"witch Hammer" Witch-hunt Movement

The paper is an attempt to probe into the interrelationship of the witch-hunting handbook Malleus Maleficarum (MM) and the Witch-Hunt in early modern Europe, in the hope of shedding light on the ideological roots of the outbursts of the Witch-Hunt.The early modern European Witch-Hunt has always been regarded as an "alternative" episode of the story of the West. Despite repeated and continuous historical efforts in recent decades/centuries, the Witch-Hunt remains shrouded in a mist of explanations. Historians either approach it with a strong ideological bias, or attempt to fit it into neat socio-scientific models or start "thinking with demons" instead of with ordinary humans, stubbornly resistant to the true relationship between the Witch-Hunt and Christian demonology.When viewed from this ideology-event perspective, the Witch-Hunt turns out to be a strong outburst of the perennially consistent Christian demonological traditions, with its unique sets of theories, deliberations, and concrete legal steps to rid the world of witches in anticipation of the coming Apocalypse. The MM is a work born out of such traditions in times of social crisis. Even the book itself was rashly made, yet its theological resoluteness, clarity of purpose, and specificity of combat measures were enough to make it an influential though controversial witch-hunting guidebook, concepts of which almost immediately infiltrating into the social space of academia, legal discourse, and contemporary art works in Western Europe. Its impact stems from its adherence to the Christian demonological traditions, while its controversy arises out of the very fact that it touches on an essential aspect of Christian beliefs:with God, there is Satan, whose filthy servants, i.e., the witches, must be severely punished by means of "sacred violence".Besides an introduction and a short summary, the paper is divided into the following four parts:Chapter One offers an overview of current researches on the Witch-Hunt and the MM. After pointing out current deficiencies, the author continues with an illumination of the paper's structure and underlying principles.Chapter Two traces the birth of the MM with backgrounds on its authors, its overall structure and internal logic.Chapter Three delves into MM's impact, as exemplied in its repeated reprints, contemporary confirmations and antagonistic responses, and Durer's engraving of 1497, The Four Witches.Chapter Four examines possible reasons for the "canonization" of MM, arguing that the major one is that MM tries steadfastly to side with orthodox Christian doctrines encapsulated in the Bible, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, etc. Meanwhile, the constant reprints of the MM stimulated a heated and continuous debate on the essentially controversial issue of witchcraft, which in turn enshrines its "notoriety". A tentative evaluation of Heinrich Kramer is also attempted.In the concluding remarks, besides summing up the major points, the author also points out a number of inherent shortcomings of the present research.