Malleus Maleficarum
In the fifteenth century (1485), two Dominican friars, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger wrote The Malleus Maleficarum that laid the foundation for the theological and judicial beliefs concerning the arrest, imprisonment, trial, and execution of witches. The unrelenting thoroughness of this document, sums up the entire history of witch beliefs and gives to Christian Europe a complete, persuasive, and massively documented description of the witches who lived in their towns and villages. Sprenger and Kramer stated: Whatever is done for the safety of the State is merciful."
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The city of Toulouse is located in the south of France in an area known at the Midi-Pyrenees, because it is close to the Pyrenees Mountains that separate France from Spain. It is in this area in the fourteenth century that the first inquisition against witches took place. |
