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The Medieval Church · 1486–1487
The Hammer of Witches
Malleus Maleficarum
Heinrich Kramer · c. 1430–1505
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What it is
A manual arguing that witchcraft is real, that it is chiefly a crime of women, and setting out how to identify, interrogate under torture, and execute the accused.
Why it lasted
Catalogued because it must be known. Printed some thirty times and carried into courtrooms across Europe, it is among the most lethal books ever written.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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