On Love, The Devil, The Clergy, and Chastity during the Renaissance

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the interrelation of love, the devil, and chastity, as it came to bedefined in the Renaissance, gave shape to new scientific and religious con-cepts related to gender. The texts and trends that express the dominant, neg-ative views on earthly love in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe revealthe increasingly threatening meaning that love came to acquire in society atlarge, especially widespread beliefs that women’s immoderate sexuality wasan effect of their natural physiological makeup. In light of these views andbeliefs, the puzzling, though by no means original, passage “There are threethings in nature, the Tongue, an Ecclesiastic, and a Woman, which know nomoderation in goodness or vice,” contained in the influential Malleus malefi-carum (The Hammer of the Witches) first published in 1486–87 by theDominican inquisitors Heinrich Kramer (Institor) and Jakob Sprenger,acquires special relevance.2 This particular section of the Malleus (pt. 1, ques.6) has already attracted much scholarly attention because of its discussion ofabominable traits regarded as typical of the natural wickedness of women.However, it also contains a largely overlooked passage on various cases of

On Love, the Devil, the Clergy, and Chastityduring the Renaissance Witch Craze1

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maria esposito frank

Maria Esposito Frank is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Hartfordin West Hartford, Connecticut.

©Italian Culture (issn 0161-4622)Vol. 21, 2003, pp. 45-78

propensities toward “immoderation.” Included here is an intriguing catego-ry of men, namely ecclesiastics. Kramer and Sprenger grouped them togeth-er with women because of a perceived equal vulnerability, of which no illus-tration is given.

The baffling inclusion of males in the Malleus’s most misogynistic pas-sages may be explained by taking into account medical and theological the-ories about erotic love and demonic agency, as such theories intersected andcoalesced in new ways during the particular age and cultural climate thatproduced the Malleus. In referring to demonological theories of the devil’sdirect interference in bodies with a certain “disposition” to deranged per-ception (as if the devil were a natural agent), the category of clergymenidentified in question 6 was considered subject to the same extremes invirtue or in vice as all women, but in the clergy’s case it was attributed to aphysiological alteration caused by self-imposed chastity. Thus question 6,and related sections of the Malleus, present another example of the inquisi-tors’ sex anxiety and a rather interesting case of misogyny—the cleric’s“effeminized” body is finally “emended.” Above all, they present a powerfulillustration of the demonologists’ endeavor to demonstrate scientifically thereality and insidiousness of the devil.

LOVE OUT OF EDEN

“Enamored men act not under the guidance of reason, but always in the spir-it of madness.” This statement, taken from the lengthy debate on love in LeonBattista Alberti’s moral treatise Della famiglia, book 2, “De re uxoria” (Alberti1969, 92–154, 103), contains specific advice about the prerequisites for theideal bride for a member of an upper-class family. Moreover, the second bookof Della famiglia includes one of the greatest celebrations of the dignitashominis, the centrality of the human being in God’s creation, and the humanpower for self-fashioning, to use Stephen Greenblatt’s expression. Thereforethis text, like others written by Alberti’s contemporaries, is emblematic of that“reorganization of consciousness” (O’Malley 1993, 12), a hallmark of theRenaissance, according to which human experience, human choices, andresponsibility were considered decisive factors in shaping one’s earthly exis-tence. Of all creatures, humans alone had been given the privilege to rule overthe earth and use it to achieve happiness in this life. Because of this centraland powerful position, the individual was deemed capable of controllingexternal and internal forces, directing the course of events, and reaching the

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highest goals. To do so, the resolve to hold both fortune and passions in checkwas an obligatory quality. The strongest of all human passions, sensual lovebecame a prominent subject for reflection during the Renaissance. To be sure,love had occupied and preoccupied the minds of many medieval poets,philosophers, physicians, moralists, theologians, and churchmen. But in thefifteenth century love took on a much more threatening connotation. Even ina work as optimistic, confident, pragmatic, and straightforward as Alberti’s,we find something very unsettling when love is the topic of discussion.

In the section of Della famiglia referenced above, the interlocutors elabo-rate at length on the many aspects of love, including conjugal love. Here thewinning position seems to be the one prescribing love between spouses to bea “true friendship,” free from carnal desires and aimed at virtue (Alberti 1969,98, 101).3 Conjugal love is represented as more noble, durable, and powerfulthan any other kind of love because, unlike erotic love, it is free from passionand entirely subordinated to reason: amor amicitae, not amor concupiscenti-ae, in Thomistic terms. Alberti reinforces this point a few pages later, specif-ically in contemplating the choice of a bride. Here one finds no emotionalconsideration of, nor reference to, personal feelings in the description of theselection process typical of Renaissance arranged marriages.

These passages from Alberti’s moral treatise on the family serve as a prem-ise to a discussion of love—and more precisely of the negative views of car-nal love. Alberti’s Della famiglia, although prescriptive more than descriptive,offers us views on love based on very practical grounds,4 within the frame-work of marriage, and with the concrete aim of ensuring stability and tran-quility in daily life. The vehemence of the author’s attack on sensual loveconvinces us—much more than the imaginative lines of the poets or theivory-tower speculations of the Neo-Platonists—that sensual love had a real,widely threatening meaning in the Renaissance. Arguably, Della famigliaprovides us with a much more fecund starting point than much of the abun-dant late medieval and Renaissance literature specifically devoted to the sub-ject of love (including Alberti’s own Deifira and Hecatonphila 5).

The medieval literary tradition tended to present venereal love as adestructive force, an immoderate passio that existed in the imaginary worldsof poets and courtiers. Medieval literary expressions of love were often partof fashionable conventions, intellectual and entertaining exercises by andfor an aristocratic elite, and at times—as in the case of the most illustriouswork on the subject, Capellanus’s De amore—offered highly ambiguous pre-sentations of the meaning, role, and consequences of sensual love.

the renaissance witch craze 47

Later on, the Neo-Platonic trend of Renaissance love treatises by Ficino,Leone Ebreo, Bembo, Betussi, Nobili, De’ Vieri, Speroni, and their readersand followers in other countries (since Italian models were hegemonic inEurope) considered eros differently. However, when such authors discussedlove, even love seemingly directed toward a woman, they meant to tran-scend mere physicality, as their actual interest was love of universal beauty.Moreover, the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century dissertations on loveremained lofty, at times esoteric, speculations with which an intellectualelite entertained itself, much like its medieval counterpart, above andbeyond concrete concerns.

In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, marriage was a political andeconomic contract, carefully arranged by parents, especially in the case ofthe middle and upper levels of society, the classes that defined the dominantbeliefs and values. In this context one can see how sexual matters only inter-fered with the established family ethos. The fact that even carnal desirebetween spouses ought to be curbed, and conjugal intercourse vigilantlyregulated for the exclusive purpose of procreation—as not only Alberti butalso other humanists stressed6—shows the degree of vilification to whichsex was subject during that time. The enjoyment of venereal pleasures con-stituted inordinate love, and sensuality led to insanity. These dim viewswere widespread not only among theologians, canonists, and preachers ofthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as the preceding ones, but alsoamong members of society at large.7

As was the case in the Middle Ages, ambivalence still characterized vene-real issues on both the secular and the religious planes (no sharp conceptu-al distinction existed between the two, anyway): the sexual act implieddegradation, yet paradoxically it was the sine qua non for the existence offamily and society; it was the natural outlet of strong human drives, but atthe same time it was viewed as a potential danger to the health of the mindand the soul because of its association with desire and pleasure.8

The problem of establishing well-balanced criteria and prescriptionsconcerning sexual matters was a difficult one in Renaissance societies. Thesexual act was necessary for procreation and fulfilled a basic human need,but it was believed that boundaries and degrees of intensity for marital sex-uality had to be established. The “marital debt,” as sanctioned by Paulineauthority and legalized as mutual obligation of the couple by canonists,made carnal union in the conjugal bed a licit, righteous act and an appro-priate expression of that affection and emotional bond that Gratian had


strongly posed as a condition for marriage (Brundage 1987, 229–42).9

Nonetheless, praises of—and concrete encouragement toward—chaste mar-riages pervaded Christian thought, according to which husbands and wives,even within the sacred boundaries of marriage, had to exercise constant con-trol over the temptations of the flesh and strictly limit sexual indulgence(Elliott 1993; McNamara 1994, 22–33). In the thirteenth century, the famousdecretist Huguccio of Pisa took an extreme position when he stated that amarried couple that experienced carnal pleasure during intercourse sinned(even when there was a procreative intent).10

Long after Huguccio’s pronouncements, sex continued to be considereddemeaning to a large degree, if not inherently deviant, within the sacredframework of the holy sacrament of marriage: abstention was required of allmarried couples during numerous periods of the year (Lent or penitentialseasons, major church holidays, during the menstrual cycle and lactation,before Holy Communion, etc.), and the preservation of virginity in marriagewas presented by preachers such as the fifteenth-century Dominicanreformer Johannes Nider (a particularly relevant figure in this context) as themost commendable marital behavior (Nider 1971, 1.5, 26–30; Dahmus 1996,300–316).

Views such as these had the authority and the influence of ancientsources: the Renaissance greatly valued the writings of the early fathers anddoctors of the church such as Clement of Alexandria, Jerome, Tertullian,Augustine, and Basil, for whom, unequivocally, earthly love was a sickness,a disease of the senses. The bulk of patristic literature and canon law sub-jected licit sexuality to suspicion and disapproval even while conceding thatone of the benefits of marriage was the satisfaction of natural sexual drive,which prevented fornication (i.e., non-marital sex) and other greater evils.11

The ambiguities and oscillations surrounding the definition of sexualityduring the Middle Ages persisted in the Renaissance. It was feared that sexu-al appetite was an infirmity of the flesh and a threat to sanity. Debates cen-tered on the extent and degree to which sex was to be practiced with the bless-ing of the church and the approval of moralists like Alberti, and the point atwhich it became a sinful activity. Thinkers asked if erotic desire was intrinsi-cally evil, even when unavoidable, and if, therefore, it should be tolerated tosome degree. All forms of coitus, including marital coitus, would remain asso-ciated with sin, and sexuality was associated with the loss of grace subsequentto Adam’s fall (Brundage 1987, 57–98, 256–88; 1980, 365–68).12 According tothe witch-hunting manual we will consider presently, the Malleus malefi-


carum, “the sexual act caused the corruption of our first parents, and, by itscontagion, brought the inheritance of original sin upon the whole humanrace” (Kramer and Sprenger 1971, 93, 167).13 Earthly love was a perversion ofthe original love into lust; its pursuit, a desire that could lead to disease, wasa passio embedded in our human fabric.

According to medieval scholastic thought, which the Malleus treats asauthoritative, the human inclination toward carnal love was inextricablytied to desire and pleasure—passions of the concupiscent appetite, such asthe appetite for corporeal objects, and sensitive appetites that are closelylinked to the body and imply physiological changes. Physiological changesbrought with them psychological ones, as witnessed by the rich Renaissancemedical literature that has come down to us. Scholars of medicine and lovepathologies have described the composite picture of fifteenth- and six-teenth-century scientific theories. They date back to Hippocrates, Aristotle,and Galen but had been further developed by medieval Arab and Christianphilosophers and scientists. Such theories concurred in defining eroticdesire as a threat to the power of estimation, that is to say, that faculty ofthe soul upon which ultimately depended—as Albertus Magnus amongothers maintained—the power to exercise one’s own free will. Much moreneeds to be said on this point, but for the moment, let me call attention tothe fact that when dealing with love, one was not simply dealing with thememory of a shameful origin, such as the expulsion from the garden ofEden (which even the paradoxical felix culpa view had not toned down), butalso with the consideration of the entailments and consequences of sexuallongings, which made sensual love a problematic element in the humancondition. From its beginnings and throughout the Middle Ages, thechurch wavered between regulation, partial condemnation, and tolerance oferotic love, while science anatomized it. During the time of the witch crazein Europe, religious and medical beliefs intersected and interacted in a newway.

THE SOMATOGENESIS OF LOVE: EROTIC DESIRE AS A DANGER

TO THE HEALTH OF THE MIND AND THE SOUL

In dealing with venereal love, Renaissance physicians elaborated onmedieval somatogenic developments of Galenic science, according to whichsexual desire is caused by temperament. Like all other concupiscentappetites, love was believed to have material causes, deriving from the com-


plexion of the body, that is to say, the physiological makeup. This was deter-mined by the temperaments (heat, cold, dryness, moisture), those bodilyfluids essential to physiological functioning; the humors (blood, phlegm,choler, black bile); as well as the spirits (which provided the essential linkbetween the body and the soul).

If left unfulfilled, erotic desire would increase and generate excessiveheat. This in turn would burn natural bodily humors and produce vaporsthat would circulate to the brain, where they would ultimately distort men-tal vision, corrupt imagination, and derange the virtus aestimativa (judg-ment, the rational faculty of the soul, to which all other powers of the soulare subject). Renaissance medicine located the origin of love and other pas-sions in the organs and humors of the body and, from these physiologicalcauses, explained the psychological effects. In other words, love, like all pas-sions, was the result of an interplay between body and soul, which scienceheld to be “indissoluble binomial” (Beecher and Ciavolella 1990, 3-82;Beecher 1988, 1-11; Lemay 1994, 187-205).

Recent scholarship has thoroughly examined Renaissance lovesickness orother pathological states, such as melancholia and amor hereos, caused byexcessive desire or inordinate love. We will focus here on one basic tenet offifteenth- and sixteenth-century science, according to which erotic desirewas grounded in human physiology and depended on the bodily complex-ion. Health was determined by the correct balance of temperaments, whichallowed the humors to nourish properly every part of the body while elim-inating superfluities. Complexion depended on a variety of factors. It wasfundamentally innate, although, for example, food, climate, the stars, or asedentary or active life played a role in establishing the degree of heat, cold,moisture, and dryness in the body; thus, a complexion could to some degreebe modified (Siraisi 1990, 97–104). However, complexion was also at thebasis of sexual difference and constituted the foundation of female psycho-physiological inferiority.

The postulate that women lacked the necessary heat and dryness for thecorrect functioning of the bodily operations gave rise to the myth of “dys-functionality”—incompleteness, debility, and weakness of women—on boththe physical and mental levels. Women menstruated, it was believed, becausethey did not possess the necessary heat to complete digestion fully: under thecold and moist conditions of their bodies, humors could not work properly.Hence, the ingested food did not turn into useful blood that could be entire-ly absorbed (in males, on the contrary, it was completely utilized to nourish


every part of the body, and sperm represented the outcome of fully digestedfood). Together with—and as an unavoidable consequence of—the naturalimperfection of female bodily processes, there was a series of detrimental psy-chological and behavioral characteristics of woman: limited intelligence,moral weakness, frivolity, deceptiveness, lightheadedness, credulity, prone-ness to despondency and—most prominently—lust. The dominant image ofwoman was, therefore, one of a creature “governed by her sexual parts.”Woman’s libidinousness was the subject of much religious, moralistic, andmedical literature, where the correlation between her complexion (cold andmoist) and disposition (to sexual insatiability) was explained in several ways,upon which I will not linger.14

Reiteration of the long list of misogynistic views of the time (which havebeen the subject of a vast number of studies published in the last 30 years)serves to clarify that the antifemale biases of the Malleus maleficarum can befully understood only in its cultural context. Discussing why and how theRenaissance witch craze reached extreme levels of misogyny, recent scholar-ship focuses on the prejudices influencing judges to prosecute witches. JosephKlaits (1985), for example, explains the intensity of the misogynistic phenom-enon through the combined effects of the movements for spiritual reform andthe new emphasis on sexuality that fueled the witch craze. Crucial to Klaits’sreading of the witch hunt is the fact that Renaissance witchcraft introducednot only the devil pact or worship but also charges of perverse sexual prac-tices. In other words, witches were not only Satan’s worshipers but also hissexual slaves, and sexual matters had an enormous impact on witch trials(Klaits 1985, 48–85; Bullough 1994c, 206–17).15 The art historian Joseph LeoKoerner (1996) emphasizes this point as well. Renaissance visual portraits ofwitches—in their mixture of erotic, grotesque and repulsive elements—underscored the sexual aspect of the phenomenon, as did verbal depictions ofthe sabbath with their imagery of deviant sexuality and lewdness (336–38).These views of woman—by her own nature predisposed to sinful sexuality—though not at all new at this time, took on more threatening meanings in latefifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. Secular prosecutors (like Pierre deLancre), lawyers (like Bodin), theologians, philosophers, physicians, andauthors of demonological treatises agreed (with only few exceptions) in estab-lishing a direct connection between woman’s sexuality and sin, and, mostnotably, her propensity toward the demonic (Klaits 1985, 52 ff ).

Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus maleficarum—which is neither the firstnor the only manual against witchcraft but certainly one of the most


influential and the most widely circulated text of its kind—states that thegreat majority of witches are women, primarily because of their sexualappetite. Although traits such as feeblemindedness, superstition, avarice,credulity, impressionability, slippery tongues, wrath, and deceptiveness arenatural to the female and explain the gendered propensity to fall into thetrap of the devil, Kramer and Sprenger conclude that the “wickedness” ofwomen, and indeed “all witchcraft” for that matter, come “from carnallust, which is in women insatiable” (1971, 47; 1991, 45a). Even though thetwo German inquisitors acknowledge the virtues of great heroines of theOld Testament such as Judith, Deborah, and Esther, and the significantcontribution of some medieval women who were proselytizers for theChristian faith (e.g., Gilia of Bavaria and the Frank Clotilda), Kramer andSprenger finally underscore woman’s carnal proclivity, perorating:

In many vituperations that we read against women, the word woman isused to mean the lust of the flesh. . . . I found a woman more bitter thandeath; even a good woman is subject to carnal lust. (1971, 43–47; 1991,41b–45a)16

The inquisitors support their argument with citations from a whole rangeof authorities17: the Bible, Greek and Roman antiquity (Socrates, Terence,Cato, and Valerius Maximus), and early Christianity. There we find varia-tions of antifemale commonplaces that originated 20 centuries before theMalleus and survived unchallenged well beyond it.

While all the issues, facts, and events presented so far have been at thecenter of much scholarship, the passage of the Malleus linking ecclesiasticsto women has—to the best of my knowledge—gone unnoticed,18 despitenumerous studies on the interconnections between woman’s sexuality andwitchcraft. The passage is found at the beginning of question 6 in part 1 ofthe Malleus. Here Kramer and Sprenger begin elaboration of the woman-devil relationship. Titled “Concerning Witches Who Copulate with Devils:Why Superstition Is Chiefly Found in Women,” it tells of women, clergy-men, and the tongue:

For some learned men propound this reason; that there are three things innature, the Tongue, an Ecclesiastic, and a Woman, which know no moder-ation in goodness or vice; and when they exceed the bounds of their con-dition they reach the greatest heights and the lowest depths of goodness


and vice. When they are governed by a good spirit, they are most excellentin virtue; but when they are governed by an evil spirit, they indulge theworst possible vices. (1971, 42; 1991, 40b)

This statement, made by “some learned men,”19 is, not surprisingly, bor-rowed from chapter 8 of the fifth book of Nider’s Formicarius, a bookrepeatedly printed together with the Malleus during Renaissance times.20

The “three things” that Kramer and Sprenger mention—a tongue, an eccle-siastic, and a woman—are subsequently discussed in their manual but withuneven exegetical effort. There is in fact a great disparity in attention andfocus in the inquisitors’ elucidation of the quoted passage. While Nider’sFormicarius dedicates small but equal space and emphasis to the illustrationof each of the three categories, the German inquisitors engage in morelengthy and vehement expressions of misogyny, which further confirms thefact that gender issues were far more crucial for the authors of the Malleusthan for their source. Indeed, Nider’s presentation of female distinctiveshortcomings and defects is much briefer, less inflamed in its tone, and,most indicatively, it is followed (and therefore counterbalanced to somedegree) by a long passage that acknowledges the laudable, significant con-tribution of Old Testament and medieval women to Christianity. This pas-sage is placed at the very end of bk. 5, chap. 8; thus it occupies a “strong”position within the organization of the text, and in a way offsets the pre-ceding misogynous statements: the reader is left in the company of positivefemale images (Nider 1971, 226).21

On the contrary, in the text of the Malleus the heroines of the OldTestament and the pious women of medieval times appear before—andthus buried under—the long catalogue (lengthier and more detailed thanthe one contained in Formicarius) of biases against women based on beliefsin their psycho-physiological disposition toward witchcraft.22 Thus the spe-cific rhetorical dispositio of the parts in this section of the Malleus becomesa semantic vehicle reinforcing the misogynous message of question 6, whichculminates with the statement: “as regards intellect, or the understanding ofspiritual things, they [i.e., women] seem to be of a different nature frommen” (Kramer and Sprenger 1971, 44; 1991, 42b). As beings naturally limit-ed in their physical and mental capacities, women belong in the group withimmoderate proclivities. Question 6, however, says much less about the twopreceding categories, the tongue and the ecclesiastics. Reproducing Nider’stext almost verbatim, the inquisitors exhaust their treatment of the “good


tongue” with only a few sentences that point to the imagery of the Bible andDominican preachers (the Holy Ghost as tongues of fire over the apostles;Solomon’s “the just man’s tongue is like choice silver”; barking dogs with atorch in the mouth: Domini canes, the Hounds of the Lord, the preachingfriars). Then a single passage from Ecclesiasticus 28 is quoted to illustratethe opposite pole of the “evil tongue”:

A backbiting tongue hath disquieted many and driven them from nationto nation: strong cities hath it pulled down and overthrown the houses ofgreat men. And by a backbiting tongue, it means a third party who rashlyor spitefully interferes between two contending parties.

The tongue might seem an awkward presence in this triad, but it is actual-ly a very fitting element: silence, peculiarly associated with modesty, was espe-cially recommended for women, as attested in a variety of Renaissance texts;outspoken and eloquent females were often accused of impudicity or incest(Barbaro 1978, 204–6; King and Robin 2004, 6).23 However, the inclusion ofthe tongue in this context has other important implications as well, whichwould require a whole separate treatment (Kramer and Sprenger 1991, 20v).24

COMPLEXIO VENEREA AND THE DEMONIZATION OF MEDICINE

In considering ecclesiastics, the two inquisitors are almost as laconic as theywere when discussing the tongue, and here it is useful to quote in full:

Concerning ecclesiastics, that is to say, clerics and religious of either sex,Saint John Chrysostom speaks on the text, “He cast out them that boughtand sold from the temple.” From priesthood arises everything good, andeverything evil. Saint Jerome, in his epistle to Nepotian, says: “Avoid as youwould the plague a trading priest who has risen from poverty to riches,from a low to a high estate.” And Blessed Bernard, in his “Twenty-ThirdHomily On the Psalms,” says of clerics: “If one should arise as an openheretic, let him be cast out and put to silence; if he is a violent enemy, letall good men flee from him.” But how are we to know which ones to castout or to flee from? For they are confusedly friendly and hostile, peaceableand quarrelsome, neighborly and utterly selfish.

Elsewhere in the Malleus they write:


Our bishops are become spearmen and our pastors shearers. And by bish-ops here is meant those proud Abbots who impose heavy labors on theirinferiors, which they would not themselves touch with their little finger.And Saint Gregory says concerning pastors: “No one does more harm inthe church than he who, having the name or order of sanctity, lives in sin,for no one dares to accuse him of sin, and therefore the sin is widely spread,since the sinner is honored for the sanctity of his order.” Blessed Augustinealso speaks of monks to Vincent the Donatist: “I freely confess to yourcharity before the Lord our God, which is the witness of my soul from thetime I began to serve God, what great difficulty I have experienced in thefact that it is impossible to find either worse or better men than those whograce or disgrace the monasteries.”25 (1971, 42-43; 1991, 40d-41a)

A first observation could be that—following this list of authoritativequotations—there is no reference to religious females, even though Kramerand Sprenger had initially presented the ecclesiastics as a category made upof “religious of either sex.”26 From the citations recorded above, the inquisi-tors switch directly to the general topic of the “wickedness of women,” thatis to say, to the last component of the triadic cluster of immoderation ineither virtue or vice.

In this context the brevity of the ecclesiastics’ case is rather baffling.Ecclesiastics are subject to the same temptations and “abominations” aswomen (with whom, not by accident, they are grouped in pt. 1, ques. 6),yet the compilers of the Malleus do not reserve for the ecclesiastics a treat-ment equally exhaustive as the one they devote to women and the katabaticdrives behind females’ propensity for the lowest vices. Nonetheless, thepassage on the clergy does contain quotations acknowledging and deplor-ing a number of serious weaknesses in the moral fiber of the clergy: avarice,abuses of power, greed, selfishness, and even heresy. There are also allusionsto other unspecified sinful traits: those that Saint Augustine is said to decrybefore Vincent the Donatist, against which Saint Gregory inveighs vehe-mently; the two saints find these especially pernicious because the sinnerscan persist in error undisturbed under the secure and honorable cover oftheir order’s reputation. Furthermore, no explanation can be found for themotive or origin of proclivity of the clergy toward extremes of holiness andthe demonic. In contrast with the thorough enumeration of woman’s “nat-ural” deficiencies and debilities, as sources of her likelihood to sink downto the bottom of darkness, the clergy’s sinfulness is left obscure as to its


provenance and its specific manifestations. In sum, the Malleus is unusual-ly and selectively silent on points that one would expect to find meticu-lously developed in a treatise. If nature makes women immoderate crea-tures, the text leaves the reader wondering what makes ecclesiastical malestheir equals in excess.

This lacuna in the Malleus gives rise to the suspicion that ecclesiasticswere included in the German inquisitors’ treatise in reference to “the cleri-cal underworld,” as Richard Kieckhefer has called it, and particularly to thephenomenon of necromancy, which clerics practiced while conceiving it asa holy art. Indeed, there was at the time a growing interest on the part ofsome clerics in forms of magic often viewed as demonic by church author-ities. After all, from the time of Pope Honorius III (1216–1227) to that ofPaul III (1534–1549), many famous and not-so-famous preachers and parishpriests everywhere in Europe were suspected and accused of witchcraft andburnt at the stake.27 However, in the case of Kramer and Sprenger’s treatise,this connection is not convincing. Indeed, if this form of dangerous deal-ings with malign spirits was on the mind of the authors of the Malleus, theywould have included pertinent clarifications and unmasked the kind of peo-ple they suspected responsible.

Unquestionably, the Malleus proves to be not only an analysis of the phe-nomenon of witchcraft, in its various forms and manifestations, but, firstand foremost, a denunciation of spiritual corruption and a guide for detect-ing the culprits and preventing a pernicious spread of diabolism and heresy.In other words, it is intended as a manual for reformative undertakings, andas such it harshly condemns the deviousness of ecclesiastics (see the cata-logue of clerical sins in pt. 1, ques. 6). However, we can plausibly assumethat the authors of the Malleus were not primarily concerned with necro-mancers as such. Necromancers were commanders of demons and had theability to control them, rather than being dominated or penetrated by them(as were women); “demons imposed their reality on humans . . . by pene-trating human beings sexually” (emphasis in original). For this reason womenand carnal copulation were necessary elements in Kramer’s witchcraft theory,as Walter Stephens has observed. Necromancers, on the other hand, werethose capable of “penetrating” the demonic sphere.28 Stephens’s fascinatingargument does not tackle the specific issue in question 6, the object of thisstudy, and therefore it does not address a different kind of demonic “pene-tration” that may elucidate the ecclesiastics’ propensity to plunge to the “low-est depths of vice.”


To learn more about this topic, we must turn to question 7 of theMalleus, which is divided into three parts (“Whether Witches Can Sway theMind of Men to Love and Hatred,” “The Method of Preaching to thePeople about Infatuate Love,” and “Resolutions of the Arguments”) andcontemplates “how the devil can affect the inner powers of the mind, thatis the emotions.” Question 7 deals with direct and indirect diabolical influ-ences that can be exercised with or without the help of a witch. Such insti-gation, called “interior temptation,” can be occasioned “by persuasion or bydisposition.” Therefore, Kramer and Sprenger engage in an argument thatsituates these kinds of demonic instigation on a different theoretical plane,in contradistinction to their Dominican predecessor Johannes Nider, whodealt with the question of diabolical temptation, particularly “interiortemptation,” by rehashing Thomistic tenets on the subject (De Malo 3.4;esp. 16.10–12) and viewing diabolical temptation as a sort of diabolical pos-session.

Question 7 is detailed and rich in its scientific explanation of the relationbetween the senses and the mind, specifically, the process of cognition:nothing can be known except through phantasms, which are abstractions ofthe sensible objects perceived by the outer senses (our five external senses)and processed by the internal senses (common sense, fancy or imagination,thought, and memory). The imaginative power is located in the middle partof the brain and is the “treasury of ideas received through the senses”; fromhere ideas are transmitted to the posterior ventricle of the brain, wherememory is (the “treasury of instincts, which are not received through thesenses”), and finally, from memory, phantasms move to the front, to thesense of reason. (1971, 50)29

With the authority of Aristotle and Avicenna, the inquisitors then dis-cuss temptation and demonic intervention, establishing a scientific theoryin which—as Beecher and Ciavolella observed—malign spirits are present-ed “as part of the natural world, because they function through matter andnatural causation” (1971, 87):

God alone is able to enter into the soul. . . . The devil is said to enter thebody when he effects something about the body: for where he works, therehe is, as Saint John Damascene says. And then he works within the boundsof corporeal matter, but not within the very essence of the body [i.e., thesoul] . . . when devils enter the body, they enter the powers belonging tothe bodily organs and can so create impressions on those powers. And so it


happens that through such operations and impressions a phantasm is pro-jected before the understanding, such as the seeing of colors, as it is said inthe third book, De anima. And so this impression penetrates also to thewill. For the will takes its conception of what is good from the intellect,according as the intellect accepts something as good either in truth or inappearance . . . although to enter the soul belongs only to God, yet it is pos-sible for a good or bad angel to enter the body and the faculties allied tothe body. . . . The physical powers can be altered by the devil, in so far asthey can be hastened or retarded in the flesh and bone. But he does this,not for the sake of impeding or stimulating the inner or outer perceptions,but for his own gain; since he derives his chief benefit by the deception ofthe senses and the delusion of the intellect. (1971, 53-54)30

In explaining how the devil can directly incite to “inordinate love” orhatred (the subject of question 7, and again in pt. 2, ques. 2, chap. 3—whereremedies are also prescribed for those inflamed with inordinate love—“philocaption,”—or extraordinary hatred), demonologists such as Kramerand Sprenger “demonized” medicine because “they introduced the categoryof the interference of the devil, while adopting the rational analysis ofancient and medieval medicine and the analytical vocabulary of the physi-cians.” As Beecher and Ciavolella (1990) keenly observe:

The devil deceives the victim, falsifies the species in the memory, and luresthe person into sin. So defined, the involvement of the devil becomes onewith the natural sequence of deranged perception, even though he is, him-self, the cause of this deviancy—natural in the same sense that it is naturalfor apparitions to appear during sleep. (chap. 4, esp. 86-87)31

Question 7, like part 2’s question 2, specifies that the lack of corporealityenables devils to stir up and excite the inner perceptions and humors so thatideas retained in the repositories of a person’s mind are drawn out and madeapparent to the faculties of fancy and imagination; therefore, susceptible indi-viduals imagine these things to be true (Kramer and Springer 1971, 50; 1991,48a–c). More relevant, however, is another way that the devil is said to act inmatters of internal temptation: “devils search out the longings to which menare most subject, and the chief of these is erotic passion. . . . The devil invis-ibly lures a man to sin not only by means of persuasion, as it has been said,but also by means of disposition” (1971, 51; 1991, 48d–49a,b).


Addressing the same issues in pt. 2, ques. 2, chap. 3, the compilers of theMalleus once again follow Nider’s Formicarius in presenting an etiology ofconcupiscence that can be conducive to excessive states (V, 5; Nider 1971,210-11). They list three causes of inordinate love: “a lack of control over theeyes,” “the temptations of the devil,” and “the spells of necromancers andwitches with the help of devils” (Kramer and Sprenger 1971, 170; 1991,164a). The first is well known thanks to stilnovistic poetry. The second case,of lust caused by means of disposition—a topic already discussed in ques-tion 7: “Lust can arise apart from witchcraft, and simply through thetemptation of the devil”—is declared by the authors to be less than perti-nent to the subject of their book: indeed, their endeavor is to fight witch-craft, so they deal with it swiftly.

While most of their attention is directed to the first and third causes,Kramer and Sprenger succinctly illustrate the second, exemplifying itthrough the biblical story (2 Sam. 8) of Ammon, who grew ill for love of hisown sister Tamar. Ammon’s yearning—the inquisitors had explainedalready in question 7—was the result of a corruption caused by the devil’stemptation. In similar ways the devil tried to tempt the Holy Fathers andSaint Paul (2 Cor. 7)—we read as a corollary to the biblical story—and itwas unbelievably hard for all of them to overcome this lust. The story ofAmmon’s crime with his sister is depicted as a diabolic case of lust and islater reiterated in the second part of the Malleus, where advice is given onremedies for philocaption caused by the devil (Avicenna’s seven remedies,suggested by Nider as well), without the aid of witchcraft.

Jean Céard, who has analyzed those passages of the Malleus that dealwith the etiology of inordinate love (i.e., pt. 1, ques. 7; pt. 2, ques. 2, chap.3), has stated that Kramer and Sprenger, and demonologists in general,dealt with the issue of the devil’s action in those with a bodily dispositionfavorable to concupiscence (making them more prone to consent, as in thestory of Ammon and Tamar) as a moral disease. Céard also shows that somephysicians attributed excessive infatuation strictly to natural causes, whilestill other physicians acknowledged the demon’s role in such disorders butnevertheless believed this devilry worked “after the manner of a naturalagent” (Céard 1992, 33–47).

In matters such as carnal desire, which implies a change of complexion,there was wide consensus among physicians: because philocaption was analtered physical state, the devil’s intervention was irrelevant. Therefore, itwas treated by physicians through action on the immediate cause while


demonologists would deal with the evil forces that might have beeninvolved.

THE CLERIC’S BODY: CHASTITY AND ANGELS’ AGENCY

Since ascribing all of one’s sinful thoughts or feelings to the devilmeant erasing the integrity and freedom of the human mind and will, theabove-mentioned demonological theories, first and foremost that ofAquinas, had limited and restricted the harmful capacity of demonic forcesby affirming that the devil was not given access to the spiritual faculties ofmen. Demons cannot infuse thoughts in human minds, nor can they actupon the will; but through a mode of operation called interior tempta-tion (by physical action only), they can influence the intellect and thewill. The authors of the Malleus, as did Nider before them, embrace thesepositions.

Kramer and Sprenger also elaborate at length on the problem of ascer-taining the provenance of the dangerous lustful temptations. They areextremely familiar with the scientific literature on sexual matters and knowthat passions such as lust are part of our animal nature. In other words theinquisitors explicitly recognize that lust is a “natural desire . . . aroused evenin babes and sucklings” (1971, 93; 1991, 90b) and quote Origen:

Even if the devil were not, men would still lust after food and venery andsuch things. And from these inordinate lusts much may result, unless suchappetites be reasonably restrained. (1971, 49; 1991, 47a)

However, distinctions must be made in matters of diabolical temptationsleading to one precise effect: the devil here acts directly. Indirectly, all sinshave their origin in the devil, because he incited the first man to sin and,from that sin, the whole human race inherited a proneness to err (“a dispo-sition to some effect”). Nonetheless, while the devil is the origin ofhumankind’s limitedness and fallibility, not all sins are committed at hisinstigation, because “some are of our own choosing.” Therefore, allhumankind is naturally always disposed to err—particularly with the sexu-al act.32 Furthermore, the specific disposition of certain persons, especiallyat certain stages of their lives, makes them easier prey for the devil who—the inquisitors explain—knows their inner thoughts and can, therefore, actdirectly on their emotions. According to the Malleus, demonic intervention


is more complex than temptation. The devil’s mode of operation is markedby preconditions: a sinful state deriving from lust must open the way to anever-growing deviancy from and desertion of grace, which will enable thediabolical force to take full possession. In other words, a person is firstdenuded of divine grace; only afterward can the devil take over and causethe affliction (the sin of incontinence).33

If here we learn of the power of the devil and the process of diabolicalinstigation by way of disposition, elsewhere in the text (pt. 2, ques. 1) wealso read of his impotence. In this section of the Malleus, titled “Of ThoseAgainst Whom the Power of Witches Availeth Not at All,” we becomeacquainted with three classes of men blessed by God, who cannot be affect-ed by witches or devils. The devil has no power over witch prosecutors,exorcists, and “those who, in various and infinite ways, are blessed by theholy angels.” This last class, enjoying special divine grace, are—in the exam-ple related by the inquisitors—all clerics who have labored to achieve chasti-ty. A narration of the series of just and holy men “troubled by the provoca-tion of the flesh,” but finally and definitely freed from it, thanks to theagency of a good angel, is presented here in detail (Kramer and Sprenger1971, 93–94; 1991, 89c–91a).34

The experiences of Abbot Saint Serenus (as recorded by Cassian), theblessed Abbot Equitius (as told by Saint Gregory), the monk Helias (as nar-rated by Saint Heraclides), and Saint Thomas Aquinas (as reported inNider’s Formicarius) are all stories of fiery “genital instincts” successfullyextinguished. Their struggle over sexual temptations was arduous, requiringprayers, vigils, and fasting. Their victory was possible only with the decisiveintervention of an angel of the Lord. And the remedy to their affliction hadirreversible effects: they all obtained perpetual purity of their body. Thoseholy and just men of the church were made eunuchs,35 with the sole excep-tion of Saint Thomas, who was able to drive out the fire of lust once andfor all because two angels girded him with the girdle of chastity that couldnot “be loosed by any other such temptation.”

The stories of these ecclesiastics are of double importance for, on the onehand, they provide further insights into the scholarly debates of the timeconcerning medicine and demonology as causes of concupiscence, and onthe other, they shed light for us on the puzzling passage concerning clericalimmoderation. Only through emasculation could the abbots, the monk,and the illustrious Dominican friar overcome enticement. Despite all theirpiety, religious zeal, fervent prayers, and fasting, castration or wearing a


chastity belt was necessary for them to forestall diabolic manipulations andprevail over their instincts.

It is important to observe as well that supernatural intervention wasinvolved in the definitive deliverance from unremitting sexual urges. Thefact that emasculation is consistently presented as taking place only invisions or dreams, but not in actuality, is irrelevant here: it felt and lookedreal to the possessors of the maimed genitals. Of Serenus it was written that“the chastity he felt in his heart should be visibly conferred upon his body,”Equitius saw that “all feeling was taken away from his genital organs,” andHelias felt that “he was entirely delivered.” Even the girdle of chastity thatfastened Saint Thomas was, to him, as real and mutilating as the castrationsof the other three: Thomas “felt himself girded, and was aware of the touchof the girdle.”36 As a conclusive remark to the section devoted to the witchprosecutors, exorcists, and holy men made eunuchs, Kramer and Sprengerstate that only these three classes of men are secure from diabolical action.

The agency of the angels is crucial not only in these instances, but in thegeneral belief that the inquisitors express about both the instigation to con-cupiscence and its extinction in humankind. Man—as Dionysius theAreopagite wrote and Kramer and Sprenger repeat—has three properties:will, understanding, and inner and outer powers belonging to the bodilymembers and organs. Only God can influence the will; understanding canbe influenced by a good angel who provides a clearer knowledge of the trueand the good (enlightening), and a good angel can also endow a man withgood qualities in his inner and outer powers.

The inquisitors believe, however, that just as a good angel can influencerightfully, a bad angel can—with God’s permission—influence a man per-versely in both his understanding and his inner and outer perceptions and—as we read—can do this by means of persuasion or disposition. “Corporealmatter,” the inquisitors explain, following Aristotle’s Metaphysics, “naturallyobeys a good or a bad angel as to local motion” (1971, 49; 1991, 47d).Elsewhere they claim that “Men deprived of the guardianship of angels of theLord are those who are either in mortal sin always or practice those impuri-ties with too lustful a zest” (1971, 93; 1991, 89d–90a). Before being assisted bygood angels, the abbots, the monk, and Saint Thomas were experiencing thetorments of carnal temptation, which means that they were in a state of lust-ful disposition of the body. However, their understanding had not been dark-ened, because their intellect had not given in to the deceptive persuasion ofthe devil. “Nothing is loved until it is known” (1971, 52; 1991, 50a); therefore,


the will—over which the devil has no power—was not misled to love whatthe enlightened intellects of the four holy men knew to be evil and, conse-quently, vehemently rejected. Their defense against diabolical instigation ofthe flesh was all the stronger as their intellect was further enlightened.37

Experiencing bodily impulses but restraining themselves and actuallyturning them into an occasion for further spiritual devotion, the fourexemplary men preserved God’s grace and the angelic protection. Their casewould be what the inquisitors had called “temptation of the flesh,” a venialsin, inescapable because of being all too human, which they overcamebecause—again as the inquisitors had specified when they included theecclesiastics in the group with immoderate proclivities—they manage toremain “governed by a good spirit,” an angel of God.

In all four cases—which were meant to exemplify an entire class of menvowed to chastity—we should notice that, while still struggling for com-plete and total purity, they achieved peaks of virtue by intensifying theirprayers and fasting, engaging in holy practices, and withdrawing from theworld. Yet they kept imploring God for relief and, when a response was sentto them from above, it took the form of a drastic, final, and irrevocablemeasure through which the source of a potentially diabolical temptationwas eliminated. Divine help did not come to bring further spiritualstrengthening, nor did any angelomachia take place, as in those battles ofgood and bad powers over the possession of a soul that we encounter inmedieval texts and paintings. The supernatural agency has instead a med-ical role; “angelic surgeons” indeed effected physiological changes.

These stories illustrate an important intersection between those scientifictheories that attributed carnal desire strictly to physiological causes anddemonological views on bodily disposition. The “emendation” of a faultybodily complexion (altered by self-imposed chastity in accordance with thevoluntary submission to the monastic rule)—whether by more or less extrememeasures, depending on the gravity of the case and the spiritual aspirations ofthe person—is needed in order to foil the devil’s plans. Such emendation con-sisted in cutting the channels of the demonic darkening action over theunderstanding and, consequently, the deliberative faculty of the person. Themen of these examples possess unshakable faith and acute discernment. Thenarrations of their fleshly troubles present them as firm in their religious com-mitment and exemplary in their devotion. However, they all feel that fastingand incessant, ardent prayer are not enough for their absolute ideal of ulti-mate and complete purity—i.e., the immoderate pole of sanctity. The


absolute purity desired by the four religious men was an ideal of total self-denial, that is to say, an extreme challenge to the animal nature of man.

According to Renaissance science—with its teleological view of the body,whose parts and functions had a purpose and an end—sexual appetite wassimply the result of a healthy completed digestion of food. The widelyshared Galenic view of the production of semen and subsequent sexualarousal established that the food was turned into blood, a portion of whichwas concocted as semen in the liver, while the testes contributed to its finalrefinement (Galen 1968, 2: 635–42; 1976, 196–97). Stored in the testicles, thesperm would accumulate up to a point when a natural expulsion was need-ed. Erotic appetite signaled this urge. The laws of repletion and excretionregulated this bodily process. By contravening these laws—as in the case ofa prolonged permanence of seed in the testes—overwhelming venerealdesire would arise as the result of an overabundance, which inevitablyaffected the normal balance of bodily humors. Therefore, male sexual driveswere—even in the opinion of the stern Huguccio mentioned at the open-ing—a “natural sensual appetite,” the source of which was located in thetesticles.38 Rufinus and the Glossa Ordinaria to the Decretum confirm thisscientific tenet while qualifying male sexual urgings as diabolical in origin.39

From antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, super-fluity of seed was considered among the major—if not the major—factordetermining a complexio venerea. Love can be baneful if occasioned by the“dispositions of the body inclining toward such a desire [concupiscentia]because of some compulsion of necessity, such as . . . a venereal complex-ion or moistness and tickling in the organs of generation” (Arnald ofVillanova 1585, 272, quoted in Beecher and Ciavolella 1990, 75).40 Awarenessof the scientific processes of the production and nature of male semen andits consequences was already widespread in the philosophical, medical, andreligious circles of the Middle Ages; the treatise of the monk Constantinethe African, On Coitus, and Albertus Magnus’s De Animalibus can be citedfor further corroboration.41 Hence, people bound to chastity, as ecclesiasticswere, had to cope with a physiological reality that was known to be con-stantly insidious. Of the medical remedies usually recommended, somewere not applicable to the clergy (therapeutic coitus, for example); others(such as bloodletting, rigorous fasting, vigorous physical exercise) could notfully and permanently eliminate erotic desire.

The theory of internal temptation, where diabolical intervention isdirect and invasive to the point of becoming one with the inner fabric and


functions of the body, certainly provided demonologists such as Nider,Kramer, and Sprenger with the most solid and concrete argument fordemonic immanence and beguiling power. The devil could wander in anyspace and intrude into vulnerable human bodies, disrupting their internalperceptions, balance of humors, and emotions. Distinguishing betweennatural disturbances and diabolical interferences became a problematictask, while the impact of demonic agency extended in subtle, secret, andyet natural manners beyond the material part of the human composite.

Widespread belief in covert demonic attacks, such as those presented inthe Malleus, is an expression of the increasing fears of a sinister demonicpresence that marked the Renaissance (especially in Germany where theMalleus was produced). It was a symptom of the anxiety typical of transi-tional times and the result of Reformist concerns, mostly on the part of thelearned classes and the clerical elite.

Nider’s Formicarius, which the compilers of the Malleus held as a modelin a variety of places, set in motion an ever-increasing fear of the devil; how-ever, since it was mainly an expression of reformative intents, theFormicarius mostly focused on religious failings, sin and corruption, and onways to carry out a spiritual and moral renewal of the clergy during the firsthalf of the fifteenth century. Thus, Nider’s moralizing dialogue,Formicarius, is a collection of wonders, visions, revelations, and exempla par-ticularly concerned with the issue of demonic deception. However, I wouldargue, it does so in a way that vastly resembles the tradition according towhich evil spirits are especially determined to attack those committed to amore elevated spiritual life (since the devil’s main goal is to destroy God’simage within humanity). Therefore ecclesiastics in general, and monks andhermits in particular, were the target of an army of evil spirits that attackedin wiliest forms and during the most vulnerable states of mind and times ofthe day, like the old logismoi and noonday demons.42 Nider’s perspectivehad its roots in the treatises of the third and fourth centuries, a period inwhich the power of the devil seemed to grow in proportion to the increas-ing insecurity and instability of life in a crumbling Roman Empire.43 In thefervor of his reformative enterprise—which was meant first and foremost tobenefit preaching—Nider collected a series of stories in which good and evilangels appear for edifying purposes. But the good angels (such as those thatdelivered Serenus, Equitius, Helias, and Thomas, whose stories appear inthe Formicarius as well) have in Nider’s dialogue (bk. 5, 6) the primary roleof illustrating the enlightening angelic role over the human intellect, the


benefits such celestial ministers can bring to us on earth, and the ways inwhich they can counter the opposing force of the devil. The bad angels, onthe other hand, appear as protagonists in tales of snares, tricks, torments,and outright assaults aimed primarily at the just. Legions of cacodaemoneswere believed to target persistently those who, on earth, were most chal-lengingly pursuing things celestial.

The Formicarius and the Malleus present remarkable commonalities.Both are fifteenth-century texts written by Dominican friars engaged inreflections on the question of evil and its role and modus operandi on earth(Chène 1999, esp. Introduction and p. 116; Céard 1992, 34–38; Hansen 1901,89; Hildsheim 1963; Bailey 2003, 3, 30, 48–49, 110).44 However, unlike theFormicarius, the Malleus developed the demonological theories, scientificbeliefs, and misogynism already present in inherited scholastic and otherearlier speculations. The insidious devilry lurking in the passages we haveconsidered seems to anticipate the Lutheran experience of being inwardly“assaulted” by the devil (Anfechtung), a fear that made the covenant with thedevil unnecessary because indulgence in vice would automatically bind tothe devil. The blending of “scientific” and demonological beliefs, as exem-plified in the case of Renaissance theories of internal temptations, extendedantifemale biases to males. The main target of the inquisitorial processes,catalyzed by the Malleus, remained women, due to their natural psycho-physiological proclivity toward extremes in evil; however, a group of maleswhose self-imposed chastity threatened their otherwise perfectly balancedphysiology—with a “effeminization” that was more invincible than anymedieval logismos or daemonium meridianum—suffered a similar plight.

NOTES

1. I wish to thank John O’Malley, Richard Kieckhefer, Mahlon W. Barnes, and thereferees of Italian Culture for their comments and suggestions. I also wish to informthe reader that all Latin quotations from the original texts were eliminated becauseof space constraints.

2. Most scholars today consider Kramer the primary, if not the sole author of theMalleus. However, I use André Schnyder’s edition (1991–93), which presents bothKramer and Sprenger as its compilers, because I believe that issues of authorshipare negligible here and have no import on the main arguments of my essay. As forthe impact of this manual against witchcraft, one can hardly exaggerate: from itsfirst appearance in 1486–87 until 1669, the Malleus had more than 30 editions andthirty thousand copies produced in various parts of Europe.


3. Hyatte (1994, 137–202) discusses amicizia vera in a way that highlights the origi-nality and the complexity of Alberti’s different sorts of friendship.

4. Following Schnell’s methodological example to focus not on poetic, philosophical,or dogmatic discourses but on a pragmatic one, I have relied primarily on Alberti’sDella famiglia.

5. R. Rinaldi (2002, 15-52) recently published a very insightful essay on these texts,which I was able to consult only after this essay was in production.

6. Barbaro’s De Re Uxoria was composed over two decades before Alberti’s text anddiffers significantly from it (Barbaro 1978, 189–228).

7. The Renaissance produced a small number of writings celebrating marriage. Theyculminate with Erasmus’s Encomium Matrimonii and Institutio ChristianiMatrimonii (O’Malley 1999). Equally if not more celebrated in some humanistworks was, together with marriage, corporeal beauty, as is abundantly documentedin D’Elia (1999).

8. The bibliography on this topic is vast, and in the following footnotes I will indi-cate some of the most thorough studies, but I would like to place in relief the veryconcise, enlightening presentation that C. S. Lewis gave in the opening pages ofThe Allegory of Love (1959).

9. Gratian had also rejected the extreme position that people who married for sexualfulfillment were not truly married (Brundage 1980, 361–85; Bullough 1994a, 1–21).

10. Huguccio’s rigor was not shared by Laurence of Spain, nor by John Teutonicus,whose gloss became part of the Glossa Ordinaria. However, the liberality ofLaurence, Teutonicus, or, later, John Andreae, did not shape the general view of sexduring the Middle Ages and was contrasted even more with the patristic revival ofthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which brought to the fore other authoritativevoices on the subject of sexuality and sinfulness.

11. One of the three benefits of marriage discussed by Saint Augustine in De bono coni-ugali was that marriage prevented fornication, even though in itself marriage wasnot desirable (Glossa Ordinaria to C.31 q.I c.10 ad v. per se. Also C. 32 q.2 c.6 andd.p.c. 5, quoted in Brundage 1980, 364; 381–82).

12. On the sexual nature of original sin, see Pagel (1989, xxiii–xxv, 27–31), andArmstrong (1994, 123–25). Sexuality was associated with the diabolical also becausealmost all the early fathers of the church believed that the angels fell through lustfor the daughters of men before the flood (Kelly 1965, 165–94; 1974, 103–32).

13. For the original Latin text see Kramer and Sprenger 1991, 90a and 161d. Althoughnot always flawless, Summers’s translation of the Malleus has proved to be accuratein most of the passages quoted in this paper. I will indicate the places where I donot follow Summer’s rendition. For the original text I have used the photographicreprint of the editio princeps (1487) published with an introduction and, in a sepa-rate volume, a commentary by André Schnyder (Kramer and Sprenger 1991; 1993).


The 1487 text is also available in a 1992 edition by Günter Jerouschek, who ascribesthe Malleus to Heinrich Kramer only.

14. Good, concise illustrations of Renaissance theories on female psycho-physiologicalinferiority are provided by Berriot-Salvadore (1993, 3: 348–88), Siraisi (1990,78–109), and Cadden (1995, 169–88).

15. Clark strongly disagreed with Klaits’s stress on sexual aspects, criticizing what hesaw as over-reliance on one particular text, namely the Malleus Maleficarum (1977,106–23).

16. I modified Summer’s translation of the final clause, which reads, “I found a womanmore bitter than death, and a good woman subject to carnal lust.”

17. The misogyny so pronounced in the Malleus has been also traced to the SummaTheologica Moralis of Antoninus, the noted archbishop of Florence (Kramer 1971,62n).

18. Michael Bailey’s Battling Demons was published after I submitted this essay. In dis-cussing Johannes Nider’s accounts of female inferiority, he calls attention to a pas-sage from Formicarius (V, 8) that is very similar to the one in Malleus singled outhere. However, Bailey does not link this specific passage to the Malleus (though hedoes stress Kramer’s frequent copying from the Formicarius), nor does he attemptan explanation for the inclusion of males in that misogynistic section of Nider’sbook (Bailey 2003, 49–53).

19. Aliqui doctores indicates a plurality of authoritative figures whose identity is hard todetermine. Even the explanatory sections and glosses of some recent French(Grenoble 1997) and Italian (Venice 1977) editions of the Malleus are silent on thisparticular point. However, Johannes Nider is their most direct source here(Formicarius, V, 8; Nider 1971, 224). Nider’s brief explanation of this statement,which concludes chapter 8 (1971, 225–26), is also echoed the Malleus, which elabo-rates on the subject with a different thrust.

20. Of the various extant editions, I have consulted a 1582 Frankfurt edition that fea-tures the Malleus maleficarum together with the fifth book of the Formicarius.

21. This observation is validated by Bailey’s general conclusion on Nider’s real concernover witchcraft (2003, 110–11).

22. “Women are more impressionable . . . and more carnal than men. . . . Womenalways deceive. . . . When a woman weeps she weaves snares. . . . Women are moreprone to abjure the faith . . .” (Kramer and Sprenger 1971, 44–48; 1991, 41d–46a).There is an endless list of works on the subject, but I will limit my reference to theincisive article by Camerlynck (1983, 13–25).

23. On women, silence, and immodesty, see Barbaro (1978, 204–6). See also King andRobin (2004, 6) and King and Rabil (1992, 16–18) on the anonymous 1438 letteraccusing the humanist Isotta Nogarola of incest and promiscuity (“an eloquentwoman is never chaste”).


24. In Nyder’s Formicarius the passage is on pages 224 and 225. I believe that the men-tion of the tongue in this section of the Malleus and in the Formicarius can also beexplained with a concern—still strong at the time of Nider, and, later, Kramer andSprenger (all three representatives of the Ordo Praedicatorum)—about “verbalabuses,” misuses of language that had caused so much alarm among theologians,canonists, and preachers since the time of Alan of Lille and Peter Cantor. For athorough and comprehensive study of the various forms of the vitio linguae most-ly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (malalocutio, vaniloquium, multiloquium,loquacitas garrulitas, rumorositas, clamores, murmurationes, etc.) see Casagrande andVecchio (1987). Furthermore, Maggi’s Satan’s Rhetoric: A Study of RenaissanceDemonology provides interesting insights into the related question of demonicspeech and linguistic communication between the devil and human beings.

25. Schneider’s commentary does not gloss this passage but only provides indicationsof the exact places in the sources quoted by the inquisitors (cf. p. 127). In this caseas well, the Malleus closely follows Nider’s Formicarius (225).

26. I would leave aside for the moment the category of religious females, whose inclu-sion under the heading “Ecclesiastics” will automatically appear clear once the malecounterpart inclusion will be elucidated. After all, the explanation is quite simple:women—by nature already sexually insatiable, weak as for sexual temptations—would be even more so if their religious vows deprived them of what they so irre-sistibly crave.

27. In his analyses of the “clerical underworld,” Richard Kieckhefer expounds on theunderlying conceptual similarities linking witchcraft and sainthood (1994, 355–85,372–85; 1989, 144–201; 1998). Faggin (1995, 99–110), Cohn (2000, 102–17), Cardini(1995, 271–90), and Walker (1958, 36–144, 189–229) have also addressed this topic.

28. The observation I quote is part of Stephens’s broader argument, according to whichwitchcraft theorists felt compelled to find exhaustive proof of demonic immanenceand corporeality, mostly because of their deep skepticism about the “reality ofChristian metaphysics.” In Stephens’s view, Kramer did not fear feminine powerbut needed it in order to explain that women had voluntary access to demonicpower and that carnal copulation with demons provided a demonstration ofdemonic reality (Stephens 2002, 32–57, esp. 50–55, 322–42; 1998, 495–529).

29. See also pt. 2, ques. 1, chap. 9, p. 125. For a clear, step by step explanation of thecognitive process, see Beecher and Ciavolella (1990, 77–80; 46–48).

30. For the original Latin text, see Kramer and Sprenger 1991, 50d–52b. The authors ofthe Malleus are basing their theory of internal temptation also on the authority ofThomas Aquinas (De Malo, 3.4; 16.10). For an accurate history and explanation ofthe theory of internal temptation, see Kelly (1965, 165–94). The best explanationand history of the internal senses is still to be found in Wolfson 1935.

31. Wack (1992, 7–31, esp. 15–17) and Beecher (1992, 49–65, esp. 50–56) also have inter-esting things to say on this topic.


32. Quoting Saint Anthony, the Malleus reminds us that “the more power God allowsto the devil over the venereal act than over other human acts, because of its natu-ral nastiness, and because, by it, the first sin was handed down to posterity. . . . Thedevil receives power against those who are given to lust” (1971, 168–69; 1991,162d–163a).

33. Ibid.; cf. Formicarius (V, 5; Nider 1971, 211–12). Nider, as did Kramer and Sprengersome 50 years later, echoes a passage from Saint Anthony: “the devil can in no wayenter our mind or body, unless he has first deprived it of all holy thoughts andmade it empty and bare of spiritual contemplation.”

34. The stories that the inquisitors relate here are in a sense “classics” in the history ofasceticism. They provide exemplary models throughout the period of earlyChristianity and after (Rousselle, Porneia, 1988; Caner 1997, 396–415). Caner’s arti-cle shows how self-castration—prompted by a common interpretation of Matthew19:12—continued to be practiced as an expression of faith and continence and by thefourth century had become a conspicuous phenomenon despite various condemna-tions and bans by church authorities and regulations (Bullough 1994b, 14–21).

35. The descriptions are explicit in the cases of Abbot Equitius and the monk Helias. Agreat deal of symbolism also characterizes the case of Abbot Serenus (Kramer andSprenger 1971, 93–94; 1991, 89d–91a). See also Formicarius, V, 6; Nyder 1971, 217–18.

36. Ibid. One should also keep into consideration that Kramer and Sprenger are con-veying what was the official, orthodox position of the early church, which wasagainst extreme “cures” for lust (such as Origen’s alleged self-castration). Voluntarycastration or self-castration had been condemned both by the so-called canons ofthe apostles and the canons of the Council of Nicea, which prohibited the ordina-tion of eunuchs (Brundage 1987, 86–87). It may be useful to call attention again,in this context, to the Malleus’s reference to Origen, who believed that lust was somuch a part of human corporeality that even if the devil did not exist, “men wouldstill lust after food and venery” (1971, 49; 1991, 47a).

37. “By his natural power . . . [the devil] can act upon the intellect but not by means ofenlightenment, but by means of persuasion. For the intellect of man is of that con-dition that, the more it is enlightened, the more it knows the truth, and the more itcan defend himself against deception” (Kramer and Sprenger 1971, 49; 1991, 47c).

38. For this reason, nocturnal emissions were not judged harshly, and, for example,Gerson would allow clergymen to celebrate Mass the morning after such occur-rences. This biological view of male sexuality helps explain the large degree of tol-erance of clerical incontinence (up until the Council of Trent, of course).

39. Rufinus (Summa decretorum to D. 13 c.2; glos. ord. to D. 6 c. 2, D.13 c.2). See alsoBrundage (1980, 378–79).

40. See also Beecher (1992, 56–57). Battista Fregoso, in his L’anteros sive tractatus contraamorem (Milan, 1496), is also unequivocal in this regard (Beecher and Ciavolella1990, 125).


41. “The cause of desiring to have intercourse is heat and a multitude of seed. Sinceheat moves from center to circumference, heat is thus the mover in the emission ofseed. But heat is more abundant in man than in woman, and so is seed. Foralthough in women there is a great quantity of superfluous and undigested fluid,yet that is evacuated through the flow of the menses, which does not occur in men”(Albertus Magnus 1955, vol. 12, bk. 5, ques.4, p. 155; quoted in Cadden 1995, 156).See also Paul Delaney’s translation of Constantinus Africanus’s De Coitu(Constantinus Africanus 1969, 55–65, esp. 58–59).

42. On logismoi and noonday demons, see Russell’s numerous books on the devil in theChristian tradition, especially Russell 1981, 137, 149–85.

43. On this particular period of decline in the Roman Empire and the increasing fearof evil, see Russell (1981, 149–85).

44. I could not consult Werner Tschacher’s 1998 dissertation or book Der Formicariusdes Johannes Nider von 1437/1438.

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