of the whole mass of fables and myths, with ridiculous and obscene attachments, which had come down through the whole course of history. It is amazing that the male half of the human race should have thus calumniated the female half of it. There may have been some reaction against the equally senseless adoration of women in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but the Malleus supported its denunciation of women by scholastic methods and theological arguments. "It caused on this domain an immeasurable harm to the human race."[1] All the material in the Malleus is heaped together without criticism. From the second half of the thirteenth century popular tales and superstitions had been taken up by the Church and Incorporated in Christian theology, and as a consequence sex-commerce between demons and women had been made a crime. Jurists were now charged to detect and punish it.[2] Innocent VIII, in his bull of 1484, asserts the reality of such commerce in the most positive manner. "The only result of the school theology of the Middle Ages had been to give to the popular delusions a learned drapery and to incorporate them in the Christian world-philosophy. This made them capable of dangerous application in the administration of justice. The notion of sex-commerce between demons and women had ceased to be a popular delusion. It was a part of learned theology.[3] "The reaction on each other of theological thinking and of omnipotence, without any appeal, in the administration of justice led to the combination of Church faith and popular delusion and produced the witch-mania. Under the cloak of religion and in the name of justice, that mania became a senseless rage against supposed witch-persons."[4]
1 Hansen. J.: l.c., 490. 2 Ibid., 187. 3 Ibid., 187. 4 Ibid., 176.
