On Witchcraft

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.
1163/157006508X383626
Journal of Early Modern History 12 (2008) 361-382 www.brill.nl/jemh
Bridging North and South: Inquisitorial Networks
and Witchcraft Teory on the Eve of the Reformation
Tamar Herzig
Tel Aviv University
Abstract
Tis article reconstructs a network of Dominican inquisitors who facilitated the reception
and adaptation of northern European demonological notions in the Italian peninsula. It
focuses on the collaboration of Italian friars with Heinrich Kramer, the infamous Alsatian
witch-hunter and author of the Malleus Malecarum (1486). Drawing on newly-discovered
archival sources as well as on published works from the early sixteenth century, it proposes
that Italian inquisitors provided Kramer with information on local saintly gures and were,
in turn, inuenced by his views on witchcraft. Following their encounter with Kramer in
1499-1500, they came to regard witches as members of an organized diabolical sect, and
were largely responsible for turning the Malleus into the focal point of the Italian debate
over witch-hunting. I argue that Kramers case attests to the important role of papal inquis-
itors before the Reformation in bridging the cultural and religious worlds south and north
of the Alps.
Keywords
Inquisitors, Dominicans, Roman Inquisition, Inquisitorial networks, living saints, demon-
ology, Italy, witchcraft trials in Moravia, Bohemian Brethren, anti-heretical literature,
female mysticism, Alsace
Te major outbreaks of witch-hunting in Italian history occurred in the
rst four decades of the sixteenth century. After the establishment of the
Roman Inquisition in 1542, large-scale witch persecutions in the penin-
sula were successfully curtailed. Tere is a broad consensus as to why Ital-
ian witch-hunting was short lived.
1
But how can we explain the upsurge in
1
John Tedeschi, Inquisitorial Law and the Witch, in Early Modern European Witch-
craft: Centres and Peripheries, eds. Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford, 1990),
83-118; Guido DallOlio, Tribunali vescovili, Inquisizione romana e stregoneria. I pro-
cessi bolognesi del 1559, in Il piacere del testo. Saggi e studi per Albano Biondi, ed. Adriano
362 T. Herzig / Journal of Early Modern History 12 (2008) 361-382
ferocious witch persecutionspreviously chiey conned to remote sub-
Alpine villagesin the bustling urban centers of Emilia, Romagna, and
Lombardy in the early years of the sixteenth century?
Tat a signicant number of witchcraft trials took place in northern
Italy in these decades was no doubt related to the devastating impact of the
Italian Wars. In the politically fragmented regions that suered external
incursions, famines, and epidemics, the belief in an organized sect of dia-
bolic witches could easily take root. And so, in hitherto prosperous towns
such as Mirandola, the catastrophes that accompanied the Italian Wars
helped to create a general climate of insecurity that was favorable to the
proliferation of witchcraft accusations.
2
Northern Italy at the turn of the sixteenth century, then, clearly ts into
the crisis scenario that preceded the eruption of witch-hunting episodes
in other parts of Europe in the early modern era. And yet, as Rita Voltmer
reminds us, ensuing crises alone cannot fully account for the outbreak of
multiple witchcraft trials in any given time and place. After all, individual
and communal misfortune could, and indeed had, been attributed to a
variety of causes, and blamed on members of other outcast groups in the
past. For a crisis scenario to lead to a mass persecution of witches,
the local populaceand especially the would-be witch-huntershad to
become familiar with the belief in a conspiratorial type of diabolic witch-
craft, which constituted a real threat for Christian society.
3
Since the most fervent Italian witch-hunters of the early sixteenth cen-
tury were also prolic witchcraft theorists, we know that they indeed sub-
scribed to such a view and were actively involved in disseminating it. Te
letters, sermons, and tracts that they left behind reveal invaluable informa-
tion on the peculiarities of age-old Italian witch beliefs. However, they also
convey central elements of what Richard Kieckhefer designates as the
witchcraft mythology which had originated north of the Alps in the late
Middle Ages. Tis mythology was distinct from the one that had evolved
in central Italy over the course of the fteenth century, as well as from the
one that had previously surfaced in Italian Alpine regions.
Prosperi (Rome, 2001), 63-72; Andrea Del Col, LInquisizione in Italia. Dal XII al XXI
secolo (Milan, 2006), 195-217.
2
Cf. Matteo Duni, Under the Devils Spell: Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in
Renaissance Italy (Florence, 2007), 7-8, 30-32.
3
Rita Voltmer, Witch Hunts, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: Te Western Tradition, ed.
Richard M. Golden (Santa Barbara, CA, 2006), vol. 4, 1211.
T. Herzig / Journal of Early Modern History 12 (2008) 361-382 363
Italian witchcraft trials were traditionally concerned with protecting
domestic and family values, with suppressing superstitious practices or
archaic agrarian beliefs, or with warding o threats to the wellbeing of the
community. In contrast with those concerns, the northern European mythol-
ogy stressed the anti-Catholic, heretical aspects of witchcraft. Once fused
with local beliefs, the northern mythology paved the way for intense per-
secutions of witches as members of an organized sect of devil-worshipers.
4

Te gradual reception and adaptation of the northern mythology in
Italy is a process that still awaits a systematic historical analysis. It had
probably begun in the fteenth century,
5
but ended only in the rst third
of the sixteenth century. In this article, I argue that Italian inquisitors
played an important role in this process, and that its ultimate completion
was closely connected to the direct ties that some of them had with the
Alsatian witch-hunter Henricus Institoris, better known today as Heinrich
Kramer (c. 1430-1505), around 1499-1500.
Kramers publication of the infamous witchcraft manual, Malleus Male-
carum (Te Witches Hammer) in 1486 has often been interpreted as trig-
gering the outbreak of witch-hunting in various parts of Europe.
6
We now
know that the impact of the Malleus on actual witchcraft trials was more
limited than historians had traditionally assumed.
7
Nevertheless, recent
studies have shown that Kramers witch-hunting activities, and the publi-
cation of his Malleus, had a considerable impact on subsequent persecutions
4
Richard Kieckhefer, Mythologies of Witchcraft in the Fifteenth Century, Magic,
Ritual, and Witchcraft 1 (Summer 2006): 79-108.
5
Cf. Michael Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial
Districts in Northern Italy, 1474-1527 (Leiden, 2007), 153.
6
It is now generally agreed that Kramer was the main author of the Malleus. See Wolf-
gang Behringer and Gnter Jerouschek, Das unheilvollste Buch der Weltliteratur? Zur
Entstehungs- und Wirkungs-geschichte des Malleus Malecarum und zu den Anfngen der
Hexenverfolgung, in Heinrich Kramer (Institoris), Der Hexenhammer: Malleus Male-
carum, ed. and trans. Wolfgang Behringer, Gnter Jerouschek, and Werner Tschacher
(Munich, 2000), 31-37; Klaus-Bernard Springer, Dominican Inquisition in the Archdio-
cese of Mainz (1348-1520), in Praedicatores, Inquisitores, I: Te Dominicans and the Medi-
eval Inquisition (Acts of the 1
st
International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition,
23-25 February 2002), ed. Wolfram Hoyer (Rome, 2004), 345-51.
7
Jerouschek, 500 Years of the Malleus Malecarum, in Malleus Malecarum 1487 von
Heinrich Kramer (Institoris). Nachdruck des Erstdruckes von 1487 mit Bulle und Approbatio
(Hildesheim, Zurich and New York, 1992), xlvi-xlvii; Christopher S. Mackay, General
Introduction, in Henricus Institoris (Kramer) and Jacobus Sprenger, Malleus Malecarum
(Cambridge, 2006), vol. 1, 170-71.
in Alsace, in the city of Metz and in the area between the Rhine and Mosel
Rivers.
8
Tus, although judges in the Mosel area had been preoccupied
with witchcraft for some time prior to the publication of the Malleus, only
after reading this work were they nally able to dene the witches diabolic
behavior, and proceed accordingly.
9

Tis was, I propose, also very much the case in northern Italy, where in
the rst decades of the sixteenth century witch persecutions were often
(though not always) ledand justiedby inquisitors of the Dominican
Congregation of Lombardy, some of whom had previously met Kramer.
Tese inquisitors encounter with the ruthless witch-hunter facilitated
their complete assimilation of the northern European notion of witchcraft.
I rst discuss Kramers ties with those inquisitors, and then analyze their
attitude toward witches in the following years. Finally, I show that Kram-
ers Italian acquaintances were the rst to praise the Malleus in writing, and
were largely responsible for turning it into the focal point of the local
debate over the justication of witch-hunting.
* * *
Although much has been written about Kramers life in recent years, his
numerous visits to the Italian peninsula remain virtually unexplored. Hav-
ing visited Rome for the rst time around 1460, the Alsatian friar presum-
ably studied theology at the Dominican Studium generale in Naples, and
the Dominican Master General conrmed his status as Master of Teology
in Rome in 1479.
10
By the time he started working on the Malleus, Kramer
had already gotten to know inquisitors from northern Italy, among them
the inquisitor cumanus responsible for the execution of forty-one witches
in the region of Bormio in 1485.
11
Kramer returned to northern Italy in
the fall of 1495, and in 1496-1497 resided in the Conventual friary of
8
Voltmer, Witch Hunts, 1209.
9
Behringer, Malleus Malecarum, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 3, 721-22; Idem,
Demonology, 1500-1660, in Reform and Expansion, 1500-1660, ed. Ronnie Po-Chia
Hsia (Cambridge, 2007), 408-10.
10
On Kramers life see Peter Segl, Heinrich Institoris: Persnlichkeit und literarisches
werk, in Der Hexenhammer: Entstehung und Umfeld des Malleus malecarum von 1487,
ed. Peter Segl (Cologne, 1988), 102-26; Andr Schnyder, Malleus Malecarum. Kommentar
zur Wiedergabe des Erstdrucks von 1487 (Gppingen, 1993), 33-73.
11
Tavuzzi, Lorenzo Soleri da SantAgata OP (ob. ca. 1510): Te Inquisitor Cumanus of
the Malleus Malecarum. A Biographical Note, in Hoyer, Praedicatores, Inquisitores, I, 407-20.
Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. He spent some time north of the Alps in
the summer of 1497, but was back in Venice by 1499. On July 27, 1499
one of his polemical tracts, Opusculum in errores Monarchie (Small Work
against the Errors of the Monarchia ) was published in this city.
12
Kramers
refutation of the main arguments of jurist Antonio de Roselli against papal
supremacy in this work signicantly enhanced his reputation among Ital-
ian inquisitors, and was later praised by Silverstro Mazzolini (commonly
known as Prierias, 1456-1527).
13
At some point in 1499 Kramer departed
for Rome, where he remained until January or February 1500, when he
headed northward again.
During his last sojourn in northern Italy, Kramer had contact with mem-
bers of the Dominican Congregation of Lombardy. In March 1500, he met
Giovanni Cagnazzo of Taggia (or Tabia, ourished 1470-1522), the inquisi-
tor of Bologna (in 1494-1513) who in 1498 had condemned the Bolognese
healer Gentile Cimitri as a witch. Cagnazzos role in securing Cimitris even-
tual burning at the stake was approvingly reported by two of his confreres,
the would-be inquisitors Leandro Alberti (1479-c.1552) and Prierias.
14
In 1499, Cagnazzo arrived in Ferrara, where he served as confessor to
Ercole dEste. He was particularly devoted to the dukes court prophetess,
Lucia Brocadelli of Narni.
15
Kramer, too, showed a marked interest in this
living saint, and even came to Ferrara to meet with her. As he would later
recall, he was so moved when he saw Brocadellis bleeding stigmata wounds
that he kissed them.
16
He also requested that Cagnazzo conduct an inquis-
itorial examination to certify the authenticity of Brocadellis stigmatiza-
tion.
17
Kramer himself was present at this examination, which Cagnazzo
12
Heinrich Kramer, Opusculum in errores Monarchie (Venice, 1499), colophon.
13
Silverstro Mazzolini (Prierias), De strigimagarum Daemonumque Mirandis libri tres
(Rome, 1575), bk. 2, chap. 1.
14
Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 11; DallOlio, Leandro Alberti, inquisitore e mediatore, in LItalia
dellInquisitore: Storia e geographia dellItalia del Cinquecento nella Descrittione di Leandro
Alberti, ed. Massimo Donattini (Bologna, 2007), 31.
15
On Cagnazzos life see Tamar Herzig, Cagnazzo, Giovanni of Taggia, in Encyclopedia
of Witchcraft, vol. 1, 158. On his admiration for Brocadelli see idem, Savonarolas Women:
Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy (Chicago and London, 2007), 131-39, 167.
16
Kramer, Sancte Romane ecclesie dei defensionis clippeum Adversus waldensium seu Pick-
ardorum heresim (Olomouc, 1501), fols. 10
r
, 79
v
.
17
Two contemporary copies of the Instrumentum publicum certifying this examination
are kept in the Archivio Generale dellOrdine dei Predicatori (Rome), Sez. XIV, lib. GGG,
pt. I, c. 332 and 333
r
-335
v
.
conducted on March 2, 1500 with the assistance of Brocadellis confessor,
Fra Niccol of Finale (or Finaro, d. 1525).
18
Kramer then left Ferrara for Moravia, where he served as papal nuncio
and inquisitor until his death around 1505. He was specically charged with
prosecuting members of the Bohemian Brethren and other heretical sects,
and with publishing a polemical tract in confutation of their main tenets.
Kramers Sancte Romane ecclesie dei defensionis clippeum adversus waldensium
seu pikardorum heresim (A Shield to Defend the Holy Roman Church against the
Heresy of the Pikarts or Waldensians) was rst published in Olomouc on
April 20, 1501,
19
and was partly based on information obtained from his Ital-
ian confreres. Tus, in his discussion of the method of distinguishing true
miracles from false ones, Kramer described the miraculous intercessions of
Fra Jacobo Griesinger of Ulm, a lay brother of San Domenico in Bologna.
20

Fra Jacobo had passed away in San Domenico in 1491, and his Bologn-
ese confreres were the rst promoters of his cult. Fra Ambrogio of Soncino
started writing his hagiographic legend shortly after his death, and Prierias
edited it and published it on August 10, 1501. Te rst Latin account
of Jacobos life was later published by Alberti, who had been Prieriass stu-
dent at the Studium generale of San Domenico in 1499-1500.
21
Since the
rst edition of the Clippeum predated Prieriass publication of Fra Jacobos
rst o cial vita, Kramer must have based his discussion of the holy mans
miracles on informal accounts. It is not implausible that Kramer visited
Bologna on his way from Rome to Ferrara; he may have met the Bolognese
miracolato (miraculously cured) who in February 1500 placed an ex-voto
at Fra Jacobos burial place.
22
But even if he had not visited Bologna, Kramer
18
On Fra Niccols close ties with Brocadelli see Herzig, Savonarolas Women, 109-10,
129-37.
19
Amedeo Molnr, Autour des polmiques antivaudoises du dbut du XVI
e
sicle, in
I Valdesi e lEuropa (Torre Pellice, 1982), 117-133; Schnyder, Malleus Malecarum. Kom-
mentar, 64-67.
20
Kramer, Sancte Romane . . ., fol. 79
r
: novissime in Bononia frater Iacobus alamanus,
qui et sacristanus in eodem conventu sancti Dominici longo tempore fuerat, licet in vita
regularem vitam duxisset sine omni reprehensione, eius tamen sanctitas post mortem primo
revelata fuit per miraculorum coruscationem, caecis visum restituendo, leprosos mun-
dando, mortuos suscitando, omne genus inrmitatis expellendo . . .
21
Cf. A. L. Redigonda, Alberti, Leandro, in Dizionario biograco degli Italiani (Rome,
1960-), vol. 1, 699; Tavuzzi, Prierias: Te Life and Works of Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio,
1456-1527 (Durham and London, 1997), 1, 36, 133.
22
Leandro Alberti, De viris illustribus ordinis praedicatorum libri sex (Bologna, 1517),
fols. 262
v
-267
v
.
clearly had contact with the main promoters of Fra Jacobos cultmost
likely with Prierias or Albertiwho reported the friars miracles to him.
Kramers Italian confreres also provided him with documents certifying
the supernatural experiences of the Dominican tertiaries Lucia Brocadelli,
Colomba Guadagnoli, and Stefana Quinzani.
23
Kramer hoped that such
documentslike the report concerning Fra Jacobos miracleswould
convince his readers that the ultimate manifestations of divine power could
only be found within the Catholic Church. Plausibly due to the fact that
his personal involvement in Cagnazzos inspection of Brocadellis stigmata
was noted in the instrumentum publicum that authenticated it, Kramer
decided not to print this document in his Clippeum. Instead, he provided
his readers with the full text of a certicate attesting to the rst examina-
tion of Brocadellis stigmatization, which Fra Domenico de Pirri of Garg-
nano (d. c.1520) had conducted in Viterbo on April 24, 1497.
24

Pirri, inquisitor of Mantua (1490-c.1511) and former inquisitor of
Bologna (in 1485-1489), belonged to the same milieu as Cagnazzo, Prie-
rias, and Alberti, and was personally acquainted with them.
25
Like Cag-
nazzo, he had close ties with Ercole dEste, and was particularly devoted to
Lucia Brocadelli. Ercole was most likely the one who sent Pirri to Viterbo
in 1497 to examine Brocadellis stigmata. Only this can explain why an
inquisitor of the Lombard Congregation was sent to Viterbo, which formed
part of the Tusco-Roman Dominican Province. In the notarial record
that certied Pirris examination of Brocadelli, he was identied merely as
venerable father brother Domenico of Gargnano of her [Brocadellis]
order, professor of sacred theology and inquisitor of heretical depravity,
without noting that he was, in fact, the inquisitor of Mantua.
26
Tis has
23
On Kramers interest in these holy women see Herzig, Witches, Saints, and Heretics:
Heinrich Kramers Ties with Italian Women Mystics, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 1
(Summer 2006): 24-55.
24
On this examination see Giacomo Marcianese, Narratione della nascit, vita e morte
della B. Lucia da Narni dellordine di San Domenico (Ferrara, 1640), 107-11.
25
Pirri presided over Cagnazzos graduation as master of theology, and Prierias had been
one of his students in Bologna (Tavuzzi, Prierias, 13; Idem, Renaissance Inquisitors, 183). In
1517, Alberti noted that Pirri was so old that he could hardly walk (De viris illustribus, fol.
141
v
). Albertis enthusiastic praise of Pirris inquisitorial zeal (in this work as well as in
Descrittione di tutta Italia di F. Leandro Alberti bolognese. . . . Riproduzione anastatica delledi-
zione 1568, Venezia, Lodovico degli Avanzi [Bergamo, 2003], vol. 1, 324) strongly suggests
his personal acquaintance with him.
26
I consulted a contemporary copy of Brocadellis examination in the Archivio San Domenico
led historians to assume that Brocadellis rst examination was conducted
by the local Father inquisitor in Viterbo.
27
In the printed version of this
document in his Clippeum, however, Kramer made Pirris a liation clear
by adding a few words that identied him as member of the Observant
Congregation of Lombardy.
28
In the Clippeum, the instrumentum publicum attesting to Pirris exami-
nation of Brocadellis stigmatization is followed by another certicate, this
one authenticating the Passion ecstasy that Brocadellis admirer, Stefana
Quinzani, had in Crema on February 17, 1497.
29
Here, too, Pirri seems to
have played an important role: as the only inquisitor present, he diligently
examined everything he saw or heard, and even touched Quinzani while
she behaved as if she was being crucied to make sure that this was no
fraud. Pirri signed his name in the original certicate merely as Father
Domenico of Gargnano of the Order of Preachers, professor of sacred the-
ology and inquisitor of heretical depravity.
30
Once again, Kramer comple-
mented this statement by adding that Pirri was also an illustrious preacher
and a member of the Observant Congregation of Lombardy.
31
Kramer, who preached re-and-brimstone sermons against heretics in
Venice and Olomouc, regarded preaching as a crucial aspect of an inquisi-
tors defense of orthodoxy.
32
He praised Pirris preaching skills in a pam-
in Bologna (hereafter ASDB), Sez. I, tit. 7790: venerabilis patris fratis Dominici de Garg-
nano, eiusdem ordinis, sacre theologie professoris ac heretice pravitatis inquisitoris.
27
Cf. Edmund Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara: A Study in the Poetry, Religion and
Politics of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (New York, 1968), 368.
28
r
: venerabilis patris fratris Dominici de Garniano
eiusdem ordinis, sacre theologie professoris vite regularis congregacionis Lombardie ac
heretice pravitatis inquisitore [sic].
29
Ibid., fols. 20
v
-21
v
. Kramer asserts that this ecstasy took place in February 1496, but
according to the original certicate that I discovered in ASDB, Sez. I, tit. 8100 it occurred
a year later, on February 17, 1497. Te original certicate has long been considered lost,
and historians have hitherto relied on its transcription in Quinzanis early modern hagiog-
raphies, which was based on a copy kept in Quinzanis convent in Soncino (see Adele
Simonetti, Le vite e gli agiogra della beata Stefana Quinzani, Hagiographica 8 [2001]:
194, 227 n. 114).
30
ASDB, Sez. I, tit. 8100: Frater Dominicus da Gargnano ordinis praedicatorum, sacre
theologie professor ac heretice pravitatis inquisitor.
31
v
: ac predicator egregius vite regularis congregatio-
nis Lombardie.
32
Cf. Rudolf an, Te History of the Unity of the Brethren: A Protestant Hussite Church
in Bohemia and Moravia, trans. C. Daniel Crews (Bethlehem, PA, 1992), 91-94; Walter
Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago and London, 2002),
phlet, Stigmifere virginis Lucie de Narnia aliarumque spiritualium personarum
feminei sexus facta admiratione digna (Wondrous Deeds of the Stigmatic
Virgin Lucia of Narni and of Other Spiritual Persons of the Female Sex that
are Worthy of Admiration), which he edited and published in Olomouc
on September 16, 1501. Tis pamphlet comprised several documents,
which had been provided by the Italian supporters of Brocadelli, Quinzani,
and Colomba Guadagnoli, and attested to their miraculous experiences.
33

Kramer did not incorporate the text of the notarial document authenticat-
ing Quinzanis ecstasy into the Stigmifere. Instead, he referred the readers
to the original certicate, which was kept by Fra Domenico of Gargnano,
a most famous proclaimer of the holy Gospel, at the Dominican friary in
Mantua.
34
Although Kramer does not specify where he had obtained his
own copy of the certicate, he must have gotten it from Pirri himself dur-
ing his sojourn in Ferrara in March 1500.
35
In addition to the documents that he received from Pirri, Kramer obtained
from his Italian confreres information about the divine gifts of Colomba
Guadagnoli. His discussion of Guadagnoli in the Clippeum, which was based
on their reports, was probably the rst account of her saintly life ever to
appear in print, and the only one to be published before her death in May
1501.
36
Although Guadagnoli resided in Perugia, her cult was promoted
by the friars of San Domenico in Bologna, and especially by Leandro
224-227; Herzig, Witches, Saints, and Heretics, 36-37; Mackay, General Introduc-
tion, 169.
33
Herzig, Witches, Saints, and Heretics, 44-50.
34
Stigmifere virginis Lucie de Narnia aliarumque spiritualium personarum feminei sexus
facta admiratione digna [ed. Heinrich Kramer] (Olomouc, 1501), no foliation: conventu
Mantuano apud magistrum Dominicum de Gragnano predicatorum ordinis et exclama-
torem sanctorum evangeliorum famosissimum instrumentum reperit ea omnia continen-
tem. Te certicate had evidently been transferred to San Domenico in Bologna some
time before 1694, when a copy of it was prepared and sent to the main archive of the
Dominican Order in Rome (as indicated in a note attached to the original document in
ASDB, Sez. I, tit. 8100).
35
Pirri had evidently brought the certicate to Ferrara, where Ercole dEste had the
chance to read it. Te duke a rms that he had seen this document in a letter that he wrote
on March 4, 1500, and which was rst printed in the Clippeum (Kramer, Sancte Romane . . .,
fol. 22
r
).
36
Herzig, Proofs for the Truth of the Faith: Dominican Mystics, Inquisitors, and
Polemicists at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century, forthcoming in Il movimento domenicano
al femminile: Storia, gure, istituzioni (Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Bologna,
ottobre 11-13, 2007).
Alberti.
37
Tat Alberti or one of his confreres provided Kramer with accounts
of Guadagnolis miraculous experiences is implied by his identication of
the Umbrian mysticwho o cially belonged to the Tusco-Roman Prov-
inceas a tertiary associated with the Lombard Congregation.
38
* * *
Te author of the Malleus, then, was personally acquainted with Cagnazzo,
Pirri, and Niccol of Finale, and seems to have had ties with other would-
be inquisitors of the Lombard Congregation, such as Prierias and Alberti.
After settling in Moravia, he made extensive use of the reports he had
received from Italian friars in his campaign against heretical sects in the
Kingdom of Bohemia. I would now like to suggest that this exchange of
information was not unilateral, and that Kramer shared his own views on
witchcraft with his Italian confreres.
It is important to note that witchcraft remained an acute concern for
Kramer long after his completion of the Malleus in 1486. On January 31,
1500, Pope Alexander VI promulgated a brief which, in addition to
appointing Kramer as inquisitor in charge of prosecuting the Bohemian
Brethren, also allowed him to proceed against members of the heretical
sect of witches and sorcerers who were active in Bohemia and Moravia.
39

Alexanders anti-witchcraft statement in this brief, like the more detailed
one in the papal bull that Kramer had solicited from Innocent VIII in
1484, must have been inserted at the inquisitors behest.
40
Te most fervent witch-hunter of the fteenth century is not known to
have actually proceeded against witches during the last decade of his life,
but he certainly continued to advocate the harsh repression of witchcraft.
In his Clippeum, he argued that the recent appearance of the two brand
new heretical sects, that of witches and that of the Waldensians (a term he
used to denote the Bohemian Brethren),
41
was a sign of the devils rein-
37
Herzig, Savonarolas Women, 63.
38
v
.
39
See the full text of Alexanders brief in Schnyder, Malleus Malecarum. Kommentar,
64-66.
40
Cf. Senner, How Henricus Institoris Became Inquisitor for Germany: Te Origin of
Summis desiderantes aectibus, in Praedicatores, Inquisitores, I, 395-406.
41
Cf. Josef Mller, Bohemian Brethren, in Te New Scha-Herzog Encyclopedia of
Religious Knowledge (Grand Rapids, 1963-1966), vol. 2, 214.
forced attack on the Church.
42
Emphasizing the physical harm that witches
inicted on Christians by means of malecium, he attacked skeptics who
questioned the reality of diabolic witchcraft or criticized contemporary
witch-hunts. Kramer also explicitly referred the readers to his fuller discus-
sion of the witches misdeeds in the Malleus Malecarum.
43
Tat he decided
to do so shows beyond doubt that, fteen years after the rst publication
of the Malleus, Kramer (who here ascribed the composition of this work
solely to himself )
44
continued to uphold his original views on witchcraft.
He still regarded witches as members of an organized heretical, diabolical
sect, whose existence gravely threatened Christendom, and which should
hence be eradicated. Even though by 1501 the Malleus, as the rst printed
handbook of demonology, was already a best-seller in early modern stan-
dards,
45
Kramer did not miss an opportunity to urge readers who had not
read it yet to do so.
Te elderly inquisitor evidently continued to publicize the Malleus, and
to propagate its main arguments, until the end of his life. It is therefore
only reasonable to surmise that he shared his views on the diabolic sect
with friars of the Lombard Congregation that he met in the winter of
1499-1500, thereby contributing to the escalating anxiety over witchcraft
in northern Italy. Tat this was indeed the case is suggested by the expressed
concerns of Kramers acquaintances in the years following their meeting
with him, which we shall now turn to examine.
* * *
One of the most zealous Italian witch-hunters of the rst decade of the
Cinquecento was none other than Domenico Pirri. Tis Dominican friar
42
Kramer, Sancte Romane . . ., fols. 88
r
-89
v
: cur per has hereses duas iam novissimas sic
atrociter diabolus ecclesiam infestat, patet responsio, quia enim cunctas alias hereses exce-
dunt et in crudelitate quo ad malecos hominibus, iumentis et terre frugibus supra modum
nocentes, ut in opera sermonum contra heresim malecarum deducitur; et heresies Walden-
sium excedit in pessimis demoniorum doctrinis, ut tactum est et successive in reprobacione
eorum errorum deducetur. Ideo etiam, quia per amplius he hereses sibi deserviunt pre
ceteris, etiam per eas ecclesiam persequitur [diabolus].
43
Ibid., fol. 81
r
: prout alibi in sermonibus contra malecas ad longum est a nobis dis-
cussum; et in tractatu mallei malecarum conclusimus contra illos, qui malecas esse
negant . . .
44
Cf. Segl, Heinrich Institoris, 117 n. 72; Mackay, General Introduction, 109-10.
45
Cf. Behringer, Malleus Malecarum, col. 721.
had rst been involved in an inquisitorial procedure in Bologna in 1465,
when he assisted inquisitor Girolamo Parlasca in conducting the sorcery
trial of Giovanni Faelli. Typically, the accused in this early trial was a
learned friar, who was condemned for practicing ceremonial magic.
46
Pirri
apparently only began to subscribe to what has been dened as the cumu-
lative concept of diabolic witchcraft forty years later, shortly after Kramer
had left Ferrara for Olomouc.
47
During the years 1505-1508for the rst
time in his inquisitorial careerPirri directed his persecutory zeal to the
systematic repression of what he now perceived to be a conspiratorial,
heretical sect of devil-worshiping witches.
One of Pirris rst targets was the stregone (wizard) Bartolomeo Arcero,
who was serving as podest of the commune of Volta at that time, and his
arrest at Pirris orders evidently displeased the marquis of Mantua, Fran-
cesco Gonzaga. In a letter of January 10, 1505, Pirri protested Gonzagas
intervention, and exhorted him to help the holy faith and the O ce [of
Inquisition] . . . so that this heretical sect of female and male witches may
be eradicated and exterminated.
48
Pirri then tried to enlist the help of
Gonzagas beloved court prophetess, Osanna Andreasian admirer of
Brocadelli and close friend of Quinzaniwhose miraculous gifts were
mentioned in passing in Kramers Clippeum
.49
In March 1505 Andreasi
wrote to the marquis asking him not to hinder Pirris prosecution of here-
tics, and he assured her that he had never meant to do so.
50
Nothing came
out of Andreasis intervention, though, because she and Arcero both died
shortly afterwards.
Pirri then became concerned with the diabolical activities in the village
of Cavriana (between Mantua and Brescia), where his vicar conducted sev-
eral trials that ended with the execution of one relapsed witch and the
burning of anothers exhumed remains. Pirris vicar also had the local par-
46
Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors, 181.
47
On the cumulative concept of witchcraft see Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A
Global History (Cambridge, 2004), 57-67.
48
Pirris letter to Gonzaga of that date, Archivio di Stato, Mantua (hereafter ASMt),
Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2465: a dare ogni favore ala sancta fede e alo cio . . . aci [sic] che
questa secta heretica de strie e strioni lo possa [s]radica[r]e et exterminare.
49
v
; Herzig, Savonarolas Women, 58, 119-20, 146-49.
50
See Andreasis letter to Gonzaga of March 2, 1505 (ASMt, Archivio Gonzaga, busta
2465), and his reply of March 7, 1505 (ASMt, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2913, Copialettere
di Francesco Gonzaga, libro 186, c. 58
v
).
ish priest, who refused to assist in the trials, removed from o ce.
51
On this
occasion, too, Pirri turned to the marquis for help, stressing the imminent
threat posed by the witches heretical sect.
52
Two years later, Pirri wrote to
Gonzaga once more, informing him of a certain witch known as La
Gena, whose diabolical transgressions gravely violated and vituperated
the faith of Jesus Christ.
53
Gena may have been the woman from Volta
who, after Pirri had condemned her as a witch, was burned at the stake in
Mantua in 1507, together with another convicted witch.
54
On April 7, 1508 Pirri wrote his most detailed letter to the marquis, in
a nal attempt to convince him of the urgent need for the extermination
of the sect of witches, who continually grow [in numbers] and commit
enormous evils.
55
For that purpose, Pirri described the crimes to which a
woman whom he had interrogated had confessed. According to Pirri, the
witch admitted that she had been serving and worshiping the devil for
twenty-seven years. Among other things, she confessed that she had
renounced the Christian faith, the sacrament of baptism and the Virgin
Mary; trampled the cross; profaned the eucharist, and performed various
types of malecium out of reverence for the devil.
56
Pirris account of the witches inversion of orthodox Christianity
reected notions which had not formed part of the traditional witch beliefs
that had evolved in the Italian peninsula in the late Middle Ages. Tese
ideas appeared in the records of trials conducted in the Pays de Vaud from
the fourth decade of the fteenth century onwards, and were also expounded
in Johannes Niders Formicarius (1435-1438), on which Kramer often
draws in his discussion of the witches diabolical gatherings.
57
Tat Pirri
51
On these trials see Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors, 183-84, 255.
52
Pirris letter to the marquis of July 30, 1505, ASMt, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2465.
53
Pirris undated letter of 1507 to Gonzaga, ASMt, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2470,
c. 413: la fede de Iesu Christo molto vituperata e conculcata da una stria e maleca detta
la Gena.
54
On the burning of those witches see Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors, 184.
55
Pirris letter to the marquis of that date, ASMt, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2472, c. 670:
q[ue]ste strie, le quali continue cresseno e fano de grandi mali . . . el Breve del papa, el qual
coma[n]da che q[ue]sta secta de le strie sia exterminata. On this letter see Alessandro Luzio
and Rodolfo Renier, La coltura e le relazioni letterarie dIsabella dEste ed Elisabetta Gon-
zaga, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 33 (1899): 34, n. 1.
56
ASMt, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2472, c. 670; cf. Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus
Malecarum, ed. Mackay, esp. vol. 1, 394-403.
57
Cf. Kieckhefer, Mythologies of Witchcraft, 89-98; Mackay, General Introduc-
tion, 46-57. Although Kramer does provide his readers with a description (largely based
started expressing those specic notions of witchcraft only after his encoun-
ter with Kramer suggests that his Alsatian confrere was the one who had
rst turned his attention to the central elements of the northern European
witchcraft mythology.
58
Pirris emphasis on the witches denial of real presence in the Eucharist
and on their desecration of the host, in particular, echoes Kramers lifelong
anxiety over Eucharistic errors.
59
Although the profanation of the Eucha-
rist was already listed among the witches misdeeds in the inquisitorial
interrogatory used in the Pays de Vaud in the early fteenth century,
60

Kramers preoccupation with possible abuses of consecrated hosts clearly
surpassed that of all earlier European witch-hunters. As Charles Zika and
Walter Stephens have shown, Kramers abiding concern for the host and
for the defense of Eucharistic reality shaped his entire inquisitorial career,
and also inuenced his characterization of the diabolic sect of witches in
the Malleus.
61
on Niders accounts) of the witches assembliesthe so-called Sabbaththese receive rela-
tively scarce attention in the Malleus. It has been argued that the reason for Kramers appar-
ent lack of interest in the Sabbath was that it was simply not relevant to his main purpose
in the book; proving that witchcraft was a real crime, and that diabolic witches greatly
endangered Christian society. See ibid., 235, n. 76; P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Introduction, in
Te Malleus Malecarum, ed. and trans. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart (Manchester, 2007), 12-14.
58
It has been suggested that inquisitors of the Lombard Congregation acquired their
diabolic interpretation of witchcraft from reports about the witchcraft trials in Lausanne
and its vicinity, which they could have received from inquisitors active in the northern
dominions of the duchy of Savoy (Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors, 153). While it is cer-
tainly plausible that Pirri and his confreres also had contacts with foreign witch-hunting
colleagues other than Kramer, I am not aware of any extant documentary evidence that
attests to the existence of such contacts.
59
Two of Kramers polemical tracts (Tractatus novus de miraculoso eucaristie sacramento
[Augsburg, 1493] and Tractatus varii cum sermonibus contra quattuor errors . . . [Nuremberg,
1495]), as well as parts of the Clippeum, were concerned with refuting doctrinal errors
concerning the sacrament of the Eucharist. In 1480, he conducted a trial for unorthodox
Eucharistic practices in Augsburg, and during his sojourn in Venice in the late 1490s he
participated in a public disputation regarding the nature of the Eucharist (Mackay, Gen-
eral Introduction, 87, 90).
60
Kieckhefer, Mythologies of Witchcraft, 85, 89, 94, 108. Te witches profanation of
the Eucharist was also mentioned in the Errores Gazariorum, written by an anonymous
inquisitor in the 1430s, which was an important source for the trials in the Pays de Vaud.
Ibid., 94 n. 36; Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History, eds. Alan Charles
Kors and Edward Peters, 2nd rev. edition (Philadelphia, 2000), 161.
61
Charles Zika, Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-
Century Germany, Past and Present 118 (1988): 27-28; Stephens, Demon Lovers, 223-232.
Like Kramer, Pirri underscores the witchs negation of the real presence
of Christ in the consecrated host. Describing an accused witchs reluctance
to receive the Body of Christ in communion, Pirri recounts how, during
the priests consecration of the host, she always used to say You are lying
through your teeth, you are lying through your teeth.
62
Pirri also stresses
the witchs abuse of the hosts that she had stolen during mass, although he
refrains from specifying the unspeakable ways in which she desecrated
the eucharist out of reverence for the holy sacrament.
63
Pirris letter of 1508 was probably the rst vernacular reiteration of
northern European notions of witchcraft ever to be written in the Italian
peninsula. Some of these notions are also reected in records of the trials
conducted by some of Pirris confreres of the Lombard Congregation. Te
growing tendency to discern signs of diabolic witchcraft (rather than mere
superstition or sorcery) is clearly manifest in the records of the trials con-
ducted by Dominican inquisitors in Modena in the years 1518-1520, most
notably in the trial of Anastasia la Frappona. As Matteo Duni observes,
the records of Anastasias investigation provide a rare early example for
the application of the demonological conceptions which were rst fully
expounded in the Malleus in the interrogatory practices of Italian inquisi-
tors.
64
It is certainly instructive that at least one of the friars involved in
Anastasias trial, Fra Niccol of Finale, was personally acquainted with the
Malleuss author. In 1519 Fra Niccol, who in 1500 had authenticated
Brocadellis stigmata at Kramers request, served as vicar to the inquisitor
of Ferrara and Modena, Antonio Beccari.
65
Te two friars brought against Anastasia the charges of making explicit
pacts with the devil, with explicit apostasy from the Catholic faith, and
[of ] taking the devil as her lord . . . [as] all the other people who are part of
62
ASMt, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2472, c. 670: no[n] credeva essere i[n] la hostia
c[on]secrata el corpo de Christo . . . qua[n]do el sacerdote diceva la messa lei . . . diceva tu
me[n]te [sic] p[er] la gola, tu me[n]te p[er] la gola; cf. Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus
Malecarum, ed. Mackay, esp. vol. 1, 425.
63
ASMt, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2472, c. 670: ha tolto el demonio p[er] suo dio . . . e
gli ha portato el sanctissimo corpo de Christo, li vituperii e le cose nepha[n]dissime fatte
supra de quello . . . p[er] revere[n]tia no[n] le scrivo; cf. Kramers detailed account of the
witch who abused the Body of the Lord by placing it in a jar in which there was also a
toad (Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Malecarum, ed. Mackay, esp. vol. 1, 425; English
translation in vol. 2, 271).
64
Duni, Tra religione e magia: Storia del prete modenese Guglielmo Campana (1460?-
1541) (Florence, 1999), 35-38.
65
Fra Niccols assistance in this trial was rst noted in ibid., 32.
such sect do.
66
Anastasia was also charged with [performing] spells that
savor of apostasy from the Catholic faith and of most nefarious idolatry
and abuse of the Church sacraments,
67
and with having trampled on the
cross and done other nefarious things, which these criminals do.
68
After
her abjuration on October 28, 1519, Beccari and Fra Niccol condemned
Anastasia, as a repentant witch, to a ten years exile.
69

What we see in these examples is the shift form a view of witchcraft
as consisting primarily of superstition or malecium to one that regards
witchcraft as a conspiratorial heresy involving devil worshiping, explicit
renunciation of Christianity, and blasphemy. Tis reconguraion of the
very essence of witchcraft was made possible by the Italian inquisitors
contacts with a northern European witch-hunter, and by their reading of
his witchcraft manual.
While Domenico Pirri and Niccol of Finale were prosecuting witches
who reportedly confessed to taking the devil as their master and belonging
to an organized heretical sect, other friars of the Lombard Congregation
began publishing works that advocated the extermination of witches. Most
of these works reiterated the diabolic witchcraft stereotype, which had
received its systematic explication in the Malleus.
70
Strikingly, the rst
work by an Italian author in which Kramers tract is explicitly mentioned
was published by Giovanni Cagnazzo, his former collaborator in the exam-
ination of Brocadellis stigmata, in 1517.
Cagnazzos celebrated (and only extant) work, Summa summarum quae
Tabiena dicitur (Te Summa of Summas, Known as the Summa of [Giovanni
of ] Tabia) comprised of alphabetically-ordered entries, some of which
described the witches transgressions and advocated the eradication of their
diabolic sect. As the early historian of witchcraft Henry Charles Lea has
observed, the entries Diana and Sors (casting lots) in the Summa attest
to the profound impression made by the Malleus on Cagnazzos notion
66
I cite from the English translation of Anastasias trial records in Duni, Under the
Devils Spell, 107.
67
Ibid., 105.
68
Ibid., 107.
69
In 1519, Fra Niccol also lled the o ce of Beccaris vicar in the nal phase of the
witchcraft trial of Giulia of Bologna (Duni, Tra religione e magia, 32).
70
Cf. Albano Biondi, Streghe ed eretici nei domini estensi allepoca dellAriosto, in
Il Rinascimento nelle corti padane. Societ e cultura, ed. Paolo Rossi (Bari, 1977), 165-171;
Duni, Under the Devils Spell, 18-22, 29-32.
of witchcraft.
71
Cagnazzo repeats Kramers controversial contention that,
with the devils assistance, witches can change men into beasts. Citing the
Malleus, he asserts that the new sect of witcheswhose members are pros-
ecuted by inquisitors of the Lombard Congregationshould not be con-
fused with the ancient cult of Diana, which is described in the Canon
Episcopi.
72
Cagnazzo also reiterates Kramers accounts of how witches are
physically transported to their diabolical assemblies. Like Pirri, he stresses
the heretical elements in the witches rites, and assures his readers that
witches worship the devil, abjure the faith, deny the sacrament of baptism,
and profane the cross and sacramentals.
73
Cagnazzos preoccupation with witchcraft had undoubtedly preceded
his encounter with Kramer in 1500, and can be traced back to 1498, when
he condemned Gentile Cimitri as a witch. Nevertheless, it was only after
he got to know the Alsatian witch-hunter that Cagnazzo became aware of
the main arguments of the Malleus, which he then used to justify the cam-
paign against witches that his fellow inquisitors were leading in northern
Italy. Tree years after the publication of Cagnazzos Summa, his former
student Prierias published a voluminous tract entitled De strigimagarum
daemonumque mirandis (On the Wonders of Witch-Magicians and Demons),
which similarly defended the vigorous prosecution of witches by members
of the Lombard Congregation.
Prierias, who as inquisitor of Brescia and Crema had been responsible
for the trials and execution of perhaps as many as sixty witches in 1508-
1511, published De strigimagarum daemonumque mirandis in 1521.
74
Pri-
eriass frequent reliance on the main arguments and examples of the Malleus
in this work have long been noted by historians.
75
His atypical identica-
tion of Henricus Institoris as the author of the Malleus, however, has not,
and therefore merits a brief discussion here.
71
Henry Charles Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. Arthur C. Howland
(New York and London, 1957), vol. 1, 196.
72
Giovanni Cagnazzo, Summa summarum quae Tabiena dicitur (Bologna, 1517), fol.
450
v
: Habet in malleo malecarum . . . quod est quodam alia secta praeter illam de qua sit
mentio in de canon episcopi, que nunc . . . inquisitores . . . experiunt.
73
Ibid., fols. 132
r
, 234, 351
v
, 450.
74
Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors, 180, 256.
75
Giuseppe Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe. La credenza nelle streghe dal sec. XIII al XIX con
particolare riferimento allItalia (Palermo, 1971), 336-37; Jared Wicks, Prierias (Silvestro
Mazzolini da Prierio), in Dictionnaire de spiritualit (Paris, 1986), vol. 12:2, 2348; Ste-
phens, Demon Lovers, 73.
Te disputed authorship of the Malleus has received much scholarly
attention. It is now generally agreed that Kramer presented the Malleus as
coauthored by himself and Jacob Sprenger, presumably in order to add
prestige and authority to his work.
76
Te Apologia auctoris in Malleum
Malecarum presents the authors of the tract as we Inquisitors, Jacobus
Sprenger together with the very dear associate delegated by the Apostolic
See for the extermination of so destructive a heresy.
77
Sprengers confreres
at the Dominican friary in Cologne already attempted to dissociate their
deceased priors name from Kramers controversial tract in 1496.
78
Never-
theless, contemporaries who cited the work often relied on the statement
in the Apologia, and attributed it to Sprenger and his associate. Te assump-
tion that Sprenger was the books main author was so prevalent that since
the publication of the 1519 edition of the Malleus he was named as author
on the works front page. In the second half of the sixteenth century,
Kramers name was omitted from the work altogether.
79
Writing in 1520, Prieriasunlike other contemporary readerswas
well aware of Kramers leading role in the composition of the Malleus.
Appreciative not only of Kramers zealous persecution of witches, but also
of his refutation of Antonio de Rosellis anti-papal tract in 1499,
80
Prierias
admiringly referred to his Alsatian confrere as the great man Henricus
Institoris.
81
On at least four occasions in which he quoted from the Malleus,
Prierias noted the author [cited] is Henricus Institoris.
82
Although he
occasionally also referred to Master Henricus Institoris and his associate
83

76
Jerouschek and Behringer, Das unheilvollste Buch der Weltliteratur?, 31-37;
Springer, Dominican Inquisition, 345-351; for a critique of this view, which nonetheless
concedes that Kramer was the works main author, see Mackay, General Introduction,
103-21.
77
Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Malecarum, ed. Mackay, vol. 1, 207: nos inquisitores
Jacobus Sprenger . . .cum charissimo ab apostolica sede in exterminium tam pestifere heresis
socio deputato (English translation in ibid., vol. 2, 29).
78
Schnyder, Malleus Malecarum. Kommentar, 62.
79
Behringer, Malleus Malecarum, 721-722.
80
Prierias, De Strigimagarum, bk. 2, chap. 1: magister Henri[cus] Insti[toris] qui adver-
sus impium Antoniu[m] Roselli scripsit, eiusq[ue] blasfemu[m] opus de monarchia chris-
tiana damnavit.
81
Ibid., bk. 1, chap. 1: vir magnus Henricus Institoris.
82
Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 7: author est Henricus Institoris; authore Henrico Institore
(ibid.); authore dicto Henrico Insti[tore] (bk. 2, chap. 9); Author est Henricus Institoris
(bk. 2, chap. 11).
83
Ibid., bk. 1, chap. 1: per magistrum Henricum Institoris & socium inquisitores;
as co-authors of the work entitled Malleus Malecarum,
84
he made it a
point to note that Kramer was the more illustrious author of the two.
85

Nowhere in De strigimagarum was Sprenger mentioned by name.
Relying on the Malleuss main arguments, Prierias set out to distinguish
the new, organized, sect of devil-worshipers from the superstitious women
mentioned in the Canon Episcopi, and called for the extermination of
modern witches. Aiming his work against skeptics who doubted the reality
of witchcraft and supported the lenient treatment of witches, Prierias
described the latter as women and men who submitted themselves to the
devil body and soul, renounced the Christian faith, performed blasphe-
mous, heretical rites and engaged in obscene sexual acts with demons.
86
Prieriass work had a considerable eect on some of his former students,
and especially on Bartolomeo Spina of Pisa (c.14751546), who soon
became one of the Malleuss best-known Italian supporters. Spina, who
as vicar to the inquisitor of Modena had pursued an enthusiastic anti-
witchcraft campaign, published two major demonological works: Quaestio
de Strigibus (An Investigation of Witches, 1523) and Quadruplex Apologia de
Lamiis in Ponzinibium (Fourfold Defense on Witches against Ponzinibio,
1525).
87
In these books, Spina repeated the arguments concerning the real-
ity of diabolic witchcraft, and attacked the leniency with which some
judges prosecuted witches. Unlike his mentor, however, Spina was appar-
ently not personally acquainted with Kramer.
88
Hence, he did not make
Authore mag[ist]ro Henri[co] Insti[tore] & so[cio] (bk. 2, chap. 6); Henricus Institoris
et socius (bk. 2, chap. 4); Henricus Institoris ac socius inquisitores famosi (bk. 2, chap. 9).
84
Ibid., bk. 1, chap. 1: Henricus Institoris ac socius quorum e[s]t opus quod male-
carum malleus inscribitur. Prierias also occasionally refers to the auctores dicti mallei
(bk. 1, chap. 1; bk. 2, chap. 4).
85
Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 1: auctores mallei malecarum, duo magni viri, maxime magister
Henri[cus] Insti[toris].
86
Franco Mormando, Prierias, Silvestro, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 4, 932-
933; Del Col, LInquisizione, 203-204.
87
Duni, Tra religione e magia, vii-viii, 28-39; Stephens, Demon Lovers, 91-92; Frdric
Max, Les premires controverses sur la ralit du sabbat dans lItalie du XVI
e
Sicle, in Le
sabbat des sorciers en Europe (XV
e
-XVIII
e
sicles), ed. Nicole Jacques-Chaquin and Maxime
Praud (Grenoble, 1993), 59-62. Spina acknowledged his familiarity with De Strigimagarum
but insisted that his work was not merely a repetition of his teachers arguments. See Spina,
Quaestio de strigibus, una cum tractatu de praeeminentia sacrae theologiae et quadruplici apo-
logia de lamiis contra Ponzinibium (Rome, 1576), 140.
88
Spina was rst attested in Bologna on December 17, 1502, and began his studies at the
Dominican Studium in Bologna on October 6, 1503 (Celestino Piana, La Facolt teologica
dellUniversit di Bologna nella prima met del Cinquecento, Archivum Franciscanum
any eort to praise Kramer, nor did he refer to him as the Malleuss main
author.
89
By the time Spina published his Quaestio de Strigibus, the Malleus had
already become the main reference point in the Italian debate over the justi-
cation of witch-hunting. In April 1523, Spinas confrere Leandro Alberti
edited Gianfrancesco Picos dialogue Strix (Te Witch) in which Kramers
work was explicitly praised as a hammer (Malleus) for smashing skeptics
who opposed the harsh repression of witchcraft.
90
Picos anti-witchcraft book
complemented those of Prierias and Spina, and was similarly aimed at
proving the reality of diabolic witchcraft to Italian skeptics.
91
Pico, the count of Mirandola who moved in the intellectual orbit of the
Lombard Congregation, lent the power of the arm of the secular law to
Dominican inquisitors who persecuted witches in his domain in 1522-
1525. His apologetic defense of this witch-hunt was clearly written under
the spell of the Malleus,
92
a work which Pico cited three times.
93
An ally
and close friend of Pico, Alberti may have been the one who called the
counts attention to the Hammer published by the Alsatian witch-hunter
with whom he had collaborated in 1500.
Even though Alberti himself did not preside over any known witchcraft
trial, he served as the press agent of the Mirandolese persecutions. Shortly
after facilitating the publication of Picos Strix, he oered to translate it
into the vernacular. His translation (completed in April 1524) was the rst
discussion of witches in the vernacular ever to be published in Italy, sig-
nicantly widening the audience for witchcraft theory by making it acces-
sible to readers who knew no Latin.
94
* * *
Historicum 62 [1969]: 226 n. 3). It therefore seems that the Pisan friar only arrived in
northern Italy after Kramer had departed for Olomouc.
89
Spina refers either merely to the books title (Quaestio de strigibus, 49, 55, 86) or to the
unnamed authoribus quoque libri, qui malleus malecarum inscribitur (ibid., 140).
90
Giovanni Francesco Pico, Dialogus in tres libros divisus. Titulus est Strix, sive de ludi-
catione daemonum (Bologna, 1523), sig. H4
r
.
91
Stephens, Demon Lovers, 87-99.
92
Cf. Gustavo Costa, Love and Witchcraft in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola: La
Strega between the Sublime and the Grotesque, Italica 67:4 (Winter 1990): 430; Stephens,
Demon Lovers, 232.
93
Pico, Dialogus . . . Titulus est Strix, sig. D3
v
, H4
r
, F2
v
.
94
Adriano Prosperi, Leandro Alberti inquisitore di Bologna e storico dellItalia, in
Alberti, Descrittione di tutta Italia, vol. 1, 12-19.
Before 1542, papal inquisitors such as Kramer were accountable only to
the curia, and were not subject to any higher inquisitorial authority. Te
degree of independence that they enjoyed in carrying out their missions
was thus considerably greater than that of their successors after the estab-
lishment of the Roman Inquisition.
95
In the course of his long career, Kramer
traveled great distances, and collaborated with inquisitors who were active
in very dierent political and social settings from the ones with which he
was familiar. After encountering Italian colleagues, Kramer became inter-
ested in holy women whose mystical gifts conformed to a genuine Italian
typology of female sanctity,
96
and was largely responsible for spreading their
cults beyond the connes of the Italian peninsula. At the same time, his
ties with Italian inquisitors facilitated the transmission of northern European
demonological notions south of the Alps. As Kramers case makes clear,
in the pre-Reformation era inquisitorial networks contributed to bridging
the varied cultural and religious worlds south and north of the Alps.
Personal contacts played a crucial role in this bridging process; indeed,
only they can explain the enthusiastic yet belated reception of the Malleus
in Italy. While Kramers anti-witchcraft tract enjoyed impressive commer-
cial success in central Europe immediately after the publication of its rst
edition in 1486, it remained virtually unknown in northern Italy for many
years. Tis was only to be expected, since Kramers manual was written in
an outdated Parisian style, which did not appeal to Italian readers,
97
and
articulated northern European notions of witchcraft, quite dierent from
the ones that had evolved in the Italian peninsula. What does come as a
surprise is that such an unmistakably northern bookin both style and
contentswas eventually welcomed by Italian witchcraft theorists of the
early Cinquecento. Tat the Italians who relied on the Malleus, cited it and
praised it in their writings, all had either direct or indirect ties with Kramer
can account for the sudden interest in this work in the years following the
Alsatian friars last sojourn in northern Italy.
We can only imagine the impact that meeting the best-known inquisitor
of their erawho never missed an opportunity to publicize the contents
95
On the personal character of the late medieval inquisition see Kieckhefer, Te O ce
of Inquisition and Medieval Heresy: Te Transition from Personal to Institutional Jurisdic-
tion, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46:1 (January 1995): 36-61.
96
On this typology see Gabriella Zarri, Le sante vive. Profezie di corte e devozione
femminile tra 400 e 500 (Turin, 1990).
97
Cf. Herzig, Te Demons Reaction to Sodomy: Witchcraft and Homosexuality in
Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandolas Strix, Sixteenth Century Journal 34:1 (April 2003): 59.
of his Malleus or share his rsthand experience in the persecution of
witcheshad on committed inquisitors such as Domenico Pirri. Teir
acquaintance with the zealous witch-hunter clearly rendered Italian inquis-
itors more attuned to manifestations of diabolism, conspiratorial heresy
and the profanation of sacraments in the activities of purported witches. It
also shaped their written defenses of witch-hunting, which from that point
on largely echoed Kramers main arguments.
And yet, the northern European notions that Kramers Italian confreres
propagated in their letters and tracts never really took root in the southern
soil of Italy. As is well known, shortly after the witch panics of the 1520s
had abated Italian inquisitors stopped expressing their concern over the
diabolic sect of witches, and adopted a lenient approach toward witchcraft.
Te rapid spread of Evangelical ideas in the Italian peninsula required that
inquisitors concentrate their eorts in the repression of Protestantism. But
even when the Protestant menace seemed su ciently curtailed, they turned
their attention to the extirpation of superstitious magical practices, rather
than to the repression of diabolic witchcraft.
98

Te breakup of Western Christendom eventually put an end to the pan-
European inquisitorial networks which, as we have seen, had existed while
papal inquisitors could freely traverse the Alps and exchange information
with foreign confreres. From 1530 onwards, the history of inquisitorial
activity diverged north and south of the Alps.
99
Cut o from their increas-
ingly marginalized colleagues on the other side of the Alps, Italian inquisi-
tors abandoned (in practice, if not in theory) the central aspects of the
northern European witchcraft mythology. Instead, they concerned them-
selves with uprooting indigenous superstitious beliefs. Alongside the
institutional control and judicial centralization of the Roman Inquisition,
the fact that Italian inquisitors could no longer have direct ties with foreign
witch-hunting confreres must have contributed to the scarcity of erce
witch persecutions in Italy in the mid- and late-sixteenth century.
Acknowledgments
I thank Stuart Clark, Guido DallOlio, Moshe Sluhovsky and especially
Matteo Duni for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
98
Duni, Under the Devils Spell, 31-38.
99
William Monter, Te Mediterranean Inquisitions of Early Modern Europe, in
Reform and Expansion, ed. Po-Chia Hsia, 283-88.

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Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.

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