In 1486 an ambitious Dominican monk and an inquisitor Heinrich Kramer decided to write an extraordinary manuscript. He wanted to prove in his work the existence oft witchcraft and that the majority of those who were practicing witchcraft were women. Kramer’s document was supposed to serve as some kind of manual for authorities who would hunt witches, find them in local population and “deal” with them accordingly.
As a web analyst I tried to review Kramer’s advertising and marketing “campaign”. The guy was a master crook of his times. Here is what he did.
He spent over a year to complete his project and as a result produced an infamous, opportunistic treatise named “The Hammer of Witches” (in Latin, Malleus Maleficarum). Kramer understood that he was too insignificant for Catholic church, so he decided to add the illustrious name that would give his manuscript credibility. So he added as a co-author the Inquisitor of Germany Jacob Sprenger without the permission of the latter.
After theory comes practice. Thus, equipped with this diabolical manual Kramer tried to unleash a huge anti-witchcraft campaign in his local area but was blocked by authorities. The ambitious Dominican monk added the papal bull on witchcraft as the preface for his book to make it look as the sign of approval from the Pope of Rome. But this did not help him much either.
In search of powerful endorsement Kramer submitted his book to the review of the University of Cologne but failed again. The theologists of the University condemned The Hammer of Witches as unethical and illegal work. This did not prevent Kramer to insert a fake endorsement from the University in his creation.
Undoubted forgeries in the book made Catholic church to ban it completely in the 1490. However, even the Church could not prevent it to become the bestseller of the ignorant masses of the Medieval Europe.
Witch hunters and inquisitors loved The Hammer of Witches and used it as guidance extensively. Up until 1669 it was published almost forty times in multiple editions and was translated in all major European languages.
One of the most interesting forgeries in the medieval times is the so called manuscript Canon Episcopi. This infamous document played a sad role in the birth of inquisition and witch hunts that took place all over Europe. I found about it in the archives of my web analytics company. Canon Episcopi was first mentioned in the beginning of the 10th century by religious scholars who assumed that it was written during the some religious council of Anquira in 314. Needless to say, that such a council never happened. In fact, the manuscript was some kind of Frankish composition. It did not prevent Catholic church from treating Canon Episcopi as a canon law for centuries until the views on European witchcraft began to change dramatically.
So why this manuscript added fire to the later witch craze of medieval Europe? The Frankish author described in it Pagan worship of the Roman goddess Diana. In several paragraphs he was telling the audience that some women became the “instruments of Satan” by fooling other people about their participation in goddess Diana’s wild hunt. In their stories during certain specified nights they would travel on the backs of the animals great distances, serving goddess Diana and obeying her orders. The author concluded, that thanks to these “wicked” women stories, people leave Christian faith and fall into pagan error.
Anonymous author called this worship as superstition and phantasm, but, medieval theologians used it as a link to non-existent witchcraft beliefs of their own times. This allowed Catholic church to create a theological position of witchcraft based on this pre Christian descriptions of pagan beliefs. Religious scholars did have very vivid imagination, so they did their best to reconcile Canon Episcopi with their own views on witchcraft that they considered both real and effective.
One of the most famous forgeries of the Dark Ages was the manuscript called the Donation of Constantine. I found this story while going through some internet research for my local web analytics company. This fake Roman imperial edict was evidently devised in the second part of the 8th century for the Pope of Rome Stephen II.
The Donation of Constantine t was used by Catholic church for centuries as the support for its territorial claims. It believed blindly in the authenticity of the famous manuscript. Only in the second part of the fifteenth century, with the revival of Classical scholarship and textual critique, the Church had begun to realize that the document could not possibly be genuine.
In the forgery Roman emperor Constantine allegedly grants to the Popes of Rome dominion over lands in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa, the city of Rome and the entire Western Roman Empire. The manuscript tells that all these territories are presented a gift of the first Christian emperor to the pope Sylvester. All these named lands were a one gigantic “present” from the grateful emperor to the pope for instructing him in the Christian faith, baptizing him, and even miraculously curing Constantine of leprosy.
Pope Stephen II was a shrewd diplomat. He successfully used the forgery to create the foundation of the Papal States. He crossed into Gaul with this manuscript and presented a copy to the new king of Franks Pepin the Short. Pope managed to gain king’s support against Lombards who occupied former Byzantine territories in Italy and threatened to push the Pope out of Rome. In 756 Pepin and his Frankish army forced the Lombards to surrender their conquests to the pope of Rome. These lands would become the Papal States and would be the basis of the Papacy’s secular power for the next eleven centuries.
