery tongue,” and is “a liar by nature.” Thus she inclines always to “deceit”; moreover, “her gait, posture, and habit [betray her] vanity of vanities.” A further “natural reason” for her basic “perfidy” is that “she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations”; indeed, her “carnal lust . . . is insatiable.” Finally, “it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib . . . in a contrary direction to a man. [Thus] she is an imperfect animal.” To repeat: credulous, impressionable, feeble in mind and body; lying, deceitful, vain; insatiably carnal; and defectively formed in the first place. Put the whole together, and “it is no matter for wonder that there are many more women [than men] found infected with the heresy of witchcraft.”
    Perhaps it seems unsurprising that two aging male priests, sworn to lifelong celibacy, would spew such pointedly woman-hating invective. But, in fact, Kramer and Sprenger were as careful here as throughout the Malleus to cite numerous other writings in support of their views. Again and again they invoked the Bible: for example, “There is no wrath above the wrath of a woman” (Ecclesiastes 25). And also the saints: “What else is a woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with fair colors” (St. John Chrysostom). And, not least, the sages of antiquity: “The many lusts of men lead them into one sin; but the one lust of women leads them into all sins; for the root of all woman’s vices is avarice” (Cicero). Indeed, this aspect of the Malleus is best understood as a pulling together of misogynous attitudes from many different sources and centuries. As such, it exemplifies a virtual mother lode of feeling (especially, but not exclusively, in men) that fueled witch-hunting everywhere.
    In its final section, the Malleus turns from theory to practice—from witchcraft as a social, cultural, and cosmological presence to the specific requirements of inquisition. Witch-hunting was then in the early stages of a highly consequential shift; formerly the special province of the church, it would soon become a prime focus for the state, as papal inquisitors yielded more and more responsibility to secular courts and judges. The Malleus was a major instigator, both in furnishing overall warrant and as a source of particular strategies and tactics. The chief arguments favoring secular prosecution were: “First, because . . . the crime of witches is not purely ecclesiastical, being rather civil on account of the temporal injuries they commit”; second, “because special laws are provided for dealing with witches”; and, “finally, because it seems that in this way it is easiest to proceed with the extermination of witches.” The Malleus did, at every point, emphasize maleficia (“temporal injuries”) over broadly theological issues. Governments had recently begun to write witchcraft into statute law. And, for certain, there was no quicker, more efficient way to achieve the ultimate goal of witch “extermination.”
    The specifics, reflecting as they did the authors’ direct experience, ran the gamut from basic principles of law to elaborate counter-magical tips. Thus, on the one hand: “The judge is not bound to publish the names of