MALLEUS MALEFICARUM
Book Details + Condition: John Rodker (London, UK). First, Limited and Hand-Numbered Edition, 1928. This particular copy is numbered 190 out of a limited printing of 1275. Hardcover publisher's original gilt lettered red cloth over tan cloth covered boards. Quarto, 278 pages. Illustrated with engraved frontis portrait of Pope Innocent VIII. Limited first edition in English - the first English translation of the 1489 Latin edition. With Introductions, Bibliography and Notes by Montague Summers.
Dominican friars Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger were charged by Pope Innocent VIII, with the Bull of 1484, which had essentially ratified the Church's powers in dealing with witchcraft, heresy and other crimes. Their goal was to investigate witchcraft, and they traveled throughout Germany gathering local lore and legend for the MALLEUS MALEFICARUM (The Witches’ Hammer). First published in 1486, the work provides detailed instructions for identifying, trying, torturing and executing witches. It also presents lurid tales of shape-shifters, incubi and succubi, and mortals in league with Satan. It is long considered the authority on the subject, and served to sustain two centuries of witch-hunting hysteria in Europe. The work is divided into three parts: the first two deal with the reality of witches as established by the Bible, as well as its nature and horrors and the manner of dealing with it, while the third lays down practical rules for procedure whether the trial be conducted in an ecclesiastical or a secular court. It was sensational in the stigma it attached to witchcraft as a worse crime than heresy - and in its notable animus against the female sex.
From the massive occult collection of King Lawrence Parker - academic, dissertation author, and book collector extraordinaire. In very good condition, with firm binding; light shelf wear to boards; Parker's bookplate to inside front board; interior is clean and free of markings.
