Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

burns her or gives her flesh to eat, or eats it, he is to

be punished by death. 6

The Church had accordingly for 7 centuries considered

the belief in witchcraft a heathen belief and the burning of alleged witches a capital crime. Pope Innocent, however, secure in papal infallibility and demonstrating a true political sensibility (leading to the consolidation of power), described the extent of his concern: It has indeed lately come to Our ears, not without

afflicting Us with bitter sorrow, that in some parts of

Northern Germany, as well as in the provinces, townships, territories, districts, and dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Saltzburg, and Bremen, many

persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi [male] and succubi

[female], and by their incantations, spells, conjurations,

and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and

horrid offenses, have slain infants yet in the mother's

womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the

produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruit

of the trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen,

herd beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pastureland, corn, wheat, and all other cereals; these wretches furthermore afflict and torment men and women, beasts of burthen,

Gynocide: The Witches

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herd beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, with

terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases, both internal and external; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence

husbands cannot know their wives nor wives receive

their husbands; over and above this, they blasphemously renounce that Faith which is theirs by the Sacrament of Baptism, and at the instigation of the

Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink from committing and perpetrating the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses to the deadly peril of their own souls,

whereby they outrage Divine Majesty and are a cause

of scandal and danger to very many. 7

T o deal with the increasing tide o f witchcraft and

in conformity with the Pope’s orders, Sprenger and

Kramer collaborated on the Malleus Maleficarum. This

document, a monument to Aristode’s logic and academic methodology (quoting and footnoting “authorities”), catalogues the major concerns o f 15th-century Catholic theology:

Question I. Whether the Belief that there are such

Beings as Witches is so Essential a Part of the Catholic

Faith that Obstinancy to maintain the Opposite Opinion

manifestly savours of Heresy (Answer: Yes)

Question III. Whether Children can be Generated by

Incubi and Succubi (Answer: Yes)

Question VIII. Whether Witches can Hebetate the Power

of Generation or Obstruct the Venereal Act (Answer:

Yes)

Question IX. Whether Witches may work some Presti-

digitatory Illusion so that the Male Organ appears to

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