Broad History

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Medieval historian and podcaster Eleanor Janega and I go deep on the Malleus Maleficarum, the bonkers demonology treatise written by a seriously misogynistic German monk in 1486, which laid out a lot of the "intellectual theory" behind the witch hunts.

In this episode:
  • The "worst century to be alive in" or how 14th century troubles gave rise to the witch hunts
  • The Western Schism, the Reformation and a spiritual arms race between Catholics and Protestants
  • Heinrich Kramer, a "stupid man's idea of a smart man"
  • How the Malleus Maleficarum was received and why it (eventually) became popular
  • Why Christian countries killed more women
  • Pre- and post-Christian misogyny (aka there are no good eras for women)
  • Was witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins a serial killer?
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Creators and Guests

Host
Isabelle Roughol
Journalist & public historian
Guest
Eleanor Janega
Medieval historian. Co-host We're Not So Different and Gone Medieval podcasts. Author of The Once and Future Sex

What is Broad History?

The history you think you know, with women in it this time

[00:00:00] Isabelle Roughol: Hey, I'm Isabelle Roughol, creator and host of Broad History. I'm back with another mini bonus episode, an excerpt of my conversation with the wonderful mediaeval historian and podcaster herself, Eleanor Janega. The entire hour long interview is available to members of Broad History on the members' feed. You can go to broadhistory.com/membership and you'll instantly get access if you choose to support the show.

[00:00:26] But here's a taste of my conversation with Eleanor Janega.

[00:00:30] Start of excerpt
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[00:00:30] Eleanor Janega: You can kind of trace the entire problem to one guy. It's like the, the worst, the worst guy to ever live.

[00:00:36] Isabelle Roughol: There's always one guy. There's always one guy.

[00:00:38] Eleanor Janega: It's this guy. So, Heinrich Kramer is the man that you hate, that I hate. And the trouble with this man too is he's really stupid. it's frustrating.

[00:00:47] I'm doing a kind of close reading of his very famous work, the Malleus Maleficarum or the Hammer of Witches. And the trouble is he's like a stupid guy's idea of a smart guy. He is an inquisitor, [00:01:00] so he's from the Dominican order, and he is supposed to sort of be working on heresy, right? And there's a lot of heresy around the shop right now.

[00:01:08] Like you could go find Hussites by the barrelful, right? And this guy's working in the German lands, so they're kind of like, right, he's right next door to Bohemia. There's a lot of back and forth with this. And he's like, "Hmm, am I gonna worry about this genuine heresy that has claimed an entire kingdom? No."

[00:01:23] And what you can tell about him, if you read the Malleus, is that he is psychosexually obsessed with women and he hates them. And that's what's going on in the Malleus Maleficarum. And in particular, we know that his impetus to write it is based on the fact that he tries at a point in time to bring a woman to trial for witchcraft.

[00:01:48] Her name was Helena Scheuberin and she was like a very wealthy patrician woman in a city that he was working in. And she thought that he was a psychosexual weirdo who was strange to women. And he was like, "well, I'm accusing you of [00:02:00] witchcraft." He goes to court, he accuses her of all these absolutely bonkers sexual things, you know, having sex with the devil.

[00:02:08] And everyone's like, "wow, Heinrich, it seems like you are not well." And the trial gets thrown out of court. Everyone is like, "What is this bro? Like, this doesn't make any sense at all whatsoever." And he basically writes the Malleus in response to that. And he's like, actually, "All women are sluts and they're all shagging the devil", which he specifically says is part of becoming a witch.

[00:02:33] It's like, you have to renounce God and all of the sacraments, and then you have to have sex with the devil because duh. And then there's like all these things where it's like sometimes when they have sex with the devil, it's invisible and sometimes it's visible. So like no matter what you do if you're brought before this guy, he's like, you're probably having, you're probably having sex with the devil right now.

[00:02:52] And it's like, great. And the thing about it is when this is written in the earlier 15th century, everyone is like, "this guy is a nut [00:03:00] job." Like he is absolutely not well. And this is like very clearly on him. And no, nobody's into it. Nobody's into it.

[00:03:09] But what ends up happening over the 15th century is the people who are kind of into this, who are a few, they begin to circulate this text with a papal bull that is called _Summis desiderantes affectibus_, easy for you to say obviously. And it was a papal bull that was given to Heinrich Kramer, but also another, um, another inquisitor called James Sprenger. And basically was the pope going like, "yeah, you can inquisit over here."

[00:03:42] And this is an interesting bit of context because what that is actually in response to is the fact that Franciscans and Dominicans are always at loggerheads. They're two different kinds of monks that do inquisitorial stuff. And essentially what _Summis desiderantes affectibus _says is that "these Dominicans are allowed to operate in these [00:04:00] areas." It does kind of be like, "yeah, I don't know, witchcraft, there, there, there might be some witches there. I don't know. They could look into it. Seems like a thing."

[00:04:08] But _Summis desiderantes affectibus_ is written before the Malleus Maleficarum, has nothing to do with it, right? It's like three or four years before. But they begin to travel together and people start saying, "oh, this is real. The Pope signed off on this. The Pope signed off on this book because Summis desiderantes affectibus is right there. And the Malleus Maleficarum is right here. So this is the Pope's seal of approval, which is not the case, but 70 years later people don't know that.

[00:04:35] And 70 years later, the German lands are now in open revolt against the Church. We have the German Reformation beginning to happen because now, a hundred percent we've got Martin Luther who's like, I also wish to be like Jan Hus except I'm not getting burnt at the stake about it. And so the German lands go away.

[00:04:55] And as a result of this, there ends up being essentially what I always call a spiritual [00:05:00] arms race, where Protestants and Catholics are attempting to prove to one another that they are the holy and Christian ones. And one of the ways that they decide to do this is by taking witchcraft allegations seriously.

[00:05:11] So the Catholics say, "oh look, there we're, see, we're taking witchcraft allegations seriously because look at all of these, these documents that we have that say that we take it seriously." And the Protestants say, "no, see, you've had all of these documents and you decided not to do anything about it, which is proof of like your terrible profligacy and the fact that you don't care about your flock."

[00:05:32] And so they begin to ramp up the witch trials. And it is no surprise that you will see the witch trials are the most ferocious anywhere we have Catholics and Protestants living next to each other. And that's where you're going to see more women killed, than anywhere else except,you know, like the Puritans will just do it for fun 'cause they're the worst group of people who ever lived.

[00:05:56] So like, they, they will, they'll just do it in order to get [00:06:00] ahold of money or things like that. But it does tend to be places that are Protestantizing. So, they're going through the process of what we call confessionalisation. They're deciding to take on this new religious form. But, places that are really Catholic don't do it.

[00:06:14] So, like, I think in Ireland there's something like three, three women are killed. In Spain, it's like, "oh no, we were killing Jewish people. So we don't actually care about witch trials." like, there, there are, when you have like these places, like in, in Italy, not really, anyone who's like, just stays particularly Catholic without a neighbouring Protestant, they don't do this.

[00:06:36] Protestants will do it for, for fun and Catholics will do it if there's Protestants next door. But they won't, they won't do it without that impetus.

[00:06:45] Isabelle Roughol: Okay. I have like 12 follow-up questions

[00:06:46] Eleanor Janega: Sorry. Let, let me just like give you a monologue, babe, right?

[00:06:49] , Like

[00:06:50] you just gave me, you just gave me two centuries in eight minutes, but, no, this is, this is great. This is great to set it up. So, it, it sounds like [00:07:00] _Malleus Maleficarum_ is like, what if you took an incel's manifesto seriously and then completely misunderstood history and then, you have a pope who is like, "Oh, just leave me alone. Like, you, you get this part, you get that part of a country," and then somehow it becomes, "hey, the Pope says." That's a hundred percent it. And it, is a real incel manifesto. It's absolutely bonkers. And it's also, as, as I say, it's, it's quite funny because he's attempting to do kind of a Aristotelian argumentation in it, which is of course, how people argue in the mediaeval period. And, he's a Dominican, and so is, Thomas Aquinas one of the best aristotelians to ever do it, right?

[00:07:38] Like, and, but when you read Thomas Aquinas, it's all really clear and, you know, you can follow these things. And it's just circular reasoning. He tries to make scholastic arguments. Well, he'll say, oh, it says this in, you know, Saint Augustine's, the, the city of God. And then I'll, I'll say, Oh, does it? And I go, look it up.

[00:07:56] It does not say that. so it's like he, he he'll make, he'll [00:08:00] make these calls to authority.

[00:08:02] Isabelle Roughol: He's hallucinating quotes, is what you're saying. That sounds very, very current.

[00:08:05] Eleanor Janega: And it's like, I don't know. I don't know if like the notation is just off or something, but I'll be like, that is not what that page says my guy. And so it's like sometimes he's just, and sometimes he's just lying because he also lies and pretends that he wrote the_ Malleus Maleficarum_ with James Sprenger who's also in _Summis desiderantes affectibus._

[00:08:23] And now we are like, that did not happen. Historians are like, leave poor Sprenger out of this. He did not want this. You know? So it's interesting because he's this completely unreliable narrator who you know, and he is like the kind of like debate me bro incel where it's like what you're doing is bad philosophy and it's not good argumentation style, but because it's in a book, no one can really argue against him.

[00:08:48] He's like, and so as we proved, it's actually heresy to not believe in witches. And here I am, i'm like, I don't think you proved that at all. And he's like, no, I did. You're like, okay, fine, fine, you know. [00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Isabelle Roughol: What's the difference actually between heresy and witchcraft?

[00:09:04] Eleanor Janega: Great question.

[00:09:04] So, um, witchcraft is heresy, but not all heresy is witchcraft. Uh, the frustrating thing about heresy

[00:09:09] Outro
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[00:09:10] Isabelle Roughol: That was Eleanor Janega. If you enjoyed this conversation and you want to hear more, go to broadhistory.com/membership. Sign up to support the show, and you'll get instant access to the members' feed, where you can hear the entire hourlong conversation. You'll also get access to another full hourlong interview with the historian Malcolm Gaskill, and then coming up soon will be Marion Gibson. And there will be more.

[00:09:34] These are the interviews that I will be sharing excerpts from only in the Witch Hunt Series coming up. So if you're a member of Broad History, you get to listen to the entire interviews, and you will get the Broad History Witch Hunt series in full, the second that it's ready, so you're able to binge it earlier than on the public feed. That's to say thank you to the people who help me make the show.

[00:09:56] So go ahead, [00:10:00] broadhistory.com/membership and thank you so much for your support. I'll talk to you very soon.