The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum

Christopher S. Mackay is a classicist and historian, and this Cambridge University Press volume is his current scholarly translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, the fifteenth century witch-hunting manual, with a scholarly introduction covering its printing history, the papal bull attached to early editions and the University of Cologne's actual limited approbation of the work. Its strength is that Mackay's introduction corrects popular misconceptions about the text's authority, including the frequently repeated but inaccurate claim that it carried full and unanimous Church endorsement. Its limit is that it is a translation and historical introduction, not a broader history of the witch trials themselves, so a claim about the trials' actual scope and toll across Europe needs a source addressing that wider history rather than this text alone.