In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued aPapal Bull concerning the practiceof Witchcraft. He was not the firstto do so: several of his predecessorshad written on the subject and whatshould be done about it. Innocent’swas different, in that it was muchmore widely read than earlier ones.Thanks to the European inventionof moveable-type printing byJohannes Gutenberg around 1432(it had been used in China manycenturies earlier) it was easy for theChurch to issue many copies ofInnocent’s Bull. Without it, eachcopy would have had to belaboriously handwritten by Monks,thus global suppression beganthanks to the humble printing-press.

All over Europe, Priests read thatclergy; laymen; and laywomen werenot treating the threat posed byWitchcraft seriously enough.Innocent insisted that it was theduty of every Roman Catholic (andthat meant almost everyone, for theChurch was so powerful) to help hisInquisitors search out Witches.

The people they sought were thoseof herbalists and midwives,continuing on the medical remediesof nature handed down fromgeneration to generation; these evildevil worshipping human beings,were country folk, men, women, andchildren, dancing in a field tocelebrate a harvest that would allowthem to eat for another year. Thesewhores of the devil, were moralwomen whom believed that it wasimpossible for a woman to become

pregnant without laying with aman, call her ‘Mary’, call her

‘Madonna’, even Divinity

whose office it belongs, to the gloryand honour of the worshipful nameof Jesus Christ and for the exaltationof the Holy Orthodox Faith, and forthe putting down of the abominationof heresy, especially in all Witches ingeneral and in each one severally ofwhatever condition.

The book went on to inform on howproceedings should be initiatedagainst alleged Witches; the mannerin which they should be arrested;how witnesses should be questioned;the use of torture; and the sentence.Judges were warned not to touchany person with their bare handsand to wear a bag around their neckcontaining salt that had beenconsecrated on Palm Sunday. In thesame bag there should be herbs,similarly blessed and enclosed inconsecrated wax (ironic… theCatholic vilifying the Witch, iswearing a gris-gris bag around hisneck!). Witches should be leadbackwards into the court and if theJudge had to approach the suspecthe must first cross himself andapproach her ‘manfully’. In thisway, the two Monks wrote, “withGod’s help the power of that oldSerpent will be broken”.

Thus, the Papal Bull of PopeInnocent VIII, as was issued in 1484by the Catholic Church of Rome, isto be found within the followingpages along with that of the MalleusMaleficarium of 1486, which led tothe torture and murder ofthousands and thousands ofinnocent Witches, male, female,children, and animals. This is whyso many still hate the Church andher peoples for their legacy…

cannot defy the Laws of Nature.These slaves of the Beast, weresimple, innocent, and unthreateningAncestors of Druids; Priestesses;and Practitioners who walked theearth before Rome had a singlebrick laid in its walls, and who doyou think the Ancestors of Jesus (ahuman) were?

Innocent’s Bull encouraged twoMonks, Heinrich Kramer and JakobSprenger to publish the “MalleusMaleficarium”, or “WitchesHammer”, which was essentially aWitch-hunters manual. It explainedwhy Witchcraft was such a terriblething, why it was the duty of allgood Catholics to stamp it out andhow to tell if someone waspracticing the black arts.

In their rant against Witchcraft,Kramer and Sprenger, who wereInquisitors themselves, list the typesof Witch. They accused Witches ofhaving sexual relationships with theDevil and working with him tospread his dark ways.

The book detailed how a trial shouldproceed, beginning with a noticethat was to be fixed to the walls ofthe parish church (or town hall). Itwas worded:

Whereas we, the Vicar of……….……… do endeavour with allour might and strive to preserve theChristian people entrusted to us inunity and happiness of the CatholicFaith and to keep them far removedfrom every plague of abominableheresy…

Therefore, we the aforesaid Judge to