Talk:Malleus Maleficarum/Archive 1

Edited Genesis
I have rewritten a lot of the Genesis part. I include the parts I have removed and my comments on them.

---

However, most modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little if anything to the work besides his illustrious name.

Russell doesn't say this. He says Kramer was the chief author and that Sprenger's role was "minor".

-

In 1484, Kramer had tried to prosecute witchcraft in the bishopric of Trent but was blocked by local ecclesiastical authorities. Kramer requested papal support and attained it via the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, which recognized the existence of witches and gave full papal approval for the Inquisition to prosecute witchcraft.

This is not what Russell says. He talks about both authors requesting a papal bull.

-

However, after local authorities still blocked his attempts, Kramer directed his energies to the composition of the Malleus. He drew on earlier sources like the Johannes Nider's treatise Formicarius, written 1435/37. Kramer used the papal bull as the preface for the Malleus, giving the false impression that Innocent VIII had endorsed the Malleus when in fact the bull had endorsed Kramer as an inquisitor and not his (then unwritten) work.

Kramer and Sprenger submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, hoping for its endorsement. Instead, the faculty condemned it as both unethical and illegal because the demonology it contained was inconsistent with Catholic doctrine.

Nevertheless, Kramer inserted an endorsement from the University into subsequent editions. The Catholic Church eventually banned the book entirely, placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

After reading the preface in whole I see no indication that the bull was placed there for other reasons than showing papal support for the existence of witches, witch trials and for the two authors. This seems to either unsourced or refers to the Jenny Gibbons piece which is itself totally unsourced and includes claims which are not supported by for example Russell and Mackey. I am removing all traces of it. I am removing the reference to the Index of banned books because it seems like a regional Spanish list and not and offical papal one. I have searched in vain for the book on the offical Indexes but found none. I could be wrong so please check this out for me. I haven't found any mention off it in the books I have.

Óli Gneisti (talk) 11:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * According to this it was banned in 1707 which after the main witch craze was over: http://www.beaconforfreedom.org/search/censored_publications/publication.html?id=9700509 Óli Gneisti (talk) 14:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Community ban of the Joan of Arc vandal
This article has been targeted in recent weeks by CC80, a sockpuppet of the Joan of Arc vandal. This and similar articles may be targeted again by other sockpuppets of the same person.

A vandal who has damaged Wikipedia's Catholicism, Christianity, cross-dressing, and homosexuality articles for over two years has been identified and community banned. This person will probably attempt to continue disruption on sockpuppet accounts. Please be alert for suspicious activity. Due to the complexity of this unusual case, the best place to report additional suspicious activity is probably to my user talk page because I was the primary investigating administrator. Durova Charg e! 17:20, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment 2016
Has been known to add inaccurate statements to cited passages, degrade existing footnotes, and fabricate fraudulent citations. Deletes material from talk pages. Has created at least one account to impersonate an established editor. Highly persistent vandal can read sources in French and attempts to mask destructive activity as legitimate editing disputes. [emphasis added] The vandal has switched between registered accounts that conduct lengthy disputes on talk pages, unregistered AOL IPs that conduct disputes through lengthy edit summaries, and quiet socks that specialize in deletion vandalism without comment. [...] the same person has also used the trolling technique of posing as a new user to distract investigation [..] Whoever Editor X actually is, this person has done extensive reading on the subject in both French and English and will likely return to alter Wikipedia's Joan of Arc article again. Although many of these distortions require similar expertise to dispute in detail, this person's consistent failure to observe WP:V makes it possible for a good editor to undo most damage. The most serious concerns are fraudulent citations and subtle POV pushing. All edits that resemble Editor X activity should be scrutinized. [emphasis added by me in 2 places] --Asterixf2 (talk) 16:38, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Updated link to the description of Joan of Arc vandal in WP:Long-term abuse
 * A link to Durova's description of the editor.

Edited Genesis
I have rewritten a lot of the Genesis part. I include the parts I have removed and my comments on them.

---

However, most modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little if anything to the work besides his illustrious name.

Russell doesn't say this. He says Kramer was the chief author and that Sprenger's role was "minor".

-

In 1484, Kramer had tried to prosecute witchcraft in the bishopric of Trent but was blocked by local ecclesiastical authorities. Kramer requested papal support and attained it via the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, which recognized the existence of witches and gave full papal approval for the Inquisition to prosecute witchcraft.

This is not what Russell says. He talks about both authors requesting a papal bull.

-

However, after local authorities still blocked his attempts, Kramer directed his energies to the composition of the Malleus. He drew on earlier sources like the Johannes Nider's treatise Formicarius, written 1435/37. Kramer used the papal bull as the preface for the Malleus, giving the false impression that Innocent VIII had endorsed the Malleus when in fact the bull had endorsed Kramer as an inquisitor and not his (then unwritten) work.

Kramer and Sprenger submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, hoping for its endorsement. Instead, the faculty condemned it as both unethical and illegal because the demonology it contained was inconsistent with Catholic doctrine.

Nevertheless, Kramer inserted an endorsement from the University into subsequent editions. The Catholic Church eventually banned the book entirely, placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

After reading the preface in whole I see no indication that the bull was placed there for other reasons than showing papal support for the existence of witches, witch trials and for the two authors. This seems to either unsourced or refers to the Jenny Gibbons piece which is itself totally unsourced and includes claims which are not supported by for example Russell and Mackey. I am removing all traces of it. I am removing the reference to the Index of banned books because it seems like a regional Spanish list and not and offical papal one. I have searched in vain for the book on the offical Indexes but found none. I could be wrong so please check this out for me. I haven't found any mention off it in the books I have.

Óli Gneisti (talk) 11:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * According to this it was banned in 1707 which after the main witch craze was over: http://www.beaconforfreedom.org/search/censored_publications/publication.html?id=9700509 Óli Gneisti (talk) 14:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Confirmation (reply 2016)
1. Thank you for your useful comments. You are correct that there is a lot of plausible misinformation. 2. As far as I know, the book has been never banned. To the contrary, it was well received by demonologists. In particular, it is not enlisted on "Index Librorum Prohibitorum, Anno 1946" from The Vatican City State. --Asterixf2 (talk) 12:58, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Jacob Sprenger's role
The article on demonology says that the Malleus maleficarum was "once thought" to have been co-written by Jacob Sprenger. Can some expert clarify this inconsistency between the two articles?

65.96.178.162 22:16, 12 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The book wasn't co-written by Jacob Sprenger. Jacob Sprenger was just added as auther to make the work look more trustworthy.
 * --80.62.126.100 17:51, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree on the fact that the Malleus Maleficarum was not supported by the church or the inquisition.

I also disagree. I would like to see some references to this. - Scythe000 (kenmay@kenmay.net) Scythe000 05:54, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

latin
anyone know if the latin is available somewhere online?

Not sure if this is the right way to answer your question, but yes, there is. Here's the link: http://historical.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/witch/docviewer?did=060 Snelle Fjöll 18:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

There's a new edition that is supposed to be coming out in early 2007, translated by Christopher W. MacKay. It's in two volumes: the first is Latin with glosses, and the second is supposed to be an all-new English translation. Summers was very partisan and his translation is generally seen as suspect. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.241.134.56 (talk • contribs) 02:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Included texts
I have added this note based on the book by W.E.H.Leckey and it was deleted by user 205.188.117.67: "The book includes texts by a lot of theologians of the 14th and 15th century, e.g. Johannes Nider, Bernard Basin, Ulrich Molitor, Jean Gerson, Thomas Murner, Bartolomeo Spina, Johannes Laurentius, Bernardus Comensis, Paulus Grillandus and others." Do you consider that incorrect or irrelevant? User: Aloysius

no, I consider it relevant. Put it back. It is information that contributes to the background of the book.

Length
I feel that this article needs to be broken down into smaller sections, as the text is rather long and overwhelming. The archbisquick 21:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Not supported by the catholic church?
Is there any confirmation of the claims that the church approval was forged? This view seems to come from the essay by "jenny gibbons." That reference also says she is an historian, yet there is no mention of credentials, and it is "the accepted view among scholars," although the site it links to is a commercial non-academic site, with no references for its claims. I suggest that it be removed, or edited until better confirmation.

It seems that the Papal bull was from 1484. Hans Peter Broedel states in his recent work The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft that the Malleus was mostly written by Institoris (Kramer) in reaction to an incident that took place in October 1485; if his assertion is accurate, then the Pope could not have known the content of the Malleus before writing the bull. In any case, the earliest publication date I've seen for the Malleus was two years after the bull. So it's unlikely that it was written as justification for the content of the Malleus.

The article states that it specifically gives inquisitional powers to Kramer and Sprenger. However, their names are not mentionned in the papal bull. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.65.153.52 (talk) 09:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * your last sentence is false (verified in primary source) --Asterixf2 (talk) 19:23, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Removed Sentence
I have re-removed the following "sentence", the deletion (not by me) of which was erroneously identified as vandalism:


 * However was suppoted for the catholic church comdemed all those who were not priest as followers of the devil.

I have removed it because it is very bad English indeed (two misspellings, incorrect capitalization, poor grammar and syntax); I cannot even make enough sense of it to reword it. Presumably, it was previously removed for the same reason. -- EmmetCaulfield 19:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Link added
http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/ added to links, since there was no link to an English translation.Hodgson 19:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

POV
Incredible! Well, seems like something bad happened... This article is a myth. Based on an essay with no sources of its revolutionary claims There are hundreds of articles based on this one already on the web. This article should be DELETED!--Hapala 23:22, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The website from which all the incredible information are.... My links declare opposite facts compared to those in the article...--Hapala 00:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * This source is also related to Jenny Gibbons . --Asterixf2 (talk) 07:02, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Jacob Sprenger

 * The entry dedicated to Sprenger denies his participation in the authorship of the Malleus. We must be consistent. 201.51.221.78 22:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

What sources used in each?--195.7.55.146 15:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

There is a lot of scholarly dispute about Sprenger's authorship. It is pretty clear that it was written in one style and voice (though that could be a matter of translation), and it seems to fixate on a lot of the sexual overtones that Institoris (Kramer) has been known for. See also Hans Peter Broedel's recent work, The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft.


 * sexual aspect is tracable to aquinas treatment of witchcraft --Asterixf2 (talk) 19:24, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

James Sprenger (reply 2016)

 * "James Sprenger" is the same person as "Jacob Sprenger". For example, please note the name of book by Montague Summers: The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger.
 * Interestingly, name James which was primary name for article James Sprenger was removed completely from the article about this person. James and Jacob are translations of each other. --Asterixf2 (talk) 13:17, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Sources?
This article seems to be in desperate need of some citations, as I'm finding it very hard to assess the veracity of its content. The "historian" link goes to a very short essay in which no credentials are given for the author, and no further sources are cited.

Addendum: credentials are cited, though not very accessibly. The author of the piece has a Master's degree in the field. Still, no sources are given in that particular piece, so something more scholarly may inspire more confidence in the assertion that what she presents is the "accepted view among scholars". (This is not my field, I don't even know if there is a single "accepted view among scholars" - but if there is, it should be possible to document it properly.)

Second addendum: these claims have been challenged before, and readded on the basis that the author of the piece is not a Catholic, and the unsupported claim that hers is the mainstream academic view. Since this article contains seemingly controversial information that is obviously not sufficiently sourced, I believe it should be tagged as needing improvement; I'd be grateful if someone who knows an appropriate tag for this(and agrees) could add it to the article.

Hopefully, someone knowledgeable in the field can resolve this by citing some trustworthy academic sources - I'd very much like to know what actually is the accepted view here. 80.202.98.194 02:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

This is very good that you have pointed it out. Those sources were challenged in RS noticeboard and failed to get consensus for reliability. --Asterixf2 (talk) 06:56, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Pop Culture/trivia
The "MM" figures in some of the work of H.P. Lovecraft and is mentioned at least once in Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series.

Basesurge 10:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Which Witch
I find the inclusion of this bit of information a bit tasteless. The article is a very serious one about an appalling book which caused the death of literally thousands of women and enshrined institutional misogyny in Western theocracy for generations to come. Including a precis of a rather facile musical seems a little crass. ThePeg 16:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Pop culture / trivia sections are both pernicious and not a place to go looking for good editorial judgement. You could just be bold and remove it.  Jkelly

I too found inappropriate the inclusion of pop culture/trivia so i decided to go ahead and be bold and delete. Wichienmaat 08:09, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a shame that this was removed. A friend of mine came looking for this connection here, and told me he couldn't find it, so I decided to take a look myself, certain I had found the information here myself long ago. The subject interests me, so I was hoping to find other references to Mallerus in contemporary culture and art. GenderLine
 * I agree that it is useful to provide this kind of information. I may check it some time later. --Asterixf2 (talk) 07:04, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Legal validity
However it does become somewhat valid if the word witch is replaced with "communist" or "terrorist".

This section seems vague and it is unclear to me why this was added. It seems to be a polemic comment, rather than a genuine contribution to the article, as the "Malleus Maleficarum" surely has no legal validity today. The link between the book an "red-baiting" witchhunts or anti-terrorism does not hold. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shadowhunter98 (talk • contribs) 14:47, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I was rather surprised when I read that section. Since it wasn't really ever a legal document in the first place (as I understand it), I don't see how this could even be a relevant section. While there are certainly parallels between witch hunts and red scares and anti-terrorism (and the Cultural Revolution, and Stalinist purges, and Germany under the third reich, etc.), this article hardly seems the place for such arguments. I've decided to be bold and delete it. Blurble 02:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The section was unsourced, original research, and crystal-ball gazing. --Jtir 12:37, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * What I meant was that if a modern version were ever printed, "terrorist" could easily replace "witch" and still make some sense. I know it wasn't a legal document and more of a how-to/guidebook, but I couldn't think of what else to name the section. "Why this book makes sense in a modern context" sounds more like the title of a term paper. --Guthrie 16:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * WP policy says we can't do original research, so we have to find a verifiable source that makes your point. As to your hypothetical term paper:
 * British playwright Caryl Churchill's 1976 play Vinegar Tom quotes from the Malleus and has characters named Sprenger and Kramer. (The WP article on Vinegar Tom needs to be expanded to make this clear.)


 * --Jtir 17:32, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * This is very interesting. I think it should be included in the article with other references to Malleus. --Asterixf2 (talk) 07:07, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

"The" Malleus Maleficarum?
Doesn't the Latin phrase "Malleus Maleficarum" already have a "the" integrated? So saying "the" Malleus Maleficarum is surely redudant EamonnPKeane 18:32, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing this out. Translator Montague Summers consistently uses "the Malleus Maleficarum" (or simply "the Malleus") in his 1928 and 1948 introductions. I have added a note.  --Jtir 17:15, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

It's 'The'... that is to say, the particular object is a book, either 'The' book, or 'The' Malleus Maleficarum. You could drop the 'The' if indeed you wrote or spoke in latin, not simply used latin as the pronoun. Editorcomm (talk) 06:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Gutenberg and "original sin"
I'm sorry, but this bit is polemical nonsense and should be removed: "swift propagation of the witch hysteria by the press was the first evidence that Gutenberg had not liberated man from original sin"  Heavily ironic POV is not approprate to an encyclopedia. Non-Christians do not recognise "original sin" anyway, and so far as I know, Gutenberg did not have its abolition as an aim? If one believes that all religious belief is a form of irrationality, then the first hysteria spread by the printing press was not "Malleus Maleficarum", but the new relgious fanaticism caused by the printing of venacular bibles. After all, one could argue that printing caused the Reformation, and that effectively caused a terrible European civil war. I am grateful for our present freedoms, but our ancestors paid an awful price for them. Think about it :) Sasha 08:58, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The article cites Russell, p. 234, for this passage, Russell is a verifiable source, and he appears to be a reliable source. Fact checking appears to be needed. The books is online here. --Jtir 18:57, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
 * After fact checking Russell, I made this edit. The article now very clearly states that these are Russell's words, not the words of the WP editors. Even so, I'm not sure that the passage really helps the article — irony taken out of context is highly likely to be misinterpreted. --Jtir 19:24, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

discuss the English translations in the article?
There might be enough material to discuss the English translations in the article. Both of these sources are listed in the References. (I don't have access to them.) A reviewer of Mackay's edition at amazon.com describes the Summers edition as "woefully inaccurate". This review can't be used as a source, but it does suggest that there might be a reliable source saying the same thing. --Jtir 21:48, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hamilton, Alastair (May 2007)
 * Mackay, Christopher S. (2006)


 * Speaking of translations, the figure caption "the hammer of witches [smashing...] with a mighty spear" seems surprising. I did a quick search and found a somewhat similar biblical quote, Jer 23:29, "numquid non verba mea sunt quasi ignis ait Dominus et quasi malleus conterens petram", which is translated (KJV) to "Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?"  I assume that conterens must mean something like "break in pieces" - there's definitely no "spear" in that translation. Mike Serfas 20:58, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for "pointing" this out. I have tagged the translation with fact. A cursory check of Summers didn't reveal a translation. Maybe Mackay? A search of Summers for "conterens" finds his translation in  this note to his his 1928 intro. --Jtir 21:31, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * "framea" can be translated as "a spear, javelin, used by the ancient Germans" or, in later Latin, as "a sword".
 * "conterens" is an inflected form of "contero", which means "to grind, bruise, pound, wear out".
 * --Jtir 11:54, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Weasel Word?
What does it mean to be "arguably" one of the most famous texts? Call it the most famous. Say it is among the most famous. But telling me, the reader, that it is "arguably" the best, the most famous, the most flavorful tells me nothing. Kjdamrau 02:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)Ken Damrau

Number of editions
In the Genesis section, it says that the volume was published 13 times between 1487 and 1520. However, in the Consequences section, it states that 20 editions were published in the same period. Obviously, only one of these can be correct. &mdash; Dave (Talk | contribs) 06:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Objections to the use of the adjective "medieval"
A comment about the beginning of the article - I cite:

"The Malleus Maleficarum[2](Latin for "The Hammer of Witches", or "Hexenhammer" in German) is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and was first published in Germany in 1487.[3] It was the culmination of a long medieval tradition of treatises on witchcraft, the most famous being the Formicarius by Johannes Nider in 1435-1437.[4]"

I have objections to the use of the adjective "medieval". It seems to have been mechanically used because the misconception that the witch hunts were a primarily medieval phenomenon is still abroad. As is clear from the content of the cited sentences themselves, however, the Malleus itself is in fact a Renaissance work (written in 1486 and becoming an influence during the next century). Lower down in this same article, we find a link to the article 'late Middle Ages', where this period is defined as running from 1300-1500 with the 15th century described as a transition period between the middle ages and the renaissance. A usual year mentioned as marker of the end of the Middle Ages, I may add, is 1452 - the year of the fall of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. As for the statement about the Malleus being "the culmination of a long medieval tradition of treatises on witchcraft", this seems rather doubtful considering that the medieval church held the belief in witches to be a superstition (in 1090, it declared three women burned for witchcraft in Munich martyrs - I have this information from an article by Gustav Henningsen "Kan hekse flyve" (= "Do witches fly?"). G. H. is a Danish professor specializing in the witch hunts; he has also written articles in english and spanish which can be found on the web and are highly recommendable. He also cites a letter from pope Gregory VII to the Danish king Harald Hen urging the king to stop his people from keeping up the barbarous custom of accusing women of causing storms and diseases and executing them. Storms and diseases are God's will, says the Pope, and people should not go about accusing other people about them.) Well, considering, I would like to see earlier titles on these "medieval treatises" or have the text changed. The only one mentioned from the allegedly long tradition is a work from - 1435. As it stands, I suggest a replacement of the use of the adjective "medieval" with "renaissance" or "early modern" where appropriate.

Another thing: I have a comment to the question asked by someone further up about a "the" inherent in the latin "Malleus maleficarum" - no, there is nothing incorrect or "double" about writing "The malleus". Latin generally doesn't use articles (the pronoun 'ille/illa/illud' (meaning 'that one') may be used as such, however, and is the word that later develops into the article in for instance italian (il/la)). But it doesn't follow that "Malleus maleficarum" written alone automatically means "The m. m.", it may be translated with or without the article according to the meaning of the sentence around it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.81.106.89 (talk) 01:39, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your thoughtful and informed comments. I agree that "medieval" is vague and misleading, and believe that it could be eliminated entirely by simply citing specific years for specific works. The lead has yet another problem. It says: "[The Malleus] was the culmination", with "the most famous [treatise] being the Formicarius". Wouldn't the one that is the "culmination" be the most famous? I suggest dropping all the superlatives unless a direct quote from a verifiable and reliable source can be found. --Jtir (talk) 13:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Please Be bold. Anything is better than middle ages in 1487. (typing error: 1487+11=1498) Elephx4 (talk) 14:53, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Where did you read "1498"? --Jtir (talk) 20:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Author name
The name of one of the authors mentioned appears to be Maxwell-Stuart, not Maxwell-Stewart. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.152.164.46 (talk) 17:42, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Supposed Banning of Malleus Maleficarum
I just noticed what seems to be a date contradiction in this article.

The article states, "The Catholic Church banned the book in 1490, placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum." However, the article Index Librorum Prohibitorum itself states that "The first list of the kind was not published in Rome, but in Roman Catholic Netherlands (1529). Venice (1543) and Paris (1551, under the terms of the Edict of Châteaubriant) followed this example. The first Roman Index was the work of Pope Paul IV (1557, 1559)." This is corroborated by : "The first official censorship had come in 1559 with the publication of the Index auctorum et librorum prohibitorum under the direction of Pope Paul IV. The Pauline index, as it became known, was the first in a long succession of papal indexes, forty-two in all." See also.

If the first Index came out a few decades into the 1500s, how was the Malleus Maleficarum listed in one around 1490? Could someone resolve this issue perhaps?

-- 137.155.202.26 (talk) 20:10, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Presumably its impossible for it to have been in the Index at that time, then? (Certainly, the claim about 1490 does come without any citation). No mention of this censorship is made in either of the recent translations of Malleus, nor in Summers' edition. I checked in a copy of the Index at my school's library, and the Malleus does show up in there, but our edition is only from 1666. So until someone can actually provide a precise date, I am changing the entry to reflect what is known: that at some point the book was banned. (talk) 10:11, 18 August 2008 (EST)


 * I have searched in vain for a listing for Malleus on various versions of the Index and found none. I wonder if the Index you are referring to is simply a Spanish version and not official "papal".Óli Gneisti (talk) 10:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This is suspicious. It was widely used. Please also provide information if it was banned in practice or only in theory (for example quietly) to assure neutral point of view. --Asterixf2 (talk) 06:44, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

New Translation
It appears a new translation is out, by Christopher Mackay. Also, there is an interview with him at in which he discusses some aspects of the book and its history. He questions the work of the original translator. - 137.155.202.26 (talk) 20:41, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thx. Link to the interview was very useful. --Asterixf2 (talk) 07:14, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Recursive Reference & Genesis Section in General
I'm removing http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/index.html as a citation for the banning of the book since it has two references: 1) Original version of the page, which does not mention the banning, and 2) This very article. Am I wrong in thinking this means the article is using itself as a reference? I'm replacing it with another link to the Jenny Gibbons reference, which makes the point (and is interestingly from the same domain as the original citation).

I'm also going to place a "section has issues" template on the Genesis section in general, as there has been dispute in the past and on this talk page about some of its points, and there needs to be better citation in general and I for one dispute the neutrality of the Gibbons reference.

If I'm overstepping myself here, may someone promptly delete the notice!

-- 137.155.202.26 (talk) 20:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Can someone fix the citation so it doesn't spawn a new number for the same reference? I'm not sure how. -- 137.155.202.26 (talk) 21:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

-- Actually I misread, sorry, Gibbons does not make this point... - 137.155.202.26 (talk) 21:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Mixed Metaphor
The title claims that it is The Hammer of Witches which destroyeth Witches and their heresy like a most powerful spear. A hammer is one thing. A spear is another thing altogether. They are mixed together in the title. This is a reflection on the intelligence of the authors.Lestrade (talk) 04:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)Lestrade


 * I would have stuck with just the hammer image; the spear metaphor is a bit too pointed. --TEHodson 09:09, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTFORUM. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:03, 16 October 2010 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that mixed metaphors weren't roundly condemned as bad style until the nineteenth century. Is Shakespeare's suggestion of "taking arms against a sea of troubles" instead of a "host of troubles" a reflection of his low intelligence?  ;)  Elmo iscariot (talk) 16:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

strange claims
"It also mentions astrology and astronomy, which had recently been reintroduced to the West by the ancient works of Pythagoras."

Sounds like lot of nonsense to me, because no writings by Pythagoras survive. Not to mention that astrology and astronomy certainly were not recent, whatever that is supposed to mean, (re)introductions. 77.233.65.178 (talk) 02:43, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Malleus Maleficarum, a humanistic work?
I noticed this in the article, and my mind was thrown, at first into abject confusion, then into some mild anger: "The Malleus Maleficarum was heavily influenced by humanistic ideologies."

Perhaps it's noteworthy to say that it was guided by an interpretation of Aristotelian logic, sure. There is reasoning, of a sort, involved. But the ideologies that informed and influenced the general theme of this work? Humanistic? No, thanks, this was a grade-A example of theistic reasoning made manifest, and had little to do with any kind of humanism I've heard of. The fact that the Malleus mentions astrology and astronomy doesn't imply that these are thematic, nor does it make this work 'Humanistic'. A rather painless perusal of the 'contents' section makes it quite obvious where the influence lies. Being new to Wikipedia, I haven't been so bold as to edit the article myself; in this, I'd like to invite someone with more experience under their belt to do so.

Although it is my own personal inclination, I'm not suggesting that the sentence or paragraph be rewritten to reflect the thoroughly theistic, religious nature of this work. I'm only arguing for the removal of something as blatantly ridiculous as the suggestion that the Malleus was 'heavily' influenced by any kind of humanism as the term is understood. -AlsoSprach 4AUG11 — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlsoSprach (talk • contribs) 12:53, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Removed External Link
Just removed a link to a review hosted on theanarchistlibrary.org (review published in Green Anarchist #30). Felt like the review is biased and comes form a specific viewpoint and is not critical. Reading through, admittedly only skimming the last quarter, the review focuses more on various aspects of heresy, witchcraft, and anarchism throughout the timeperiod than on this book, Malleus Maleficarum. And  do believe this removal is inline with WP:ExtLinks, any objections? Birdman1011395 (talk) 10:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Whoops, here's the link in question: http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Anonymous__The_Malleus_Maleficarum___The_Hammer_of_Witches__A_Review.html Birdman1011395 (talk) 10:17, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Removal of inappropriate section IV in "Contents"
An editor previously added an extra section, section IV, to the "Contents" section. The MM only has three parts, and the text added for the new section is a POV comment on the historical significance of MM, which is inappropriate for this particular part of the entry in any case. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malleus_Maleficarum&diff=prev&oldid=492327217 I have reverted the section to its original state by removing the previously added heading and text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.144.193.189 (talk) 11:25, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect comments in major themes section?
"Indeed, the very title of the Malleus Maleficarum is feminine, alluding to the idea that it was women who were the villains. Otherwise, it would be the Malleus Maleficorum (the masculine form of the Latin noun maleficus or malefica, 'witch'). In Latin, the feminine "Maleficarum" would only be used for women while the masculine "Maleficorum" could be used for men alone or for both sexes if together.[30] This assertion by Maxwell-Stewart is not definitive for it would be centuries before spelling would become standardized through the process of English-language spelling reform"

That first sentence doesn't really have the right tone for an encyclopedia, does it?

More importantly, isn't the last sentence, well, incorrect. The standardisation of spelling in English is an entirely separate issue to the standardisation of spelling in Latin. And the difference between an a and an o in this position is meaningful -- in the same way as writing "actresses" to describe a group of women, and "actors" to describe a group of men and women (leaving aside the increasing use of "actor" to describe a man or woman) -- so the writer should be aware of using an a or an o. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.155.146 (talk) 20:27, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree about the "English spelling reform" sentence. Latin spelling was quite standardized at this time, mistakes nonwithstanding, and differs only subtly from classical Latin as far as I know. Anyways it is a question of inflection -- the a and o are not mere equivalents. I'm taking it out.--♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ (talk) 01:58, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Factors stimulating widespread use
The following sentence does not make sense:
 * That printing should have been invented thirty years before the first publication of the Malleus, which instigated the fervor of witch hunting, and, in the words of Russell, "the swift propagation of the witch hysteria by the press was the first evidence that Gutenberg had not liberated man from original sin."[34]

I am tempted to delete it, because I am unsure what point it is attempting to make, but that Russell quote is a nice one. What is the first half of the sentence trying to get at?

--125.237.154.120 (talk) 21:32, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

The sentence probably addresses matters of circulation. Before the printing press, all copies of a book had to be hand-written in manuscript form. A rather time-consuming method which always placed a strain on circulation. The discovery of the printing press made it much easier to print books and pamphlets (the predecessors of periodicals). Both allowing wider circulation for them and making it easier to spread their ideas to a wider audience.

In the case of Malleus Maleficarum, "Between the years 1487 and 1520 the work was published thirteen times. It was again published between the years of 1574 to 1669 a total of sixteen times." Wide circulation, wide spreading of its ideas, and major contribution to "the witch hysteria". Dimadick (talk) 09:05, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

"In Accordance with Pagan Rites"
I've removed the following text:

"Folk belief in reality of witchcraft had been denied by the church in earlier centuries; Charlemagne had specifically outlawed the old practice of witch burning "in accordance with pagan rites" since witchcraft was originally viewed by many early medieval Christians as a pagan superstition. "

The link is a primary source. And this is basically nonsense. Accusations of demonic influence are part and parcel for Christianity, a core element of the belief system. Secondly, such edicts must be approached with caution and must be presented in context. Charlemagne and his court were, for example, infamously hostile to the paganism(s) they sought to eradicate. The Bible, for example, has a few choice comments on killing "witches" that were rather helpful in the murder of over 60,000 innocents on record in medieval Europe.

On that note, studies in this area suffer from inappropriate glossing conventions. "Witch" is by no means an appropriate "catch-all" gloss for a 'malevolent magic user' or a 'demonically influenced individual', a combination of the two being the usual definition employed in a post-Christianization context. This is obviously not the definition you're going to find in the non-dualistic, pre-Christian societies that Charlemagne, for example, sought to Christianize (see, for example, völva for a very different societal role for the "witch"). Most related articles here also suffer from this issue—confusion and poor sourcing—and need to be rewritten from scratch. Considering the grim legacy of this particular volume, this is a good place to start. I just wish I had more time on my hands. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 02:01, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The source supports the information given, and serves to highlight why, even if you disagree with it on the basis of it being a Christian source. The article does not say that "pagans burned witches", but that Charlemagne gave this rationale, something that is veritably accurate. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 02:18, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:OR. Charlemagne did not and does not speak for Christiandom. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 03:03, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It is not WP:OR, and if you feel that it is, then the answer is to reword it so that it is not, as opposed to removing it entirely, because the part directly sourced, Charlemagne had specifically outlawed the old practice of witch burning "in accordance with pagan rites", is directly supported by a reliable source. That's not WP:OR.  It is sourced, it is relevant, and it is staying in the article because WP:OR does not warrant removing it.  Do not remove it again without a consensus to do so. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 05:07, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * What on earth does this article have to do with Charlemagne? Exactly how do you suppose that this single statement by Charlemagne's court supports your personal conclusion that "Folk belief in reality of witchcraft had been denied by the church in earlier centuries"? That's WP:OR. And exactly why is this particular reference being cherry picked to make some sort of point? It's off topic and misleading. I can, in response, tell you to quit re-adding it. It takes two. Meanwhile I'll just tag the page. It's already a mess. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 05:13, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * So now you've tagged the first part of the statement for a citation and kept the Charlemagne part in. It's still totally unclear what Charlemagne has to do with anything. This is exactly the sort of tomfoolery that has made Wikipedia into a war ground where one has to sit down and set up camp to edit these days and why it's still a game of roulette whether one will find a solid article on a topic they're searching for or an article that exists 'just to have an article on the topic'. Meanwhile, on so many articles, no matter what one does, someone without a half thought is ready to revert another simply because they can. And then again. And then again. Inevitably, either a day from nor or years from now, all of the half-assed arm chair monkeying around that this article is composed of will be completely rewritten by someone who can take the time out to get a hold of the appropriate sources and spend the appropriate time actually putting together something appropriate for such an important topic. It's a real shame that all of the related articles seem to be just as bad. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 05:26, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It is not my "personal conclusion", and such an attribution serves no purpose, nor does your rant. That the first sentence is unsourced means it's unsourced, it doesn't make a subsequent, sourced sentence WP:OR. It is WP:OR if "no reliable, published sources exist" to support the claim. These sources exist to support at least the first sentence. Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History by Wolfgang Behringer supports the information in the bit you removed. It's currently unsourced, that doesn't make it WP:OR. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 05:30, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Before playing sherif, you might want to at least get some basic familiarity with the topic we're discussing. First, Charlemagne has nothing to do with the topic of this article. That needs to go, but that'll have to wait thanks to your bungling presence. Next, this nonsense about Saxons burning "witches" (note that we're—absurdly—even using a pointless gloss here) is directly attributed to Charlemagne's court. Charlemagne's court, folks. Aoidh/Sudo, you're doing no good here. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 05:52, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The Canon Episcopi appears to be yet another example that supports the content in the article. I would think canon law reflects the Church's opinion.  You should read WP:OR more thoroughly before criticizing others of "bungling", and suggesting that others are unfamiliar with the topic only highlights your own ignorance, since you don't know what I know about the subject; such worthless speculation does you no favors.  The article does not say "Saxons were burning witches", it says that Charlemagne outlawed the practice of witch burning "in accordance with pagan rites".  Charlemagne is given as an example of early viewpoints on the matter.  I hope with the "it'll have to wait" comment you're not suggesting that you're going to wait ~24 hours before reverting simply to avoid 3RR.  You've given no cause to remove it other than your flawed WP:OR reasoning; it is not WP:OR, so that reasoning does not apply. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 06:04, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, look what you found. Enough with the boy detective act. Get yourself a decent secondary source and let others hold your hand. Or at least read the material you're bringing up: The Canon Episcopi, for example, makes it clear that belief among Christians—who compose "the church"—was quite alive and well at the time (roughly contemporarily, for example, Wulfstan, a member of "the church", complains about the influence of witches in his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos—not so simple, folks). It, of course, continued to be. Then there's the issue of what exactly is being said here: Demonic influence was thought to be alive and well by the church bureaucracy. And what were these pagans and "witches" doing? Generally collaborating with and/or being misled by demons, according to the church. Witchcraft and divination in the Hebrew Bible and all. Nothing new here. Have you spent any time with the subject of this article, the Malleus Maleficarum? If so, what's it about again?


 * The apologetic tone here might be funny if it were on some other site, but in reality this is a complicated topic with a big mess of issues, starting with terminology and definition. Thereafter you have the issue of what was and was not church policy(-ies) depended on time and place, while demonic influence and anti-heathen and anti-"heretic" sentiment remained a constant. Of course, had you a foot in this material, you might have picked up on these intricacies, realized that the material needs to be removed, and thus we wouldn't be having this discussion. Meanwhile, the bit about "folk belief" remains uncited (it is, of course, WP:OR), and you continue to threaten me with a handy mod badge. Or should I be warning you about reverts? Sudo, watch out for your reverts! Wait 24 hours. Of course you knew that. As I did. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 06:15, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You appear to have nothing to warrant removing the content, so you've resorted to name-calling and continue to show a lack of understanding of WP:OR. If that's all you have, this discussion appears to have run its course. You can grasp at straws all day, it won't remove the content from the article. For you sake, please discuss things civilly with others; incivility doesn't mask the lack of a decent rationale. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 06:30, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Or you could read my response above, where I kindly spell it out for you, and even provide some nice examples. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 06:32, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * All I see is hand-waving, incivility, and pointless accusations. You have provided nothing to warrant removing the content, so again, this discussion appears to have run its course.  Unless you have something useful to offer that would explain why the content would need to be removed, it's not going to be.  "It's not perfect" is cause to adjust as necessary, not to remove verifiable content outright, especially with an incorrect application of WP:OR. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 06:37, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Considering it's a statement contradicted by, for example, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos and, well, basic tenants of the religion itself (Witchcraft and divination in the Hebrew Bible), and the existence of WP:PROVEIT, I'm beginning to think there's something more going on here with your actions than the article content itself. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 06:44, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Sources have been given, that you seemed to have missed that is your problem. Saying that Sermo Lupi ad Anglos and the tenants of the religion itself contradict the content is WP:OR, unless you can provide a reliable source that says so.  That your ignorance about myself continues is also your problem, and yours alone.  If you think there is a problem, take it to WP:ANI; put up or shut up.  I'm waiting for the sources to show that you aren't spewing out WP:OR. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 06:49, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No, you're still linking directly to the Charlemagne edict. And that's all. You've provided no additional sources. Meanwhile, I've provided various primary sources that contradict your direct linking to Charlemagne's edict. And you've removed the OR tags. I'll thank you to quit removing the tags until the issue is resolved. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 06:57, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Ignoring the fact that you continue to ignore what WP:OR actually says, I've added a source that settles one of the tags, and already linked one in this discussion for the first OR tag you've added. The information you provided does nothing to contradict that first sentence, or any of the content, really. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 07:05, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * —Did you even read this? This does not say what you seem to think it says. You seem to have gotten stuck at "Nevertheless, into the tenth and eleventh centuries, Christian authorities continued to think that of magic primarily in terms of remnants of pagan beliefs and practices". Which, of course, had you dug around a little deeper, you would find that this would often be attributed to the influence of demons. Satan, y'all. And did you even read the canon Episcopi? It doesn't mention "witches", it does dismiss a specific incident involving a "Diana", but it also does demand for the annihilation of devil-"invented" magic being performed by people from Christian areas. In other words: church sanctioned witch-hunting. You're wasting your time and mine here. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 07:12, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You seem to have a problem with your assumptions on what other people know and have done. A little less speculation on your part would have saved you a lot of trouble from the very beginning. Your constant tagging does nothing to improve the situation; the large tags you added above serve that purpose, adding a tag to any little edit made is nothing short of disruptive. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 07:23, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * So, let me get this straight. You go to my talk page and warn me about 3RR while I'm talking to you on this talk page. Then you violate 3RR . Knowing what you've done and just as I am taking it to the appropriate board, you revert yourself with a summary commenting on how I should be blocked instead . And now you're complaining to me about me tagging the unreferenced material as "disruptive" after I point out that you apparently haven't read the material you're mentioning, the reference contradicting the text you're attaching to? Who, exactly, is being "disruptive" here? All this after I've pointed out your employment of an primary source—an edict of Charlemagne's court—for a broad statement it does not support, and after I've gone out of my way to provide you with counter examples. Come on. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 07:33, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * When you misread WP:OR to such an extent, then apply your own WP:OR with primary sources of your own, laced with incivility, accusations, and snide remarks, I'm not really concerned with your opinions outside of the content, which have been sorely lacking. Your "counter-examples" don't contradict the content in the article, how would they? And yes, tagging every little edit that gets made is nothing short of disruptive, as is your conduct on the talk page. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 07:38, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Uh, well, for example, Wulfstan was a member of "the church", for example. Second, the canon Episcopi flatly recommends hunting down those who use 'devil magic' and all. Of course, there's no shortage of quoting those exact bible verses I mentioned above in any of these sources. Edits snuggled in with a single reference to Charlemagne and an apparently unread reference are going to need to be tagged so people can figure out what the issue is. Meanwhile here we are. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 07:42, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you truly that unfamiliar with editing on Wikipedia? What was the point of you adding the large tags above, if you're subsequently going to tag everything you disagree with?  The larger tags serve the purpose, and the talk page points out the specifics.  But if that's how you want to do this, that's fine, but it still isn't going to get the content removed by any means.  You cherry-picking a primary source (weren't you saying that should be avoided?) is irrelevant.  The content needs to be improved, certainly.  However, it doesn't need to be and won't be removed.  It's relevant to the article and the more sources I'm reading the more relevant it's becoming.  The Charlemagne example might not be that critical, but the rest of it appears to be quite relevant to the article. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 07:49, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, really unfamiliar with editing Wikipedia. Doesn't my user page make that perfectly clear?


 * Of course, this page needs the appropriate background. Meanwhile you've still got "the canon Episcopi condemned belief in witchcraft" on the article while you're aware that it says exactly the opposite. Way to improve the article.


 * Obviously there wasn't some aversion to the idea of "demon-influenced" or "demon-empowered" magic-wielders (later referred to by a variety of names, and nowadays known in English as "witches") in the early church, nor in the 10th century. This is clear not only by the source you attempted to apply but also in, well, any number of other serious works on the topic.


 * I suppose that, eventually, if you are indeed interested in this topic and not just into talk page conflicts, you'll dig into this and figure out what nonsense you've been shoveling. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 07:58, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not interested in you your talk page, which is what you initially said. I'm similarly not interested in your "only when it's convenient for me" double-standards. This discussion has quickly gone nowhere; you have made your case, such as it is, and it has no basis in any Wikipedia guideline or policy, including the very one you cited. When faced with that, you turned to insults and hand-waving about what some other sources say as if they contradict the content; they do not. That you persistently failed to address that point speaks volumes. You can continue to be petty and tag the article until you are blue in the face; the content is staying in the article. That it needs work is not being questioned, but to claim that the subject warrants removal entirely suggests that you haven't actually looked into the subject at all, or that you are deliberately choosing to ignore that information. I don't know which one it is and I don't care; such reasoning is flawed and the content will not be removed simply because you object to it. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 08:15, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess you'd need some sort of footing in this area for us to go any further. Or at least a desire to actually read the sources you've dug up. Meanwhile I'll just wait for someone with some specialized knowledge with the topic to come along to discuss this with. Have a nice day/night. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 08:22, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree; I think a third-party might be needed, either way I don't think the two of us are going to come to any agreement without at minimum a complete re-write of the section. - Aoidh (talk) (formerly User:SudoGhost) 08:30, 30 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I've rewritten the opening of that disputed section and removed the tag. Eric   Corbett  22:41, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 22:55, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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Edited Genesis
I have rewritten a lot of the Genesis part. I include the parts I have removed and my comments on them.

---

However, most modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little if anything to the work besides his illustrious name.

Russell doesn't say this. He says Kramer was the chief author and that Sprenger's role was "minor".

-

In 1484, Kramer had tried to prosecute witchcraft in the bishopric of Trent but was blocked by local ecclesiastical authorities. Kramer requested papal support and attained it via the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, which recognized the existence of witches and gave full papal approval for the Inquisition to prosecute witchcraft.

This is not what Russell says. He talks about both authors requesting a papal bull.

-

However, after local authorities still blocked his attempts, Kramer directed his energies to the composition of the Malleus. He drew on earlier sources like the Johannes Nider's treatise Formicarius, written 1435/37. Kramer used the papal bull as the preface for the Malleus, giving the false impression that Innocent VIII had endorsed the Malleus when in fact the bull had endorsed Kramer as an inquisitor and not his (then unwritten) work.

Kramer and Sprenger submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, hoping for its endorsement. Instead, the faculty condemned it as both unethical and illegal because the demonology it contained was inconsistent with Catholic doctrine.

Nevertheless, Kramer inserted an endorsement from the University into subsequent editions. The Catholic Church eventually banned the book entirely, placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

After reading the preface in whole I see no indication that the bull was placed there for other reasons than showing papal support for the existence of witches, witch trials and for the two authors. This seems to either unsourced or refers to the Jenny Gibbons piece which is itself totally unsourced and includes claims which are not supported by for example Russell and Mackey. I am removing all traces of it. I am removing the reference to the Index of banned books because it seems like a regional Spanish list and not and offical papal one. I have searched in vain for the book on the offical Indexes but found none. I could be wrong so please check this out for me. I haven't found any mention off it in the books I have.

Óli Gneisti (talk) 11:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * According to this it was banned in 1707 which after the main witch craze was over: http://www.beaconforfreedom.org/search/censored_publications/publication.html?id=9700509 Óli Gneisti (talk) 14:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Confirmation (reply 2016)
1. Thank you for your useful comments. You are correct that there is a lot of plausible misinformation. 2. As far as I know, the book has been never banned. To the contrary, it was well received by demonologists (for example see the content of section Reception (click the link there to see article contents now hidden). In particular, it is not enlisted on "Index Librorum Prohibitorum, Anno 1946" from The Vatican City State. --Asterixf2 (talk) 12:58, 7 November 2016 (UTC); more info --Asterixf2 (talk) 00:02, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Community ban of the Joan of Arc vandal
This article has been targeted in recent weeks by CC80, a sockpuppet of the Joan of Arc vandal. This and similar articles may be targeted again by other sockpuppets of the same person.

A vandal who has damaged Wikipedia's Catholicism, Christianity, cross-dressing, and homosexuality articles for over two years has been identified and community banned. This person will probably attempt to continue disruption on sockpuppet accounts. Please be alert for suspicious activity. Due to the complexity of this unusual case, the best place to report additional suspicious activity is probably to my user talk page because I was the primary investigating administrator. Durova Charg e! 17:20, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment 2016
Has been known to add inaccurate statements to cited passages, degrade existing footnotes, and fabricate fraudulent citations. Deletes material from talk pages. Has created at least one account to impersonate an established editor. Highly persistent vandal can read sources in French and attempts to mask destructive activity as legitimate editing disputes. [emphasis added] The vandal has switched between registered accounts that conduct lengthy disputes on talk pages, unregistered AOL IPs that conduct disputes through lengthy edit summaries, and quiet socks that specialize in deletion vandalism without comment. [...] the same person has also used the trolling technique of posing as a new user to distract investigation [..] Whoever Editor X actually is, this person has done extensive reading on the subject in both French and English and will likely return to alter Wikipedia's Joan of Arc article again. Although many of these distortions require similar expertise to dispute in detail, this person's consistent failure to observe WP:V makes it possible for a good editor to undo most damage. The most serious concerns are fraudulent citations and subtle POV pushing. All edits that resemble Editor X activity should be scrutinized. [emphasis added by me in 2 places] --Asterixf2 (talk) 16:38, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Updated link to the description of Joan of Arc vandal in WP:Long-term abuse
 * A link to Durova's description of the editor.

Aquinas about witchcraft 13th century
"The first corruption of sin whereby man became the slave of the devil was transmitted to us by the act of the generative power, and for this reason God allows the devil to exercise his power of witchcraft in this act more than in others. Even so the power of witchcraft is made manifest in serpents more than in other animals according to Genesis 3, since the devil tempted the woman through a serpent."

- Summa Theologicae

--Asterixf2 (talk) 09:16, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
 * See Canon_Episcopi and WP:PRIMARY. An editor's interpretation of a single phrase from a primary source does not outweigh a professional secondary source's assessment of broader trends. Even if it did, the passage you cite does explicitly contradict the notion that the witches were only experiencing delusions or illusions, but rather suggests that sex and serpents serve as the devil-empowered hallucinogens. Ian.thomson (talk) 09:18, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I am convinced you are wrong, but I have not reverted this for now. --Asterixf2 (talk) 09:46, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It does not matter what you believe, you need to present solid, academic, secondary or tertiary sources which support your claims instead of engaging in original research over one line from a primary source. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:22, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Recent attempts to undo the longstanding consensus
One editor has been attempting to call into question the longstanding consensus view given in this article, mostly based on the tired misconception that the Malleus was an officially approved Inquisitorial manual, although historians have refuted that. There have been many discussions over these issues (and related issues) in the various articles dealing with inquisitorial courts, and there is no need to rehash all this stuff over and over again whenever one person comes in and repeats the same misconceptions. Even Neo-Pagan historians such as Jenny Gibbons accept that the Malleus was condemned by the 15th century Church and its author was viewed by the other clergy as a crackpot. This is the consensus among historians who are considered experts in this subfield. Ryn78 (talk) 13:43, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
 * See above discussion for a concerning example. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:44, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
 * This is OR. Lets work with sources from the article. I will have a look at discussions later.--Asterixf2 (talk) 01:35, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The article presents the consensus among historians, which is not "OR". It is you who have been making arguments based on your own ideas, similar to arguments that have been discussed ad nauseam before and do not need to be rehashed all over again. The article could certainly use better citations and I'll try to add more as time permits. Allow me time to do that, and then see what you think. Ryn78 (talk) 03:23, 20 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I disagree. All I see in the article is a bunch of manipulations that do not follow from cited sources. My edits do not render article perfect but are a step in making it less tendentious. If there are opposing views, they can be both presented. You fail to apply policy, you cannot remove tags without justifying removals. In particular, you cannot revert obvious copyright violation (copy&paste from the book). It just shows that you have not carefully analyzed my edits and that you are just frivolously reverting and ignoring my work. Stop hand nuvola orange.svg This is a non-starter for discussion. And since you remove sure copyvio tag I am obliged to revert this change. How tagging sure copyvio violates consensus? This is just one example but all your changes are unjustified. I don't care about previous consensus if the statements in article do not follow from cited sources. OR in talk page is still OR. Furthermore, please do not remove properly cited statements. Last but not least, please note that I am correcting or tagging various statements, but I am not removing them. Please also note that I have not reverted change by Ian.thomson. I don't say you are surely wrong. I just comment on the current state of the article. What I see all around the article is WP:ORIGINALSYN ;). In particular, adding four references at the end of a long paragraph is an unnecessary obfuscation. Please focus on stating facts and allow the reader to fill gaps where there are no sources. Feel welcome to add sources and modify article but building upon my work and responding to my objections in tags would be preferred. --Asterixf2 (talk) 09:42, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * What is it all about? The events seem to be the following:
 * Kramer tried to prosecute but failed due to jurisdictional dispute (according to the later papal bull(!))
 * You claim that the main reason was because he was senile old man and you insisting on quoting this phrase in an article - let's be more serious here...
 * Following that, he received papal bull that clarified and extended his authorization so that this obstacle was removed. The papal bull also gave him full authority to preach about the witchcraft (see the pull quote in this revision: starting with And they shall also have full and entire liberty)
 * Within two years AFTER he had received papal bull, he finished the Malleus Maleficarum, a year later it was published
 * Preface to the book contained (A) papal bull (B) unanimous approbation from the University of Cologne's Faculty of Theology
 * The book was never included in Index Librorum Prohibitorum and some users added such purely imaginative statements before to the article. There are difficulties in providing any source for this claim.
 * The book was HUGELY popular, it's true that Spanish Inquisition had objections to it, but (1) your edits suggesting that it was rejected are false, because Spanish Inquisition only warned not to trust fully and it was not a recommendation not to use this manual. (2) It was only Spanish Inquisition and writing about Inquisition in general is inappropriate. What's more source does not clearly say to which details that objection applied and therefore makes it possible to abuse this statement. (3) you are simply insisting on distortion of various sources.
 * To see how some users want to portrait above please read the article before my edits. Tendentiousness is alarming. I do not reject this opposing perspective. It's simply not justified currently with the sources and definitely all such interpretations must be attributed to their authors. In short, opposition tries to build the case on the following propositions (apart from other statements that are designed to induce bias in the reader even if not false):
 * he was some senile old man that was expelled and wanted revenge and also mentally ill (yes, there were such claims) update: he was also a sexual deviant, look below for 'obsession'
 * all documents are forgeries (papal bull, unanimous approbation)
 * it was the secular courts that used it (church has nothing to do with it!)
 * it was banned by everybody, everywhere and at the same time used by everybody, everywhere for centuries and never enlisted as banned book on churches' index (index was abolished in 1966 so there was a plenty of time...).--Asterixf2 (talk) 10:30, 20 October 2016 (UTC)


 * There is no reasonable doubt that those opposing the manual could be treated as heretics and could easily face death at the time. Opposition tries to turn it upside down. --Asterixf2 (talk) 11:04, 20 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I've added some better citations for some of the paragraphs that you had tagged or modified, and I can add more as time permits. But in this discussion so far, you've presented little except your personal interpretation of a few snippets in this article (which you're often taking out of context) rather than quotes from historians (you haven't cited even one historian yet who takes your view). Since these issues have been discussed so many times before, I'm just going to briefly summarize what historians have determined on some of these points you've raised and cite some sources for a number of them.
 * - Firstly, the Malleus contains material which is flatly at odds with the stated and well-documented official doctrine of the time and standard legal procedures for inquisitorial courts, in fact the third section of the Malleus bluntly advises violating the standard law (see for example: Wolfgang Behringer's article, "Malleus Maleficarum" p. 6). It also promotes a bizarre fixation on shaving the pubic hair of female suspects (!) and similar sexual preoccupations which have nothing in common with the standard inquisitorial rules set forth in actual approved manuals such as the "Directorium Inquisitorum" and the "Practica Officii Inquisitionis Heretice Pravitatis". For some of the actual manuals and the methods they describe, see Edward Peters' book "Inquisition", pp 60, 68, 109-110, 167, 182, 268, 278, etc.
 * - Secondly, your interpretation of the Papal bull and letter from the clergy at the University of Cologne is based entirely on what Kramer claims in the Malleus itself, which is soundly contradicted by the other 99.9% of the evidence from the period: there are documents proving that the clergy at Cologne actually condemned the book and directly refuted Kramer's claim that they had instead allegedly approved it -- e.g. Thomas de Scotia and Johann von Worde were listed in the Malleus as having supposedly "approved" it but they both denied that (see for example Behringer's article mentioned above, p. 3). The Papal bull does not give approval to Kramer's methods or his book; additionally, we only have Kramer's version of the bull, which may be a forgery just as the letter of approval from the University of Cologne is widely viewed by historians as a forgery, and similarly for the numerous other falsified information in the book (the abovementioned sources cover these points as well). The Malleus even claims that Kramer's investigation at Innsbruck was a success despite the patent fact that all the other evidence proves that his trial there was shut down, which brings me to the next point.
 * - Thirdly, Kramer's expulsion from Innsbruck was not due merely to a "jurisdictional dispute" as you claim in the material you added to the article: there are surviving letters from the Bishop who expelled him (George II Golser), and other documents explaining why he expelled Kramer from the city: Kramer ran afoul of the Bishop, the local Archduke, and the other members of his own tribunal for his excesses and his obsession with the sexual habits of a woman named Helena Scheuberin. The other tribunal members called a halt to the proceedings, Kramer himself was accused of illegal behavior by an attorney appointed by the Bishop's representatives, and the head of the tribunal finally suspended the trial and released the accused. The Bishop then ordered Kramer to stop causing trouble and leave the city, describing him as "senile and crazy" in the words of one historian. (See, for example, "Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia"  by William E. Burns, pp 143-144;  and Behringer's "Malleus Maleficarum", p. 2). Kramer is believed by many historians to have written the Malleus in order to come up with rules that would bypass the normal laws which had led his trial at Innsbruck to be suspended, and to try to justify his sexual obsessions, which is why the book has numerous chapters on topics such as the harmful things witches can allegedly do to penises (one of Kramer's big themes); the claim that after penises were stolen by witches, people sometimes found 20 or 30 penises crawling around and being fed on grain (!); and the idea that female suspects should be stripped naked so Kramer can shave their private parts (see: "Witch Hunts in Europe and America..." p. 160, among others). This stuff only further convinced the other clergy that Kramer was nuts, as well as his blunt claims that the law didn't apply to him; hence the aforementioned condemnation of the book by the theologians at Cologne.
 * - Fourthly, many of the tags you've added are improper - for example, one tag claims a sentence about the "Canon Episcopi" is dubious based solely on your personal interpretation of a single quote from Aquinas. Granted, the sentence you're disputing is badly phrased (other Wikipedia articles present the issue in a more nuanced fashion) but the point it's trying to make is essentially valid: many of the medieval Church's documents do in fact describe witchcraft merely as a pagan superstition or illusion, and certainly present a less extreme and obsessive viewpoint than Kramer's stuff in the Malleus.
 * - Fifthly, you claimed that the Malleus was accepted by the Church (and that *opposing* it was allegedly an act of heresy), based on nothing but your unsourced claim that it wasn't placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which you then construed as an official endorsement, which is a classic case of using an unsourced claim to back up a non sequitur which is contradicted by the evidence I just summarized above. I assume you think it wasn't on the Index just because someone in a previous discussion on this same talk page claimed he/she couldn't find it, while another person said they DID find it in one copy of the Index. So these two guys contradict each other, neither of them are historians, and it makes very little difference either way because there were numerous books that weren't placed on the Index but which were still condemned by the Church nonetheless -- there were a total of only a few thousand placed on the Index by the time it was finally discontinued in 1966, but there were hundreds of thousands of books containing things the Church didn't approve of, such as dirty sex novels, atheist tracts, etc, etc. Lack of inclusion in the Index does not mean the Church approved: the only books given official approval were the ones which were given the "Imprimatur", which the Malleus never had. The bottom line is that, as noted farther above, it was in fact condemned shortly after publication. When you claim it was "popular", you mean it was used by Royal courts later in the 16th and 17th centuries; it wasn't used by inquisitorial courts nor does it resemble approved manuals. As I said, look at the actual approved manuals such as the "Directorium Inquisitorum" to see what actual inquisitorial guidelines were like.
 * - Sixthly: your claim that the Spanish Inquisition merely cautioned against a 'total reliance', rather than condemning the book, is based entirely on your attempt to interpret a paraphrase while ignoring more specific quotes from historians on the matter: e.g., Wolfgang Behringer wrote that the Spanish Inquisition "denied any authority to the Malleus" (see Behringer's article "Malleus Maleficarum", p. 7). The Spanish Inquisition used the "Directorium Inquisitorum" and its offshoots such as the "Repertorium Inquisitorum", not the Malleus (See Edward Peter's book "Inquisition" p. 60, for example).
 * - Additionally: your claim of a "copyright violation" for one sentence is not backed by any proof, and a search for that sentence only finds webpages which have copied this Wikipedia article itself verbatim. So it seems to be these other webpages which have copied this article, not the other way around.
 * - In any event, Wikipedia articles need to be based on the views of experts who have studied a subject in depth, not your personal interpretation of a handful of phrases you've pulled from this article and then reinterpreted as you wish. Unless you can present quotes from historians who have studied the subject thoroughly, you need to cease and desist because Wikipedia talk pages are not designed for presenting your personal ideas, but rather for presenting reputable sources that we can use in the article. Worse, there have already been plenty of other discussions on these same issues in which people have brought out many of the same claims that you're making, which have been refuted over and over. Enough is enough. Ryn78 (talk) 23:56, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Once again, you disrespectfully reverted all my changes. I have not included any personal interpretation or opinion in the article and everything was properly sourced. I have added a bunch of tags where they were justified. As I have explained to you previously, my concern was with the article and based on the sources in the article. You are insisting on taking into account your personal opinion or some other OR in talk pages. Even new translator (there are 2 or 3 of them) of Malleus debunks theories that those documents were forgeries. Also, I have not claimed that Malleus was accepted by church. Obviously, there were authorizations from pope for Kramer and later tolerance of the book. There were no "multiple major rejections" as one would expect. On the contrary, it was wildly popular, published many times and with multiple editions. However, this is not crucial here, I based my edits on the cited sources not my interpretation. Sexual aspect is not specific to Kramer, but an element of christian doctrine. Just look at the example of Aquinas, one section above. As far as copyvio is concerned, I have explicitly told you that it's a COPY&PASTE FROM THE BOOK and it's evident you have failed to verify. I consider your approach WP:DISRUPTIVE, you deny to be constructive, and what you do here is, as I see it, obvious propaganda and gross violation of WP:OWN. --Asterixf2 (talk) 09:29, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * editor has restored some of my statements, I partially withdraw my position above --Asterixf2 (talk) 10:29, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * PS: This is grotesque. I have not found such statement. Furthermore, if it was on index and later was not then it would mean that it was removed from the index (unbanned). Please stop being so tendentious. --Asterixf2 (talk) 11:18, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Changes, comparison
Ryn78, Thank you for restoring some of my changes. I have just noticed that. This is more constructive and gives some hope. However you left in the article the following changes that you've made:

Alleged Forgeries
Clarification: There are two views: (1) unanimous approbation was only partially a forgery (2) there was no forgery of approbation at all. Article cannot claim or suggest that (1) is true but should be balanced and present both views. BTW: I strongly oppose to any suggestions that papal bull is not authentic (this is a different document). --Asterixf2 (talk) 12:02, 21 October 2016 (UTC) For example, author of a new and professional translation, said in an interview:The argument was made in the nineteenth century by a scholar hostile to what the Malleus stood for that the approbation was a forgery by Institoris and that Sprenger had nothing to do with the composition. The evidence for this is in my view very tenuous (and the main argument is clearly invalid).


 * I'm going to reply to your three responses (spread out over several sections you added) in one concise response to make this more manageable, and I'm going to ask you to please stop creating entirely new sections one after another for the same discussion, because that's not the normal way to do it and it's a horrendously bad way to conduct a discussion.
 * - In my last note here I presented seven citations from historians, whereas you presented only one in your current note and none at all in your previous note; and yet you have the gall to claim that I'm the one allegedly presenting unsourced personal opinions and you're allegedly presenting sourced citations from historians? Are you deliberately being dishonest, or aren't you bothering to read anything I've written? You then proceeded to "analyze" my sourced additions to the article (in which I quoted or summarized historians) by giving your own personal opinions on why you think these historians are wrong, without citing any historians who refute the ones I cited. For example, you responded to my citation of William Burns' book "Witch Hunts in Europe and America" by claiming I'm giving a "speculative interpretation" and alleging I didn't present any source for Kramer's expulsion, despite the patent fact that: 1) I gave a summary of Burns' analysis of the many documents which give precise details about Kramer's expulsion and a point-by-point accounting of the trial at Innsbruck and the reasons that trial was shut down as given in the official documents written by the people who shut it down and expelled Kramer from the city. This isn't my own "speculation": it's Burns' description of what the evidence says. If you want to refute Burns' description, you would need to cite a different historian who disagrees with Burns' assessment. You haven't done that.
 * - Likewise for your analysis of my citation from Wolfgang Behringer's article: I summarized Behringer's description of the evidence, but you tried to dismiss his description by speculating that Thomas de Scotia and Johann von Worde *might* have been lying (based on what? Your opinion?) and you accused me of violating the rule against synthesis although I accurately summarized Behringer's statements rather than presenting my own synthesis. It's not up to you to decide whether Behringer was correct or not since you're not a historian. Again, you would need to cite a quote from an actual historian who takes a different view than the ones I've been citing.
 * - Concerning your claim that Kramer's bizarre sexual preoccupations are consistent with Aquinas' writings: show me any quote from Aquinas which resembles Kramer's description of severed penises congregating and crawling around on the ground feeding on grain, as Kramer describes in the Malleus.
 * - Regarding the alleged copyright issue: Can you prove it's a direct quote from the book - have you even read that book?  Again, cite your evidence rather than just making claims.
 * - As for your quote from Christopher Mackey claiming that there is no evidence that the approval from the University of Cologne is a forgery and that Sprenger supposedly actually co-authored the Malleus as the later editions of the book claim: Christopher Mackey is a linguist specializing in ancient languages, not a historian of the late 15th and 16th centuries; his quote claims only a 19th century author believed that these documents were forged, glossing over the many modern historians who also believe that; and the quote from Mackey presented no evidence for rejecting the consensus among historians such as Hans-Christian Klose, Wolfgang Behringer, Jenny Gibbons, and many others who have pointed out that there is overwhelming evidence to prove that both of these were forgeries. For example, these historians have pointed out that: 1) Sprenger's name was only added as an author of the Malleus in 1519, fully 33 years after its first publication and likewise decades after Sprenger's own death, which wouldn't make any sense unless this late addition of his name was a forgery added to later versions of the book (see Behringer's "Malleus Maleficarum" p. 2 and other sources); 2) A close friend of Sprenger explicitly refuted this posthumous addition by pointing out that Sprenger had nothing to do with the book (see Hans-Christian Klose's “Die angebliche Mitarbeit des Dominikaners Jakob Sprenger am Hexenhammer...” pp. 197–205 in Paderbornensis Ecclesia); 3) Sprenger couldn't have been a colleague of Kramer since Sprenger spent much of his life opposing Kramer, even going so far as to get him banned from Dominican convents and banned from preaching (see Behringer's "Malleus Maleficarum" p. 3 and other sources); 4) Sprenger's stated views in his own writings were often the diametric opposite of the ideas in the Malleus (see Behringer's "Malleus Maleficarum" p. 3 and other sources). For all these reasons, many historians believe that Sprenger couldn't have co-authored the book, and certainly couldn't have suddenly become a co-author only decades after his own death. If you want to take issue with this view and claim it's "fringe", then you need to cite a sufficient number of historians who have an alternate explanation for why Sprenger was only listed as an author long after his death but not during the first three decades of the book's existence (cite historians, don't just make up an explanation of your own), and the list of these historians needs to be large enough in number to make the case that they are in the majority. Mackey is just one linguist, and the quote from him doesn't even give any reasons to back up his claim nor any alternate explanation for Sprenger's late addition.
 * - Likewise, I already cited a historian who gave the evidence for the consensus view that the Cologne "endorsement" must have been a forgery: there are documents proving that the University faculty as a whole certainly condemned it rather than endorsing it, and at least two of the alleged endorsers denied that they had endorsed it (see Behringer's "Malleus Maleficarum" p. 3 and other sources). The only excuse you've given for rejecting that view is your claim that they could have been lying, which is just speculation on your part without any citation from a historian; and you haven't even addressed the issue of the clear condemnation by the faculty as a whole.
 * - In one of your comments you claimed you just want to present both sides of the issue, and yet your own additions to the article do not present both sides, nor even the dominant side. In any event, it's common practice in Wikipedia articles to give greater weight to the dominant consensus among recognized experts, which in this case would be historians such as the ones I've been citing.
 * - In some of your latest edits to the article, you repeatedly quoted a book by Sigrid Brauner, who was a literature teacher, not a historian. Should we add citations from literature teachers to articles on physics or biology too?  Find a historian who has studied this topic thoroughly.
 * - In any event, this has gone on long enough. In this discussion, you've presented only one vague quote from an author (Mackay) as the only excuse to reject the many historians I've cited. There is no need for me to keep tediously presenting more citations only to have you reject them in turn based on nothing but your own opinions, followed by ironic accusations that I'm allegedly doing the same. Enough is enough. Ryn78 (talk) 01:55, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your response but I don't consider it fully relevant. You fail to understand that your explanations here do not matter to me as much as the article's content. What I was arguing is that citations in the article are constantly being manipulated and distorted. WP:ORIGINALSYN does not follow from the quotes. PS. Malleus Maleficarum is German literature and Brauner was an expert on German literature. Most of the professors are teachers. --Asterixf2 (talk) 12:46, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Both of you calm your tits
I'm not even going to begin to address everything point-by-point, but just some general trends.

I'm seeing you citing a lot of WP:PRIMARY sources, which is usually a sign of original research. Your addition on the summis desiderantes is nothing but original research. You are not listed at WP:RS, so your interpretation of that document is not acceptable here. Your citation of Brauner, if it checks out, is more like the sort of stuff you should be doing. When someone presents you with reliable sources (i.e. professional secondary/tertiary sources) to counter either your own arguments, your interpretation of primary sources, or your requests for sources -- you need to accept those reliable sources instead of countering with nuh-uh (which is what your response in the Aquinas thread amounts to). As for your statement that "Article cannot claim or suggest that (1) is true but should be balanced and present both views" -- see WP:GEVAL. If the only sources presented say 1 is true, we do not say "1 or 2." Until you cite some professional academic sources that explicitly support the claim the university endorsement was anything but a forgery, that's all the article can refer to it as.
 * If you are blind to WP:ORIGINALSYN by Ryn78 and tendentiousness in the article I don't have much hope. "If the only sources presented say 1 is true" ? This is not the case. On the contrary. "sources, which is usually a sign of" - I strongly oppose to this. We have a precise case and your general discussion is unnecessary. Primary sources are best sources about themselves, see also WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD. --Asterixf2 (talk) 13:00, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

While Asterixf2 has pointed out that some material that legitimately needed work, even if he also pointed out a lot of stuff that didn't need work. His citation of Brauner also appropriate. He is not being a troll, both of you are just being bull-headed.

Between the two of you, the article seems to have actually improved. I see a lot of stuff on this talk page that is useless (like arguing over whether or not it was or was not in the Index Librum Prohibitorum). Both of you need to go read WP:AGF, WP:OWN, and WP:NPA. Don't just look at that last sentence and think I'm talking about the other person, both of you need to evaluate your own behavior. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:16, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * My scepticism arises from the multiple distortions of sources (originalsyn) and overall tendentiousness. for example, Ryn78's removal of my tag "request quote" accompanied by alteration and obfuscation of the sentence is clearly wp:disruptive. The sentence (permalink:, sentence "Kramer would falsely claim that several of them had approved it, which they denied" + quotes to citations - clear manipulation) If it was or not in the index is very important. However, because it was not, I am certain some people may want to downplay this. --Asterixf2 (talk) 13:03, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It has improved. 99% of new content was added by me, and it would have improved even more if ryn78 had not insisted on tendentious nonsense. --Asterixf2 (talk) 17:31, 22 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Ian Thomson: Regarding your view that Brauner is a relevant expert from the correct field: Studying medieval German literature is not the same as studying the things that historians deal with - the societal, legal, theological, etc context which allows a proper interpretation of the literature. There's no indication that Brauner has exhaustively studied inquisitorial tribunals, medieval law, theology, the specific people involved with the Malleus or most of the other issues that would be relevant. I've been citing historians who presented very detailed descriptions of events we've been discussing such as Kramer's Innsbruck trial - historians who give precise dates for each phase of the trial, descriptions of the letters written by the local bishop, names of the attorneys involved, etc - and historians who have studied the standard manuals like the Directorium Inquisitorum which place the aberrational books like the Malleus in proper context. It's that type of exhaustive in-depth historical research which is the mark of an expert in this field, and I don't see anything similar from Brauner on this specific topic (e.g., how many inquisitorial manuals has she read in order to give her the proper perspective on the Malleus' bizarre deviations from the standard manuals? How many trial transcripts has she read in order to give her perspective on why Kramer's trial at Innsbruck was shut down by the local clergy and Kramer was banned from preaching or even entering Dominican monasteries? Does she even realize that Kramer was banned rather than being the "celebrated inquisitor" of his own fantasy?) Saying that she studies medieval literature and is therefore an expert on the Malleus is a bit like saying that someone who studies science fiction novels is an expert on physics. In some cases that may be true, but in the general case it certainly isn't. Ryn78 (talk) 04:13, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: You claimed I had "manipulated" the following sentence:  "Kramer would falsely claim that several of them had approved it, which they denied". That is in fact what the sources say, in fact it's a common view among mainstream historians.  What exactly am I "manipulating" here?  If you really want to accuse me of wrongdoing, then you need to back it up with proof, which you haven't done.
 * As for your comments about Brauner, see my response to Ian Thomson above. Ryn78 (talk) 04:13, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Ryn78 your recent reverts are absurd (properly sourced:, properly sourced, including britannica;  - again britannica;  - tendentious,  - unjustified removal. Please see WP:NOTCENSORED, WP:FRINGE and WP:OWN. --Asterixf2 (talk) 10:16, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Request for proper sourcing of Behringer, Wolfgang. "Malleus Maleficarum"
Author seems to be realiable but this source/citation is unreliable. Where it was published? When? What is it? Was it peer-reviewed? It looks like a draft and its theories are in opposition to other writers. Do I see correctly that it has 7 pages once picture is removed? In case those doubts are not resolved this source will have to be removed (and perhaps reinstated later if those deficiencies are eliminated). --Asterixf2 (talk) 20:19, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: You removed every single addition I made while making up absurd excuses for doing so.  You removed the citation for "Witchcraft and Magic in Europe" by saying you can't find an author named "Joyy", but that's because "Joyy" is a typo for "Jolly" (Karen Jolly is her full name) and yes it is in fact a real book, as you can see at :  http://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/0485891034/used/
 * There is no excuse for removing it just because there was a typo in the citation, as there often is in Wikipedia articles. The normal procedure is to fix the typo rather than deleting the entire passage, which is really a form of vandalism.
 * In my opinion, your super-tiny additions have not improved the article. Besides, they are mostly reverts of tendentious content I have removed or further manipulations. You have not provided a diff. If you do we may discuss. I purposefully have made those changes in separate edits. This typo was making the citation difficult to verify and I guess it wasn't my only premise for deletion. --Asterixf2 (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * You removed the material from "Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia" with only the vague excuse that it was "tendentious", a term you constantly use for anything you don't like.  Why is it "tendentious", and why shouldn't it be included?  Give a reason, don't just throw out the word "tendentious" all the time.
 * You have not provided a diff. If you do we may discuss. I purposefully have made those changes in separate edits. --Asterixf2 (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The rationale you gave for removing the Behringer source was: "Author seems to be realiable but this source/citation is unreliable" which is absurd.  Wolfgang Behringer is a professional HISTORIAN at Saarland University who specializes in witchcraft issues and has written many peer-reviewed academic works, and as far as I know the article I cited was peer-reviewed since that's part of the requirement for an academic scholar like Behringer.  You haven't given any reason for believing  otherwise (can you actually prove it wasn't peer-reviewed?) and even if it wasn't, Wikipedia's rules state that a recognized expert's self-published work is an acceptable RS ("Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert"), which means it wouldn't need to be peer-reviewed to be acceptable in Behringer's case. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#Exceptions
 * Please answer my questions asked at the beginning even if it was self-published. --Asterixf2 (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * You then proceeded to purge the article of virtually every view aside from your own, deleting even the briefest reference to the mainstream view that Sprenger couldn't possibly have written the book, which is in gross violation of the NPOV principle. You're clearly just trying to find any excuse you can think of to remove literally everything that doesn't suit your agenda, while claiming that I can't remove even a small percentage of the stuff you added - which brings me to the next point:
 * It is not mainstream, but your personal opinion and in my view pov pushing of a fringe theory. --Asterixf2 (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Regarding the notice you posted on my talk page warning me to never remove anything from this article even though I gave valid reasons: you've removed plenty of stuff from this article WITHOUT any valid reason whatsoever, so where do you get off telling me I can never remove anything for any reason? I gave the reasons in my edit summaries, which you still haven't addressed (why were my reasons invalid? You didn't say).
 * You are constantly bringing back obviously tendentious material. I may decide not to discuss it with you again in such cases. You don't refer to changes individually and precisely with diffs. --Asterixf2 (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * My reasons were as follows: that material makes claims which have been refuted by so many historians.  Ignoring that common view is a violation of the NPOV principle. There are also at least two problems with adding so many quotes from Mackey and Brauner : firstly, even if they are proper sources despite the fact that neither of them are historians, it still would not be proper to give them a more privileged position over actual historians who have done in-depth, specialized research on the relevant subjects. Right now, the quotes or paraphrases of Mackey and Brauner's material is several magnitudes larger than the combined amount of material from all of the actual historians that were cited in the article (even before you deleted all of them), which is absurdly unbalanced.  Secondly: Mackey is a linguist who specializes mainly in ancient Greek and Latin while only dabbling occasionally in subjects that would be relevant to this article;  and Brauner was a literature professor who only dabbled occasionally in subjects that would be relevant to this article.  Since when are dabblers considered experts?  I occasionally do a bit of dabbling in quantum physics, but I can't be cited as an "expert" in that field and I certainly wouldn't trump the scientists who actually conduct primary research using particle accelerators.  So why the dickens are Mackey and Brauner qualified as experts in a field other than their own, and why should they be quoted far more extensively than actual historians who specialize in the relevant subjects?  Worse, the quotes from them indicate that they just accept the Malleus' version of things at face value because they haven't read the many documents which contradict it. That's exactly why dabblers should be avoided: they've only studied a smattering of the evidence.   I've raised some of these points in previous notes but you continue to ignore those points. You haven't given any reason to justify using these two authors at all, much less using them relentlessly and including long quotes from them as if they're the foremost authorities on the subject.
 * You have also tried to ram your preferred version into the article by adding so much new material each day, almost continuously all day long with only periodic breaks, that it has become impossible to even wade through it all, much less properly vette and discuss it. This practice of trying to dominate an article by sitting online all day is really an abuse of the system, because: 1) it takes advantage of the fact that some of us have jobs or other responsibilities in "real life" and therefore cannot compete with your constant editing. Wikipedia articles are not supposed to be dominated by whomever can sit online the longest. 2) This tactic also takes advantage of the fact that Wikipedia doesn't have a normal, regulated review process to enforce a reasonable pace for vetting. Without that type of regulation, anyone can bulldoze their material into an article just by deluging their opponent with too much material to wade through. That's not how the system is supposed to work, so I'm going to ask you to scale down your frenetic pace. I think maybe ten edits a day should be sufficient. If you keep trying to ram your stuff through by sitting online all day, I'm going to ask an admin to lock the article until we can actually discuss these enormous new changes. A few changes do not require consensus, but a complete overhaul of the article certainly does. Ryn78 (talk) 05:17, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem is that you are trying to discuss tendentious and manipulative content and try to legitimize it by this discussion. I am not going to constantly refute the same nonsense. As far as Brauner is concerned, qualifications have been already explained to you. Regarding Mackay, he is the author of the only available fully professional translation to english of malleus and a Professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University. --Asterixf2 (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: You completely dodged my questions about your unwarranted removals of sourced material, only responding that you had "reasons" and telling to me "provide a diff", which is absurd. You know perfectly well which changes I'm referring to because I already mentioned the names of the sources which you deleted, and I gave details.  But here are the diffs anyway, although you're just going to ignore that too:
 * Here's where you removed text from Behringer : https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malleus_Maleficarum&type=revision&diff=745870730&oldid=745867349
 * Another removal of text from Behringer: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malleus_Maleficarum&type=revision&diff=745871456&oldid=745870730
 * Yet another removal of text from Behringer: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malleus_Maleficarum&type=revision&diff=745871932&oldid=745871456
 * Here's where you removed text from a respected book just because the citation had a minor typo ("Joyy et al" instead of "Jolly et al"): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malleus_Maleficarum&type=revision&diff=745876342&oldid=745872206
 * If you can't provide any legitimate rationale for your removal of virtually all of the historians who take a view that you personally disagree with, then you've proved you're guilty of POV-pushing and vandalism. You even removed a whole chunk of text from a prominent book written by several respected historians, for no other reason than the citation contained a typo, which I fixed but then you deleted it again.  That's as bad as it gets.
 * You threatened to stop discussing these issues, but the fact is you've never discussed most of them in the first place. You've failed to respond to most of my points over the last couple days while dodging others by giving flippant excuses.
 * You likewise claimed that the views of all these historians are "fringe" views, which is nonsense. Behringer, Peters, Burns, etc are respected mainstream historians, whereas the people you've been citing are almost entirely NON-historians from other fields who merely dabbled a little bit in this subject, except for Broedel; but a review of Broedel's book by Michael Bailey (in the academic journal "Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft") pointed out that Broedel's arguments run counter to the common view taken by historians rather than the other way around, and Bailey also pointed out that "much evidence points to Kramer as the sole author". Likewise on the issue of the alleged acceptance of the Malleus by the Church, which has been exhaustively proven false by numerous historians, including the Neo-Pagan Jenny Gibbons, such as in her article "Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt" in the academic journal: "International Journal of Pagan Studies, issue number 5, August 1998; pp 2 - 16".  She explains how the Malleus was mistaken as an accepted inquisitorial manual despite its rejection by the 15th century Church: 'in the 1970s, when feminist and Neo-Pagan authors turned their attention to the witch trials, the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) was the only manual readily available in translation. Authors naively assumed that the book painted an accurate picture of how the Inquisition tried witches. Heinrich Kramer, the text's demented author, was held up as a typical inquisitor. His rather stunning sexual preoccupations were presented as the Church's "official" position on witchcraft. Actually the Inquisition immediately rejected the legal procedures Kramer recommended and censured the inquisitor himself just a few years after the Malleus was published. Secular courts, not inquisitorial ones, resorted to the Malleus'. There are many other examples of historians giving this view, which is in fact mainstream. If anyone is citing "fringe authors" here, it is YOU.
 * You also have presented misleading claims about Mackay's credentials. His own faculty page describes him as a linguist, not a historian (as you imply) who focuses mainly on ancient Greek and Latin. Worse, your version of the article contains quote after quote from Mackay without any rebuttals from the opposing view since you deleted all of those. Still worse, the quotes from Mackey do not even address the actual issues  because they instead focus mainly on attacking one 19th century author while failing to address the arguments made by modern historians and also failing to present any evidence to contradict the large amounts of evidence presented by historians on this point.  Mackay just states an opinion without proof. That's precisely why we're supposed to cite experts rather than someone who merely has dabbled a little bit in the subject: an expert can give thorough evidence, the dabbler cannot.  This is common sense as well as basic Wikipedia policy. You're violating that policy on so many counts.
 * The bottom line is that you're vandalizing this article by getting rid of any semblance of balance. I've added a more balanced version while keeping most of your additions. If you want to delete all these views by historians yet again, you need to discuss it first, not just vandalize.  Ryn78 (talk) 04:32, 25 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: You again reverted all my changes without discussion or explanation, merely adding an edit note saying that you had read my comments on the talk page but without responding to any of my points, much less working out an agreement through consensus. You don't own this article. You've also once again purged the article of virtually every last opposing view, which is a gross violation of the NPOV principle.
 * You additionally keep adding discredited claims from Montague Summers, a deacon who claimed to be a priest but certainly was not a historian, in fact he largely wrote books defending his stated belief in vampires and werewolves, such as the books "The Vampire: His Kith and Kin" (1928), "The Vampire in Europe" (1929), and "The Werewolf" (1933). Not exactly a mainstream author much less a mainstream historian. His goal in writing his book on the Malleus in 1928 seems to have been to promote his favorite 15th century book (which he openly supported, including the hideous tortures described therein) by claiming (falsely) that it was supposedly approved by a wide variety of authorities. Then he went on to write books about his belief in vampires and werewolves.  He's the definition of a fringe author, analogous to citing a Youtube user who makes videos called "Zombies Caught On Camera!" or "Obama Is A Reptilian!" and peddling him off as a mainstream scholar.
 * He is a valuable resource and is quoted by all historians. BTW. Isaac Newton was an alchemist. --Asterixf2 (talk) 09:59, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Enough of this nonsense. Wikipedia's rules REQUIRE us to use mainstream experts in the relevant field, which in this case is late medieval / early Renaissance HISTORY, preferably professional historians who have done in-depth research on a wide variety of relevant documents rather than just reading the Malleus itself and either accepting its claims at face value or actively promoting its claims due to a personal agenda.   I've cited plenty of respected historians but you have deleted every single one.  Ryn78 (talk) 01:53, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I consider error in the authors name 'joyy' instead of 'jolly' that occurred in multiple places in the article as obfuscation. It made verification less straightforward and furthermore, for example, the quote about spanish inquisition was put out of context and not only that, based on that it was significantly distorted and obfuscated by mixing with 2 others sources. Jolly simply discusses on this page the discourse that was stirred by malleus maleficarum and for such a popular book it's no surprise that there were some critics, especially that even Kramer and Sprenger explain that they write a book because of the criticism of their approach. However, in the same page Jolly gives the mention by Spanish inquisition due weight by writing "The cautionary advice of Spanish Inquisition in 1538 was merely another instance of the kinds of interest, and objections, that the malleus raised." Not to mention that aged malleus at that time was being replaced by newer publications that were based on malleus and of course discussed various claims. Malleus was becoming more like Old Testament and some claims were tolerated but ignored (Summers gives ethymology of femina as an example) while others like the dangers of witchcraft were upheld. Furthermore, regarding some quotes, singling out Italy without proper discussion and context gives a wrong overall impression. PS. You are misleading I have not deleted all instances of Jolly and now I have even added a proper bibliography entry for the book. --Asterixf2 (talk) 10:28, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: You said Montague Summers "is a valuable resource and is quoted by all historians". You haven't even been citing very many "historians" on this subject, so where do you get the idea that he's quoted by "all historians"? If you do a Google search for his name you'll find source after source describing him basically as a crackpot author. Comparing Isaac Newton and Summers is hardly an apt analogy, for several reasons. For one thing, Newton conducted extensive studies on science and mathematics which is the reason he's cited as an expert on those subjects, whereas Summers wrote very little about historical subjects but wrote a lot about vampires and werewolves. This article isn't about vampires and werewolves.
 * You said: "I consider error in the authors name 'joyy' instead of 'jolly' that occurred in multiple places in the article as obfuscation". This is just plain nonsense, since: 1) I didn't even write the citations that contained the typos (many other people have contributed to this article), I just fixed the typo. 2) The only reason the same typo occurred in multiple places is probably because people routinely copy and paste previous citations of the same book so they don't have to retype the whole thing. 3) I very much doubt the person(s) who wrote those citations were deliberately trying to obfuscate anything since typos occur all the time during the rapid back-and-forth editing at Wikipedia.
 * Nor was there any improper synthesis here even if the original intent of the passage was gradually changed through repeated editing, as so often happens at Wikipedia. The main point is still true nonetheless: the Spanish Inquisition actually used the "Directorium Inquisitorum", the related "Repartorium Inquisitorum", and the "Practica Officii Inquisitionis Heretice Pravitatis" rather than the Malleus (see Edward Peters' book "Inquisition", p. 60), which means the warning against the Malleus was not merely a matter of warning against using certain small portions of it because it wasn't used at all. Exhaustive studies on the actual trial transcripts prove this, because the transcripts give a precise accounting of the actual procedures used, and those procedures clearly were not borrowed from the Malleus. I've already cited plenty of historians on these subjects.
 * To try to claim the Malleus was supported by the Church, you're citing sources which merely list a few obscure clergymen who allegedly defended the Malleus, which is not official approval (even assuming that these non-historians you've been citing know the subject well enough to get it right at all). Nor do these sources indicate how the Church viewed these individual clergyman - were they also denounced as "senile and crazy" just as Kramer himself was? Moreover, certainly the Church as a whole couldn't have supported the passages in the Malleus which call for ignoring the Church's standard rules, or the passages which are in flagrant contradiction to the standard doctrine. Additionally, the citations you've given do not mention which parts of the Malleus these clergy were defending. Some parts just describe the normal aspects of any judicial process while other parts were blatantly illegal or heretical under the law and theology of the time, and other sections were just plain weird (such as its claims about clusters of penises crawling around and feeding on grain). In all likelihood the "defenders" were just defending some of the more borderline controversial parts, not the book as a whole; but your source citations don't say what they were defending.
 * In any event, you still haven't addressed many of the comments I made a couple days ago or prior to that, on issues such as your deletion of all of the Behringer citations (a respected historian). You have also deleted everything from Jenny Gibbons' article in the "International Journal of Pagan Studies", which is a scholarly journal and hence peer-reviewed, and Gibbons is a historian. She's also a Neo-Pagan, so it would be difficult to see why she would have an ideological motive for pointing out that the medieval Catholic Church didn't actually approve the Malleus. You also deleted my citations from Burns' book while simultaneously using that same book for your own citations. It's either a reliable source or it isn't - you can't have it both ways at once. Since you can't defend any of these biased edits, you've proven that you're just pushing your own POV in violation of Wikipedia's rules.
 * You recently added a quote from Brauner claiming that both "Kramer and Sprenger" presented anti-female views even though it was only Kramer who took that point of view whereas Sprenger's actual writings (outside the Malleus) are very positive towards women; as (again) many mainstream historians have pointed out (I already covered this a few days ago, which you didn't respond to). This is one of several reasons why historians reject the idea that Sprenger was a co-author, along with the patent fact that Sprenger's name wasn't even added as a co-author until over three decades after the book was written and over two decades after Sprenger's death; and one of his friends bluntly said it was a forgery. Brauner doesn't realize that because she's not a historian. Are you ever going to allow quotes from actual historians? Why do you have sole veto power over this article, by the way?
 * You also recently added a citation from "catholicculture.org", which is not a peer-reviewed academic source. Worse, you mined that article for one quote which happens to support your agenda while ignoring the numerous parts of that same article which contradict your claims. That's as bad as it gets, and violates Wikipedia policy.
 * Your edits also routinely include glaring grammatical errors such as the persistent omission of the word "the" in cases where it is required by English grammar: e.g. it should be "the Bible", "the Reformation", "the Catholic Church", "the authors", etc, etc. The sentence structure is often backwards, such as in the sentence: "About the reality and evil of witches was also convinced Martin Luther", which sounds like a parody of Yoda speaking. Some phrases are gibberish, such as "However, in the same period miraculous was accepted in the form of ordeals". I have no idea what this is intended to mean. There are now so many grammatical errors that it would take enormous effort to fix them all. You're vandalizing this article in so many ways.
 * In short, you have continued to purge virtually every point of view but your own, while claiming the medieval Church supported a book which explicitly argues against the Church's standard rules, a contradiction which is stark nonsense. Wikipedia has a rule against stark nonsense, too. Ryn78 (talk) 05:15, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

On Bias
This page is heavily biased, and should be edited by a neutral party or otherwise revised. The content of this article is thusly encyclopediac and therefore against the Manual of Style. For example, this page uses the word "misogyny" or a variation thereof at least four times to describe the article's content, even openly declaring the book to be misogynistic in the summary! In addition, the source material cited in this article is also heavily biased. Please address this and/or harass me over this. --Vami IV (talk) 17:55, 26 October 2016 (UTC) Deus Vult!
 * ...A work that claims that women are inherently weaker and are more likely to succumb to Satan's temptations and so must be monitored and persecuted is somehow not misogynistic? That's like saying that the article on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is biased for calling it antisemitic. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:50, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course there are areas that need to be expanded or modified, but your concern with the use of 'misogyny' isn't well founded. However, I do recognize the need to provide more sources for the use of this word in the lead section. ps. according to google misogyny refers to "dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women." --Asterixf2 (talk) 00:13, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Would you mind if I put in some edits to try and balance out this page when you deem it ready? If possible, I would like to resolve any issues I or other editors have with the page. I have seen examples on this very talk page of at least one disgruntled editor correcting a biased mistake you made. --Vami IV (talk) 03:12, 27 October 2016 (UTC) Deus Vult!
 * ✅ Article refers to book as misogynistic, that mistake is fixed. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:41, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * ian.thomson refers to version with multiple citations added by me after 'misogyny': --Asterixf2 (talk) 10:20, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Vami IV: The main problem is that the article is now grossly unhistorical and unbalanced, after Asterix deleted the views of mainstream historians and added mostly non-historians or amateur authors who haven't studied the subject in depth. Ryn78 (talk) 05:15, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * User Ryn78 please read WP:RS, WP:FRINGE, Tendentious editing and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. The version before your edit is this after your edit this  diff: . What I don't like (among other things): - you added the source allegedly self-published by Behringer (as you claim) that was questioned above (thread 'request for') and refused to answer the questions, you repeatedly reinstate this source in an article - you are focused on fringe pov pushing in the lead section by claiming that kramer was the sole author - you repeatedly add a discussion aimed at proving this in the lead section where it does not belong to give it maximum of undue weight (this and previous point is explained here  in the article) - you persistently add to the lead section claims that do not follow from the sources or extremely manipulative WP:ORIGINALSYN (for example condemnation by UC) - you give totally totally undue weight to the fringe statement that Kramer was obsessed with sexual habits of Helena Scheuberin, and you have repeatedly given undue weight to tendentious statements like '[he was] senile old man', '[his] excesses and sexual obsession', 'was his revenge'. - you reinstated to the lead section (of course there) removed, unsourced statement about increasingly brutal prosecution (it was removed due to a lack of citation and because main purpose of it is to tendentiously suggest that only secular courts were responsible - this is properly explained by other paragraphs in a more appropriate way) - you have moved sentence about the book bestseller to the ref block and also removed the citation(source) for this statement(!) - you have rendered all citations for misogynistic inaccessible except one (lead section). - you moved important sentence about burning at stake to reference. - you removed from the lead section, information about two books who superseded malleus as authority (demonolatry, magical investigations) - you have significantly manipulated section 'controversies' in particular by removing Mackay statement that claims that two theologians denied approving the book are unsubstantiated and INSTEAD inserting another claim that says unambiguously that they denied. - previously you have removed my tags, including request quote tag without providing a quote - many of your manipulations come from a professional propagandist handbook that circulates online and claims to reveal 'the truth', I know this because of some particular errors that have been copied - finally, you are not developing this article at all. Most of the content (99%) was added by me. Your only goal is to preserve POV pushing that was in an article before I started to rewrite it (initial version:  and latest revision with my content before your nonsense ) and you mostly focus on lead section, your additions are careless and you don't care about style or adding citations using templates that are used in an article like sfnp and you don't care about adding your books to the bibliography (for example jolly was added there by me). This time your citations rendered 15 red warnings at the bottom of the article. I have been reluctant to waste time to more scrupulously document your misbehavior, but I have pointed some of the issues to you previously on your talk page . (btw. I congratulate you the barnstar from user Vami IV involved in the discussion here, who uses exclamations like Deus Vult! in the discussions.) I am reverting your changes. --Asterixf2 (talk) 11:50, 27 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Burying body text in ref tags because you don't like it is extremely dirty pool, please don't do it. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:20, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: Claiming that I'm inserting stuff from a "propagandist handbook" (whatever that means) is nonsense: I've cited reputable historians such as Edward Peters (one of the foremost historians on the topic of inquisitorial courts), Wolfgang Behringer (likewise a respected historian), an article by Jenny Gibbons in an academic journal, etc. Why are these people "fringe"? You never offer any proof of that, you just keep making the claim while ironically citing authors who actually are fringe such as Summers (who wrote books claiming vampires are real). The rest do not belong to the correct field and therefore cannot be said to represent that field's dominant viewpoint. You keep dodging this central issue while insisting that your version is "mainstream" when it clearly isn't. Most of your other arguments hinge on this issue: for example, you claim that it's supposedly "fringe" to quote these historians on the Bishop of Brixen's comments labeling Kramer "senile and crazy" or to point out what the trial documents say about the reasons Kramer's trial at Innsbruck was shut down. None of this is "fringe" since it comes from reputable historians who are simply citing what is actually found in the documents. Likewise for so many of the other issues, for reasons I've already covered numerous times in previous notes and which you continue to dodge. You haven't presented any reputable historians who refute any of this, you just keep citing vague claims from people like Mackey (a linguist, not a historian) who vaguely alleges that certain issues are "mistaken" but without giving any evidence to back that up, nor does he address the modern historians who have made those arguments (he instead claims it all comes down to one 19th century author's views, which completely ignores the modern debate).
 * You complained about me putting some of your endless quotes from Mackey et al into the references instead of the body text, but I did that only because 1) your constant quotes from a few non-historians are a gross violation of due weight even assuming they are relevant at all. Due weight means we don't allow dozens of quotes from one author (especially if he doesn't even belong to the right field) if most other authors aren't allowed at all, or only barely mentioned. 2) I could have simply deleted all that stuff just as you kept deleting literally everything I added from historians, but instead I chose to leave it in the article but place it in the references where people can still see it. But now you're complaining about that act of leniency? Would you prefer that I instead used your method of deleting everything wholesale?
 * As for the idea that you're allegedly "improving" the article by adding so much stuff: improvement is not a matter of sheer volume of edits, but rather the quality and accuracy. Removing one entire side of the issue is not an improvement, in fact it's usually called vandalism. Filling the article with more non-historians or dubious authors like Summers (the vampire expert) is not an improvement, no matter how much of this stuff you add. Most of your edits contain numerous cases of horrendously bad grammar that often sounds like a parody of an uneducated foreign speaker (I gave examples yesterday), which is not an improvement. The fact that I've added less stuff to the article - since I don't have the time to sit online all day like you do - does not mean I haven't made a valid contribution: I'm the only one of the two of us who has cited a significant number of actual historians.
 * Finally, on the subject of your ANI charge against me: I'll just point out that you haven't merely been deleting opposing views from the lead section because you also deleted everything I added to the section labeled "Controversies". If you won't even allow this material in the "Controversies" section then you're clearly not going to allow it anywhere else either.
 * At any rate, all of this has been covered ad nauseam many times before. Will you ever acknowledge that a history article needs to quote historians? Ryn78 (talk) 05:02, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It seems that you are going to reiterate all discussions. I am not going there. Please stop ridiculing me. Your arguments are partially misguided. Saying that you are correct doesn't make you correct. As far as authors are concerned, look how many excellent sources I have added to the misogyny word. You are pushing fringe views and some PDF that you claim to be self-published by Behringer. I don't deny some other sources. The problem is that you are misrepresenting them, sometimes by omission of important information, sometimes by lack of context and in some cases simply by distortion. I am not against them per se, I am against your particular use of them. Furthermore, I assure you that my intention is to describe all those controversies in more detail to avoid misinformation. I understand your worries, but it's not possible to finish article at once and your careless edits are not helping. If you don't have time to do it properly, feel free to let me know on talk page explicitly which issues are important to you and how you would like them to be clarified in the article. --Asterixf2 (talk) 12:41, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm reading through the article now to try and assess what work needs to be done; as I mentioned on another thread I have read through the whole piece once about 3-4 years ago, but I assume much has changed since then. I certainly don't think having 6-7 citations for the work being mysogynistic benefits the reader; pick the two best sources possible that are the least contentious and use those, and ditch the rest. The footnotes in the lead are distracting; they should be moved to the body if appropriate. As for the claims of neutrality; you'll have to give me time to read through the article again, in the meantime I can only hope I can get hold of editors like and, who I know are far more knowledgeable on early modern history than I am, to see if they can offer help. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  18:54, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

PS: I believe I have fixed all the harv errors bar one which is a shortened footnote not in the bibliography. I find it's best to pick a citation style (in this case sfn / sfnp seems to be the accepted route, which is good) and stick to it, otherwise you end up generating all sorts of silly errors. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  19:53, 27 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Anyone verifying this article should keep in mind that I am questioning accuracy or weight of those citations that I have removed and not necessarily the sources (I was verifying them and in turn lost trust in Ryn78 edits). Overall, my position is that: a) proposition that Sprenger was not a co-author is fringe b) proposition that Sprenger contributed minimally is a proposition that has a significant following, but others are disputing this claim. Even in case of fringe a), as far as I have seen, not a single author says it in other way than 'suggesting' or that it is 'probable'. Authors that are in opposition to claim a) basically say that it is a conspiracy theory. Oppose to removal of citations Regarding the citations for misogynistic, it is true that they are disturbing a little the flow of an article, however I would argue that they are highly beneficial and justified in this particular case for 2 reasons: 1) they are all cited with valuable quotes (without quotes they wouldn't be that beneficial) 2) Despite 6 citations with quotes this aspect was challenged(!!!) and brought to NPOV noticeboard mainly because of this particular issue  . I am amenable to reconsideration of this aspect once the article is at much better stage of development and more stable. This is not a strong oppose.  --Asterixf2 (talk) 15:32, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Christopher Mackay
I'd like to correct misinformation by Ryn78. I have verified that Christopher Mackay is an expert philologist, that clearly specializes in Malleus Maleficarum, he is a Professor at the Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta (he has a Phd from University of Harvard). According to Wikipedia philology is most commonly defined as "the study of literary texts and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist." Mackay in his books on Malleus Maleficarum, not only thoroughly considers all the previous evidence related to authorship, but also performs expert analysis of the structure and style of the text to ascribe specific portions of text to their particular authors. As of now, as far as I know, he is also the author of the only modern, professional and complete translation of Malleus. --Asterixf2 (talk) 16:12, 28 October 2016 (UTC) The argument was made in the nineteenth century by a scholar hostile to what the Malleus stood for that the approbation was a forgery by Institoris and that Sprenger had nothing to do with the composition. The evidence for this is in my view very tenuous (and the main argument is clearly invalid). Nonetheless, once the argument was put forward, it took on a life of its own, and people continue to advance arguments in favor of the idea that Sprenger's involvement was a falsification perpetrated by Institoris, despite the fact that this argument was vitiated from the start. In addition, Mackay points out that allegations raised in support of this theory that supposedly two of the signatories had not in fact signed the approbation are unsubstantiated. (Mackay, from article) --Asterixf2 (talk) 16:38, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

For more information, please also see the corresponding section from one of the previous revisions that was written by me (it wasn't complete for sure, but there was no nonsense imo): --Asterixf2 (talk) 16:54, 28 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: You have once again removed every single viewpoint but your own from the first half of the article, while re-inserting your own POV into that same section. Yes, you finally now consented to leaving the material in the very bottom of the article, but that would only be balanced if both POVs were kept out of the top half. In other words, you can't just consign the views of respected historians to the bottom of the article while using your amateur authors or dabblers in the rest. Your continuing insistence that these respected historians are "fringe" while the amateurs and dabblers are mainstream historians is rather astounding, and seems to be based entirely on the fact that the dabblers and amateurs happen to support your view, or they are the only ones you've read. Do you realize that the pop view of many subjects in history is quite a bit different than the views of professional historians? The pop view may be more accessible and more commonplace, but that's precisely because it isn't written by the few researchers who have conducted in-depth studies on the subject.
 * You also keep claiming that I'm distorting what the sources say or that only one source backs up most of the issues they mention, which isn't true. Just to use one example: the rejection of the Malleus by the Cologne faculty is backed up by multiple historians (e.g. Jenny Gibbons also says that). I could add additional sources for all these points if you'd ever give me time rather than continuing your frantic pace (look at all the edits you made yet again by sitting online all day long). The discussion process is supposed to mean actually taking the time to discuss things before you add a deluge of additional edits that I have to wade through.
 * Regarding the material you added about the misogyny issue: yes, the book is very anti-woman beyond any doubt; but there's no need for an entire paragraph in the lead to pound this point over and over unless you want to include most of it in the refs so people can click on those to see details if they want. You added most of this material only as a rebuttal to Vami during the misogyny debate, which should not be carried on in the article itself. Present your proofs here instead. I would add that this issue is ironic in light of the Sprenger debate, since the anti-woman tone of the Malleus is one of the many reasons why Sprenger - a very pro-woman fellow - could not have written it.
 * On the issue of Mackay: I know he's a philologist who analyzes texts; but: 1) he focuses mostly on ancient Greek and Latin texts (wrong time period, wrong languages since even Latin changed quite a bit between the 1st century and 15th); and 2) in order to analyze this particular text, he would need to have conducted an exhaustive study on the many historical events mentioned in the Malleus or related to the issues it covers, otherwise he's just accepting the Malleus' claims at face value. Worse, the quotes from him which you've again repeated here are STILL just the same vague and rather smug assurances that he's debunked it all. You haven't summarized whatever his evidence may be, as I summarized the evidence presented by the people I've been citing, nor is there any indication he's even addressing the specific arguments made by the historians I'm citing since your quote still just mentions only a 19th century author and then implies that modern historians are just copying from him, which isn't the case. If, as you claim, he presents more detailed evidence in his book, then you need to summarize that evidence. Your version of the article makes it sound as if Mackay is the only true expert (because Mackay says so) which is POV to say the least; and you then relegate the historians I've cited to a brief mention as conspiracy theorists. That's an intentionally dismissive, loaded presentation designed to paint these respected historians as nothing but fringe conspiracy nuts, which isn't remotely true. It'a also blatant POV-pushing because you can't prove that Mackey is right and all these other scholars are wrong. That section therefore needs to be changed to provide at least an even playing field, and frankly specialists on this subject should be given a greater priority over someone who doesn't specialize in it. Note that I'm not saying Mackay should be removed, but he can't be presented as the supreme authority on these matters.
 * You added yet another new entire section of text to the article while we're still discussing existing sections. That needs to stop: it's just a return to your old habit of pushing in as much of your own material as possible without giving me the time to adequately analyze it and respond. That's not a good-faith discussion. Your additions also contain the usual bad grammar (why do you always leave out the word "the", for crying out loud?) which I would need to tediously fix since you never bother to proofread your own material. That also needs to stop, because it makes the article sound amateurish at best, and creates more work for other people. I've therefore commented that section out until we get done discussing the stuff you previously added.
 * I've also restored the earlier version of the beginning of the article, since we're still discussing that as well. You can't just keep purging that of all countervailing views without reaching consensus. That's supposed to be the entire point of discussion. If I've unwittingly also restored some other stuff to that section, then that was due to the fact that I don't have time to tediously copy and paste individual sentences one at a time (it's after 4 am, and I have to "get up" in an hour).
 * From now on, you need to slow down your pace. Adding nearly a hundred new edits per day, every day, continuously all day long for 18 hours or more per day, plus all the other stuff you've been posting about this same article in other discussion pages all over Wikipedia, is an absurdly large volume as well as violating the entire point of discussion since we never work out an agreement on anything before you add even more stuff that needs to be discussed. It also creates an undue burden on those of us who have work in "real life" to do. You clearly don't have a job or other responsibilities, but some of us do. Good-faith discussion means showing some consideration for the time constraints of other people. Ryn78 (talk) 09:15, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Ryn78 edits 29 October 2016 (my date)
This is related to 2 consecutive edits, starting with by.

--Asterixf2 (talk) 12:44, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) My work related to version by Ryn78 started with this edit . I have made several edits giving appropriate edit summaries and with careful approach to his citations which resulted, in my opinion, in a lot of bad content staying in the article.
 * 2) I have been developing article (new content) starting with this edit .  I have expanded this article immensely previously, I am referring to recent additions here
 * 3) Ryn78 with this edit  has completely hidden whole new section written by me by commenting it out not removing so that it is not evident in the history that he removed a lot of valuable content. This is a permanent link to this section (and the last version of page before his edits)
 * 4) He has not complained reasonably about its contents, just wrote "You added yet another new entire section of text to the article while we're still discussing existing sections." and that grammar is bad :)
 * 5) Ryn78 with this edit  reintroduced his pov pushing.
 * 6) He reintroduced statement to the lead that Kramer was a sole author, which is in conflict with the most credible and authoritative source (I have explained it here ). Also with Encyclopedia Britannica and other sources.
 * 7) He changed in lead section "that is misogynistic" to "that is today perceived as misogynistic" which is weird at least.
 * 8) He removed properly sourced quote from Levack.
 * 9) He has hidden "It was a bestseller, second only to Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years." in ref block. (he uses this tactic repeatedly)
 * 10) He has hidden 3 properly sourced and very important sentences (with quotes) from lead section in a note (mentions of Demonolatry and Magical investigations).
 * 11) He has given undue weight in the lead section to "and because of Kramer's obsession with the sexual habits of one of the accused, Helena Scheuberin" not only that - relation of this was distorted by Ryn78. a) What source says is that interrogation led to a break in the proceedings. b) source doesn't say he was obsessed with her 'sexual habits', but explicitly says he was obsessed with establishing a link between her habits and witchcraft which is important in his theory. Also he manipulatively writes illegal behavior of Kramer and ignore the fact that source says about a argument related to his legal appointment not to some sexual behavior which your sentence suggests.
 * 12) He reinstated statement that does not have any citation, simply to suggest to the reader that only royal courts prosecuted without church's involvement, which a) is not fully true b) is redundant because this aspect is properly described in a paragraph starting with Malleus elevates in lead section.
 * 13) He gives undue weight to statement by behringer ( fragment "name was added") and adds unsourced manipulative statement at the end of the same sentence.
 * 14) He removed citation without explanation (without removing sourced sentence "public penances such as a day in the stocks) without explanation. (this is not the first time, it may lead to deterioration of citations)
 * 15) He constantly complains that he doesn't have time to handle edits properly. Also, he is not adding any new content.
 * 16) He doesn't care about proper threading in talk page and his arguments are not convincing to me. Perhaps for an uninvolved person they may prima facie look ok, but they lack substance. For example, Ryk78 writes "It'a also blatant POV-pushing because you can't prove that Mackey is right and all these other scholars are wrong.". This is the error he constantly makes. He has his opinions (or agenda I don't know) and de facto thinks that discussion is irrelevant. His long comments in talk page obfuscate it.
 * 17) He completely ignored my explanation why Mackay is the most credible source in this article, here on RS noticeboard : https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Malleus_Maleficarum&oldid=746751525#Christopher_Mackay ( updated permalink :  ).
 * 18) He is so critical of Mackay, an excellent source, and at the same time is using completely unreliable PDF allegedly self-published by Behringer about which I have complained here  and I agree with, other 2 comments are useless by GBRV and Guy Macon in my opinion.
 * 19) It's also very important that almost all of the above he is doing repetitively.
 * 20) My objections to his previous actions are here:  (permalink: ).
 * 21) Once again, I'd like to emphasize the very first point above in this list.
 * 22) PS. here is a complaint by other user about praised by Ryn78 author Jenny Gibbons (mentioned by Ryn multiple times) . Gibbons bio: . "holder of an MA in Medieval Studies with a focus on the Christian conversion of Western Europe, medieval magick, and The Burning Times" Furthermore, the citation is from a "journal" that is in my opinion unreliable, it is edited by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chas_S._Clifton without any academic credentials. He is a member of "American Academy of Religion". However, American Academy of Religion among its members has also "... students, and interested lay-people." RS Noticeboard:  (permalink to the discussion in RS noticeboard: )
 * 23) For additional consideration  Darova is inactive and I can't find any info about that.


 * Asterix: I already explained why I reverted your removal of the historians I've cited: we're supposed to be discussing that very same material to work out a consensus, which means it's inappropriate for you to just delete it (yet again) before discussion has resolved anything. It's also inappropriate, as I already explained, to keep adding section after section of new material pushing the same POV when we haven't worked out an agreement on the older material. In addition to the new section you added yesterday, you had also steadily added several others in previous days.
 * Some of the other things you're objecting to were just bits and pieces of material that I accidentally restored because the nearly 50 edits you made to the article yesterday combined so many individual POV edits mixed in with a large number of more legitimate edits that I couldn't just revert the bad stuff alone without a lot of tedious work. This is your fault, for deluging this article with so many edits each day that it becomes difficult to manage it. I'm going to make mistakes, especially at 4 am. Again: Wikipedia discussions are not supposed to be a contest to see who can exhaust the other side by making endless edits each day. I don't do that to you, which you ironically criticized by claiming it means I'm not contributing (!) I don't even know what to say to that.
 * I tried to fix the mistakes from yesterday's edit in my edit today.
 * On the issue of Mackay: you didn't address my arguments on that point so there's no need to present those arguments yet again; but I will add that you claim Mackay is the foremost authority just because he published a recent translation, and yet you ignore the other recent translation by Behringer and Jerouschek in 2000. So why wouldn't Behringer and Jerouschek count as two of the chief authorities? At least Behringer has also studied enough of the other documents to place the Malleus in proper context, rather than just translating it and accepting its claims at face value.
 * On the issue of the academic journal that Gibbons' article was in: if you're now going to claim that even academic journals are invalid, then that's just ridiculous. You haven't presented any legitimate reasons for invalidating it, and you're only objecting to it because her article contradicts your own viewpoint. Meanwhile, you cited an article from catholicculture.org which isn't an academic source at all, but you think that's a valid source. You've cited a book by Montague Summers, a non-academic who was most famous for his books arguing that vampires and werewolves are real, but you think that's a valid source.
 * In any event, thank you for not adding more stuff (or deleting stuff you don't like) in the article today while we're discussing things. Maybe we can finally work out a compromise. Ryn78 (talk) 02:06, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Please enumerate (number) all your arguments in discussions and refer to numbered mine with explicit references to their numbers.
 * Please do not distort my arguments and don't use misleading arguments. Please also see Appeal to ridicule
 * I'd like to additionally highlight that you have hidden within HTML comment this secion: (permalink) --Asterixf2 (talk) 11:18, 30 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: Regarding your "disruption" notice claiming I've had "ownership issues since 2013" and the idea I'm adding misleading information: firstly, up until about two weeks ago I had only rarely edited the article (as anyone can see by looking at the edit history prior to that point). Secondly, I've added sources written by historians and in many cases given direct quotes. Your constant allegations of "manipulation" have been refuted ad nauseam. The "ownership" claim is ironic given the hundreds of edits you've made just in the last few days.
 * I also have addressed the other issues you have again commented on, such as why I made mistakes while trying to restore material you had deleted (mistakes which I fixed, by the way); and the reasons I commented out the latest new section you added before we had worked out an agreement on the old sections. It's improper to keep adding more of your own material while the article is supposed to be under discussion. Adamfinmo backed me up on this by removing two of your notices and by thanking me for my restoration of the deleted material and for commenting out your new section.
 * And no, I'm not going to draw up an enormous list reiterating every single point that we've already discussed a dozen times before, not until you actually address my previous comments on these points. For example, you still haven't provided any counter-argument to many of my comments about Mackay. To summarize those arguments (yet again) just to use this one issue as an example: yes, he wrote a recent translation. So has Behringer. So why is Mackay the foremost expert while Behringer isn't? Why is Mackay qualified to analyze the text if he doesn't even study the right field?  A philologist doesn't magically gain knowledge about a wide range of medieval documents just because he's a philologist. At least Behringer specializes in this time period and the specific issues relating to witch trials and inquisitorial courts, and has therefore read a great many relevant documents aside from just the Malleus.  But I've said all this so many times before, I don't know what point there is in even continuing to ask you to finally address these issues.
 * On a final point, I reverted Vami's changes. I would think there should be a way to reach a compromise wording on that issue, but instead you tried to get him banned for one set of edits.   Ryn78 (talk) 02:42, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I see that you don't care about clarity since you have ignored my request for numbering. Again, here is dementi to your Mackay arguments . Again, here is clarification to Behringer issue . For other issues see beginning of this thread. Here is the section "Reception" that was hidden by Ryn78 with html tags (so it didn't show up as removal of a lot of content): . Ryn78 has not given any real arguments which I clarified above regarding this section and yes, he is WP:Civil POV pushing since 2013 (he is focusing on a few aspects and reinstates the same / similar statements). In my opinion his edits do not add much value to the article (with the exception of doing revert to Vami IV obviously scandalous edit discussed here after I had raised this issue to ANI (permalink)). However, I understand that he may have a different perspective on this. --Asterixf2 (talk) 08:28, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: All you did was link to the stuff you had already posted some time ago, rather than addressing my responses to those same posts.  You're not "discussing" anything. Just to use one example which maybe we can focus on as a first step to finally reach a consensus on at least one issue: you keep claiming that Mackay should be given priority because he wrote a recent translation. I've pointed out that Wolfgang Behringer also wrote a recent translation, and he has studied the relevant subjects in depth and written other books on those subjects, whereas Mackay hasn't. I'm perfectly willing to include Mackay's views, but he can't be presented as the supreme authority on this subject while only briefly mentioning historians such as Behringer (and the others I've cited). If you would agree to allow a more balanced presentation that doesn't privilege Mackay over everyone else, then we can decide whether to A) just list their various views one by one without giving any of them primary focus, or B) follow the normal procedure for a history article by giving greater weight to the historians.  Ryn78 (talk) 02:02, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * (1) Again, here is dementi to your Mackay arguments related to your use of word 'historians'. Again, here is clarification to Behringer issue  related to your suggestion to use historians. (2) Thank you for finally starting apparently meaningful conversation. I must point out that it was not followed by any particular actions in the article by Ryn78 so this remains void so far. (3) The issue is that you push sole authorship to the lead section as unambiguous consensus in the field. In my opinion, what is most appropriate is to say that they are both authors but to mention the controversy in the last paragraph of the lead section that some (not many because it is proportional and there is no source) historians have argued that it was written primarily by Kramer. For mention of sole authorship in the last paragraph of lead section please provide a reliable source. In particular, it is important whether the author says that it is "highly probable" or "certain", whether he suggests or claims so that we can write it in the same way (how Behringer writes about it?). Broedel for example writes that it is certain that Sprenger was a co-author. If you agree on this kind of treatment I will not argue for using term 'conspiracy theory' for sole authorship and it's appropriate to describe theories in controversies section. However, I'd argue that Mackay as a person in a field which is more specialized in establishing authenticity should be given WP:DUE weight. Also, I think that it should be taken into account that Britannica completely ignores Hansen's theory of sole authorship. What do you think? --Asterixf2 (talk) 14:05, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: On the issue of Sprenger's authorship: since this is debated by historians and rejected by many, the lede shouldn't just state that "Kramer and Sprenger" wrote it as if that's an undisputed fact. Kramer is the only undisputed author. Even Broedel says that Sprenger probably only wrote one small portion, and others (who I've mentioned previously) point out that Sprenger's name doesn't appear as an author until 1519 and one of his friends said it was falsely attributed to him. The lede can state that some authors believe Sprenger was a co-author and some believe otherwise; but it shouldn't state Sprenger's authorship as a proven fact. I think we should be able to work out a compromise on this.
 * You repeated your argument that Mackay belongs to a field specializing in authenticating documents; but historians also do that, and the only way to authenticate documents is to study the relevant documents in depth. Mackay doesn't even focus on the right time period, much less the specific range of subjects that would be relevant to the Malleus.
 * It looks like Softlavender was trying to remove only an "empty section" but accidentally also removed the comment code I had added around the Reception section, so I restored that code. The reason I added it, and Adamfinmo backed me up on that, was because discussion becomes meaningless if one side is allowed to keep adding more material promoting their own POV before any agreement has been worked out on their previous material promoting their own POV. I didn't delete it, and it can be easily re-added again. But we need to discuss previous sections first before you add even more. Ryn78 (talk) 02:23, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * (1) Your arguments allegedly come from Behringer and you don't even have a reliable source for that. Again, here is dementi to your Mackay arguments . Again, here is clarification to Behringer issue (2) Softlavender has not reverted her restoration of this section after I have explicitly pointed it out to her that she had restored it so your statements are unjustified. (3) Broedel and Mackay are best secondary sources accessible for this topic. They are dedicated to Malleus. Please don't depreciate them because it's grotesque. And they both say that Sprenger is the coauthor. Summers is not recent but quoted by all historians and also reliable as far as reported facts are concerned but when in doubt it's better to attribute them to him. Summers is also a secondary source and he reached a similar conclusion to Mackay and Broedel. Other, more general sources on Witchcraft are tertiary sources. --Asterixf2 (talk) 08:20, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Exaggerations(?) of the kind "extreme misogyny"
See Important information related to current exaggerations(?) in the article related to 'misogyny' aspect that were introduced by a user who previously, to the contrary, complained about its use --Asterixf2 (talk) 20:00, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Please stop using article talk pages to comment on editor conduct. If there is an editor issue take it to the dispute resolution noticeboard or ani. This notice could have been left in a manner that doesn't poison the well.--Adam in MO (talk) 17:36, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * He already did take it to ANI (for no good reason), but he keeps posting reminders that he took it to ANI (who knows why). Ryn78 (talk) 02:02, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Removal of It was a bestseller, second only to Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years statement
Hi. Thank you for restoring section Reception. However, I have noticed that in the same accompanying edit you have removed the statement It was a bestseller, second only to Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years (this edit) with the reason "removed non-substantiating reference". I'd like to clarify that this reason is not valid. This is because this phrase was not meant to substantiate preceding statements but it was an independent statement unrelated to word misogynistic that was hidden in a ref block by Ryn78 in this edit (btw. this previous edit is also more broadly discussed here). I kindly ask you to restore this statement. --Asterixf2 (talk) 10:54, 1 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The statement "It was a bestseller, second only to Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years" does not substantiate "that is misogynistic", and moreover it has nothing whatsoever to do with that claim, so no, I'm not going to restore it and it should not be there. Softlavender (talk)
 * As I have written, this was an independent claim in the lead section unrelated to the word misogynistic and it was accompanied by a source. Citation was visible in a source code of page, for some reason it wasn't visible in an article after moving to ref block by Ryn78. --Asterixf2 (talk) 11:10, 1 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterixf2, you can't edit to add extra text to your post after someone has replied to it, as you did here, and then claimed above that you had written that in the first place. You hadn't. I'm not going to replace the note because it does not substantiate what it is appended to, and it adds to the ref bloat after "that is misogynistic". If someone wants to place it after something it actually substantiates, that would be fine. Softlavender (talk) 11:22, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * (1) It seemed obvious to me that I can add small clarifications with &lt;ins&gt; tags. I am not sure if you are correct. (2) It doesn't need to substantiate any other statement because this is an independent claim that was buried (obscured) in ref block by Ryn78.    --Asterixf2 (talk) 11:27, 1 November 2016 (UTC)


 * (1) No, an underscore normally represents emphasis, and no one can see your codes, and that was not a "small clarification". And you certainly can't then claim that you already said something that you hadn't. If you haven't already said it in your post, do not add anything substantive to matters that have already been replied to in a current ongoing conversation. Write whatever it is in your reply, not in the original post. (2) Notes always substantiate or refer to what they are appended to; the statement neither substantiates nor refers to "that is misogynistic", so it does not belong there. -- Softlavender (talk) 11:45, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You refuse to get the point . --Asterixf2 (talk) 12:15, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix has a point here: from the time it was added to the time it was hidden in ref tags by Ryn, the "bestseller" sentence was just a statement about the popularity of the book and not part of the swarm of citations surrounding the word "misogynist". -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:28, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Anyone can add the statement into the article, if it is substantiated by a reliable source. Just not as a reference after "that is misogynistic", which was what I removed -- a reference following "that is misogynistic" which not only did not substantiate that, but which also had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Softlavender (talk) 16:34, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've restored it with the source it had before. It looks like that created a cite error since we now quote the same page (from the same book (by the same author (etc.))) in two different ways, but I'm not familiar enough with the ref system to fix it. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:54, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I fixed the error. Asterixf2 (talk) 17:16, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

SOURCES: Broedel and Mackay are best secondary sources accessible for this topic
(1) Ryn78, your arguments allegedly come from Behringer but you don't even have a reliable source for that. Again, here is dementi to your Mackay arguments. Again, here is clarification to Behringer issue (2) Broedel and Mackay are best secondary sources accessible for this topic. They are dedicated to Malleus. Please don't depreciate them because it's grotesque. And they both say that Sprenger is the coauthor. Summers is not recent but quoted by all historians and also reliable as far as reported facts are concerned but when in doubt it's better to attribute them to him. Summers is also a secondary source and he reached a similar conclusion to Mackay and Broedel. Other, more general sources on Witchcraft are tertiary sources. here is the summary of sources in the article --Asterixf2 (talk) 15:00, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: Broedel only "supports" your view with the tenuous statement that Sprenger "probably" wrote a tiny portion of the book, which isn't exactly an endorsement of the view that he was a full co-author - it's more analogous to someone writing the intro to a book, in which case they wouldn't be listed as a co-author at all.
 * On the rest: you AGAIN just kept referring me to the same links without addressing my points. I already explained what the normal procedure would be for ranking sources - i.e. people in the relevant field who have studied the issues in depth would normally be given preference. Behringer fits that situation, Mackay is debatable. You haven't presented any legitimate reason to "de-authenticate" the Behringer source and the link you provided ironically includes opinions against your position by multiple people.
 * On the ANI page you claimed that the Gibbons article was "effectively self-published", which is nonsense. It's in an academic journal. The only reason you're trying to find excuses for rejecting these two sources is because they contradict your preferred viewpoint. That's not a valid reason. Ryn78 (talk) 02:41, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 *  Again, here is dementi to your Mackay arguments . Again, here is clarification about your Behringer source Again, here is the clarification about your Gibbons source . The position of Broedel is the following:"Broedel (2003), pp. 18-20: 'Although Sprenger certainly wrote the Apologia auctoris which prefaces the Malleus, and did so in terms that strongly suggest his active participation in its writing, nonetheless because the work is of one piece stylistically (and Institoris definitely wrote the third part of the text single-handedly), and because the Malleus throughout reflects Institoris’ known preoccupations, it is likely that beyond lending the work the prestige of his name, Sprenger’s contribution was minimal. [...] Institoris and Sprenger wrote the Malleus with several stated objectives: first, it was to refute critics who denied the reality of witchcraft [...]'"Mackay writes: "Mackay (2009), p. 5: 'The argument is frequently made that the description of the work as a joint composition is a falsehood perpetrated by Institoris, who in fact wrote the whole thing himself. For this claim, there is little solid evidence. [...] Later scholars have attempted to add small pieces to the argument, but it is fundamentally nugatory. [...] In any event, what good would it do Institoris? He was clearly a man of no little prominence in his own right as both inquisitor and theologian, and he did not need to steal the name of a scholar from Cologne who was most noted for his propagation of the Rosary to validate his work about sorcery." --Asterixf2 (talk) 12:30, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: Broedel, by your own description, says:  "Sprenger’s contribution was minimal". He says he wrote only the preface, not the main text itself. Your quotes from Mackay are just repetitions of the same very vague claims that I've commented on before: does Mackay ever present any evidence to back up his claims? Because historians like Behringer present exhaustive evidence to back up his own view, so if you want to cite Mackay as a reputable source for the opposing view then his referenced statements need to actually address and refute Behringer's evidence (or similar authors), not just make vague statements against a phantom.
 * And you've once again - for something like the fifth or sixth time (!) - presented the same links to information I've already argued against, rather than addressing my arguments against it. This is becoming a charade. Ryn78 (talk) 02:26, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Each time those replies apply I may copy them. I don't see any problem with that. We are not here to analyze evidence but to report what reliable sources say. --Asterixf2 (talk) 10:34, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Working copy with additions by Ryn78 highlighted
It is available here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asterixf2/sandbox/Malleus_Maleficarum/article when changes are highlighted it is easier to see what is disputed. Some changes, like my addition of the second author are not highlighted, only his text. Here is the summary of used sources --Asterixf2 (talk) 16:01, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * We should stick to this article here, not one that has been pasted somewhere else. If you have a proposal about this article, please make it.--Adam in MO Talk 02:16, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Is there a suggestion about how to improve this article? --Adam in MO Talk 22:35, 3 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Antu face-sad.svg 03.11.2016 link to the diff and article version reverted by Adamfinmo (Adam in MO) who reverted all new additions in the article not only contentious, this was partial integration with my version (permalink) it contains improved lead section with both authors ( supported with 6 citations, including ALL reliable secondary sources in the article ), significantly improved statements by Mackay in controversies section, additions by Ryn78 moved to controversies (although they violate WP:RS). It also contains other improvements. I suggest to restore this version (but unreliable sources should be later removed). Adamfinmo, please do not remove my comments what you do repeatedly. And above, between your two comments you have just left a link to my talk page... not wasting my revert is preferred --Asterixf2 (talk) 21:36, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I will continue to remove or strikethrough all improper usage of article talk space. This talk page is for discussion of improvements to the article. If you have other comments to make, whether they be on editor behavior, or simply logging edits, as you have bizzarly done here, should be done somewhere else. I'd also like to remind you Asterixf2, that you have used your 1 revert for this article for today. Please don't re-add irrelevent comments to talk pages. --Adam in MO Talk 00:46, 4 November 2016 (UTC)


 * To Ryn78 doubts I have replied in the thread above. --Asterixf2 (talk) 23:03, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As far as his unreliable sources (as I see it) and additions are concerned, I suggest to rewrite this material with other sources (some claims appear to be nonsensical and probably won't be found in any reliable source) and with WP:DUE weight. However, it turns out that critical issue is the authorship. I don't understand why there are any doubts. Information about authorship in reliable secondary sources is pretty straightforward. I have added in my proposal adequate mention that there is no consensus to what extent Sprenger contributed. All accessible secondary sources say he is a coauthor. --Asterixf2 (talk) 23:34, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: He reverted your edit because you can't just force in your preferred version without consensus since that nullifies the entire point of discussion. Your edit was basically just a variation of your original version, and your attempted defense is little more than a repetition of your original claims, as if there has been no discussion. We're supposed to be working out a consensus here, which you're clearly unwilling to do.
 * You again claimed that my sources aren't RSs, but you haven't presented any valid reasons for that. You posted stuff about these sources at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard but failed to get agreement in support of your position, and yet you still claim to have proven your case. Ryn78 (talk) 02:26, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Conditional Proposal

 * If you won't cooperate constructively I will argue to ignore sole authorship completely in the lead section. Please let me know what do you think about this version (permalink; notice 'most likely' and the last paragraph). This is a complete lead section. With this version the condition is that you will accept my other changes as in this version reverted by Adam in MO, remove Gibbons and describe Behringer's position with proper sources and attribution, contain it within Controversies section except events related to Insbruck and Ravensburg trials which we should place in proper subsubsections of already existing 'Preceding publication' subsection. I reserve the right to withdraw from this proposal at any time both before or after you agree and without any reason, but especially if you or any other user will distort sources or use questionable sources. What do you think? --Asterixf2 (talk) 19:02, 4 November 2016 (UTC)


 * No, this is not how Wikipedia works. If you have a suggestion for the lead, post it here so it will remain in the talk page history. As for the rest of your proposal, it isn't even worth commenting on. It is actually pretty silly. --Adam in MO Talk 19:51, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Is this now wrong to propose a compromise? Are you going to disrupt consensus building? --Asterixf2 (talk) 21:55, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Are you fucking with me or something? This will be, at least, the third time I have asked you to post your proposed changes here so we can discuss them. Don't edit your posts after they have been responded to. You have been warned about this before. --Adam in MO Talk 23:09, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As I understand, Adamfinmo (Adam in MO) refers to my clarification made with &lt;ins&gt; tags --Asterixf2 (talk) 23:41, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That's the same one you didn't redo the time stamp on. Yes that one. So, for the fifth time, are you going to paste in your proposed changes so we can discuss them?--Adam in MO Talk 00:27, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: So I have to either agree to accept your version or you will completely strip out every last mention of anything that goes against your opinion? If/when you're ready to finally have a real discussion, let me know. Ryn78 (talk) 02:41, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I didn't say that. To the contrary. --Asterixf2 (talk) 10:24, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Conditional Proposal - lead section only

 * Please expand boxes to render citations clickable.

The Malleus Maleficarum usually translated as Hammer of Witches is the best known and the most important treatise on witchcraft first published in German city Speyer in 1486 and written by Catholic clergymen Heinrich Krämer (Henricus Institoris)  and most likely Jacob (Jacobus) Sprenger  who were professors of theology and inquisitors. It endorses extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a comprehensive legal and theological framework that is misogynistic. It was a bestseller, second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years.

Malleus elevates sorcery to the criminal status of heresy and prescribes inquisitorial practices for secular courts in order to extirpate witches. The recommended procedures include torture to effectively obtain confessions and death penalty as the only sure remedy against evils of witchcraft. At that time, it was typical to burn heretics alive at the stake and Malleus encouraged the same treatment of witches.

The book had enormous influence in its time that continued for a couple of centuries. Amongst the authors on witchcraft it had an ultimate authority and even 17th century "dominican chroniclers, such as Quétif and Échard, number Kramer and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their Order". Malleus was ubiquitous, but at the end of the 16th century its role as a theoretical authority was superseded by Demonolatry by witch-hunter Nicholas Rémy and Magical Investigations by Jesuit Martin del Rio.

There is no consensus to what extent Sprenger contributed to the work.





What do you think? --Asterixf2 (talk) 21:56, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Notes from ANI

 * Note: please remember that with your last revert you discarded my 6,000-long addition. This is just a remainder, not a complaint. --Asterixf2 (talk) 22:05, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note2: Mackay, Summers and Broedel say there are 2 authors. For example, Broedel consistently uses the phrase of the kind "Institoris and Sprenger do xyz in their book". I am not going to distort those sources. Mackay's position and his explanation is here. In fact, I am on the edge of withdrawing from the idea that "and most likely" should be used in this section. ALL secondary sources adopt a view that HE IS a coauthor. --Asterixf2 (talk) 22:21, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note3: Also, if he acknowledged that his sources are inappropriate we could constructively think about some other sources to represent Behringer's views. --Asterixf2 (talk) 22:48, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

 * To make this more manageable, I'm going to reply to everything in one response rather than several different sections. And please stop adding more sections, because it creates a hopeless mess (to reply, I have to hunt back through several sections to find the right spot(s) to post each reply).
 * Since your suggested draft for the lede is over 21,000 characters long, I'm going to have to wade through it all as time permits. But just to make a few initial observations:
 * It gives us something constructive to discuss, which is a big step forward; and it does seem to make some attempts to compromise.
 * You often still aren't using the word "the" where it is required by English grammar (e.g. it should be "THE death penalty", "THE Church" etc).
 * Your version is still unbalanced: you make it seem as if the Malleus was universally approved when it fact it was condemned by a great many theologians; you make it sound as if Kramer and Sprenger were close colleagues when in fact Sprenger banned Kramer from preaching or even entering Dominican convents within his jurisdiction; etc. The only concession you made was to state that there is debate over how much Sprenger contributed to the Malleus, but while still strongly implying that he definitely did. Professsor H.C. Erik Midelfort wrote a review of Mackay's book in which he said that Behringer and other historians have "made the better case" in their argument that Sprenger couldn't have been a co-author; and this is in fact a common view among historians who have studied the subject in any depth.
 * You still have an enormous number of footnotes to back up the misogyny issue. You originally added these footnotes as a rebuttal to Vami's arguments (which should have been made to Vami on the talk page rather than inserting your proof into the article itself). Why does it need so many footnotes for that one phrase?
 * Nonetheless I think we can work out a compromise. I'll look over the rest of the text when I have time and make some suggestions for changing some portions of it.
 * Farther up in a different section, you said: "We are not here to analyze evidence but to report what reliable sources say." I HAVE been discussing what the sources say, by citing what several historians have said on these issues. You haven't been replying to my responses, you just keep citing links to stuff you wrote a week ago.
 * You also said you hadn't threatened to remove all countervailing views if I refused to accept your draft. Here's what you said: "If you won't cooperate constructively I will argue to ignore sole authorship completely in the lead section...With this version the condition is that you will accept my other changes". Maybe I misinterpreted this, but it certainly sounds like you're basically saying I have to accept this version or you will remove all mention of the view that Kramer was the sole author. I'm not sure what you meant by "the condition is that you will accept my other changes". All of this sounds like an ultimatum rather than discussing the various points and working out a compromise, but maybe I misinterpreted.
 * You said (again) that Mackay and Broedel are allegedly the two best sources, while refusing to address my arguments against that. Besides, if Broedel is the second of those "two best sources" then why do you only cite him a few times, while including large numbers of quotes from Brauner? Or are you planning to remove most of the material from Brauner?
 * You also claimed that "ALL secondary sources adopt a view that HE IS a coauthor". How on earth can you claim that, unless you've convinced yourself that all the sources I've presented are "fake" (including the piece by Midelfort)? You certainly haven't proven that. Ryn78 (talk) 04:11, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * as time permits; I'll look over the rest of the text when I have time I will wait to give you more time before responding. I encourage you to change your position. Additions of lacking 'the' and other changes to fix similar obvious grammatical omissions or errors are perfectly acceptable within the scope of proposal. --Asterixf2 (talk) 02:07, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I already provided quite a few comments that we can discuss. I can add more later. Ryn78 (talk) 03:42, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: You didn't reply to the points I made two days ago. If you need more time, that's fine. Ryn78 (talk) 03:11, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It seemed like you wanted to add or change something that is why I am giving you more time. When you are referencing your previous statements or arguments please do it precisely. --Asterixf2 (talk) 00:10, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Just scroll upwards a little bit - my comments are right there. Ryn78 (talk) 02:53, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I acknowledge your rejection of my proposal and consider it no longer binding. You also have repeatedly ignored my request to use numbered lists.


 * 1) misogynyD` footnotes were not a rebuttal of Vami's arguments because there were none. I wrote longer reply in response to Ritchie in . Nonetheless, to make you happy, I have bundled them together WP:CITEBUNDLE.
 * 2) approvalD` yes, secondary sources say that Malleus met with almost universal approval. The debate is discussed in Reception section that you have hidden in HTML tags. Your statements are unsourced. I don't give weight to your personal opinion e.g. great many theologians
 * 3) midelfortD` I will reply to this in my new proposals (in the article). and this is in fact a common view among historians who have studied the subject in any depth - unsourced personal opinion. How on earth can you claim that, unless you've convinced yourself that all the sources I've presented are "fake" (including the piece by Midelfort)? 1. You mentioned Midlefort for the first time in this comment. 2. This book review is not a secondary source about this topic but a secondary source about Mackay's book. Yes, all secondary sources say Sprenger is coauthor. 3. This piece by Midelfort also makes clear that  - he has not claimed he was a sole author.
 * 4) conditions "With this version the condition is that you will accept my other changes" The sentenced ended in "...will accept my other changes as in this version reverted by Adam in MO " ("as in this..." was added long before you replied) --Asterixf2 (talk) 21:55, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Notification and link to authorship argument
FYI: the thread below I use  just as an example to show what kind of stuff is in the article. WP:Civil POV pushing. Ryn78 also repeatedly fails to apply WP:Talk and even ignored my multiple requests to use ordered lists or number his arguments. Also, I have referenced the Arbitration Committee ruling below that says section Reception cannot be removed.

FYI also. --Asterixf2 (talk) 19:42, 14 November 2016

WARNING about blatant propaganda; also new proposals 14.11.2016
Diff to the edit 14.11.2016. First in a series of consecutive edits. Final version permalink. Before replying, please see WP:Talk You may also want to see to see claims pov pushed by Ryn78 highlighted. Note that those highlights are on an older version of the article that doesn't contain current proposals.

Is this a joke? (C01)
Anchor: C01

Ryn78 has repeatedlyexamples reinstated into the article the following claims: Jacob Sprenger's name was added as an author beginning in 1519, 33 years after the book's first publication and 24 years after Sprenger's death; but the veracity of this late addition has been questioned by many historians for various reasons.

This claim is in the lead section. In case you are serious:
 * 1) Claim C01-1:
 * 2) Sprenger was named as the author since the very first edition. For citations supporting this check new references and notes in here.
 * 3) This claim by Ryn78 was "supported" with the unreliable and highly manipulative source that was discussed here. This source says Only in 1519, decades after Sprenger’s death, was he named as author on a front page. This is manipulative for 3 reasons (a) This manipulative source was distorted even further. The source says on a front page explicitly and perhaps for the simple reason that he was in fact named as the author since the very first edition in it's text but not on the 'front page'. (b) BOTH Sprenger and Kramer weren't named as authors on the title page until they BOTH died. (c) Even your source says Like many early books, it had no title page and Afterward, the book’s title was fixed and appears regularly this way in the account book, even without the Malleus having a title page.
 * 4) Claim C01-2:
 * 5) I guess it is pretty clear now that it is purely Ryn78's imagination, first added by him here with some other additions in violation of WP's "great many policies".

See also Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources. WP:EXTRAORDINARY and ''Questionable sources should only be used as sources for material on themselves, such as in articles about themselves; see below. They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others. WP:SELFPUB Furthermore, if it is used for material about Behringer opinions Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.'' WP:RELIABLE For more, see below.

--Asterixf2 (talk) 01:11, 14 November 2016 (UTC); added mention that this claim is in lead section --Asterixf2 (talk) 13:10, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Wolfgang Behringer Malleus Maleficarum (S01)
Anchor: S01

This source is neither verifiable nor reliable. It was discussed here and it failed to get consensus that it is reliable and verifiable. Therefore it should be removed, according to:


 * 1) burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material WP:PROVEIT
 * 2) Editors often post minority views to articles. This fits within Wikipedia's mission so long as the contributions are verifiable, do not give undue weight, and where appropriate, comply with WP:FRINGE. The burden of evidence rests with the editor who initially provides the information or wishes the information to remain. WP:DIS
 * 3) And for writers and editors of Wikipedia articles to write about controversial ideas in a neutral manner, it is of vital importance that they simply restate what is said by independent secondary sources of reasonable reliability and quality. WP:FRINGE
 * 4) An explanation of how scientists have reacted to pseudoscientific theories should be prominently included. This helps us to describe differing views fairly. This also applies to other fringe subjects, for instance, forms of historical revisionism that are considered by more reliable sources to either lack evidence or actively ignore evidence WP:PSCI (Mackay, Summers, Broedel dismiss sole authorship hypothesis as unsubstantiated or ignore it completely - Summers)
 * 5) Fringe theories that oppose reliably sourced research – denialist histories, for example – should be described clearly within their own articles, but should not be given undue weight in more general discussions of the topic.  WP:EVALFRINGE
 * 6) Base articles largely on reliable secondary sources. WP:V
 * 7) Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. WP:PROVEIT
 * 8) Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources. WP:EXTRAORDINARY
 * 9) Questionable sources should only be used as sources for material on themselves, such as in articles about themselves; see below. They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others. WP:SELFPUB Furthermore, if it is used for material about Behringer opinions Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. WP:RELIABLE
 * 10) Likewise, exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources.
 * 11) Proponents of fringe theories have in the past used Wikipedia as a forum for promoting their ideas. Existing policies discourage this type of behavior: if the only statements about a fringe theory come from the inventors or promoters of that theory, then various "What Wikipedia is not" rules come into play. Wikipedia is neither a publisher of original thought nor a soapbox for self-promotion and advertising. The notability of a fringe theory must be judged by statements from verifiable and reliable sources, not the proclamations of its adherents. WP:PROFRINGE
 * 12) And for writers and editors of Wikipedia articles to write about controversial ideas in a neutral manner, it is of vital importance that they simply restate what is said by independent secondary sources of reasonable reliability and quality. WP:FRINGE
 * 13) not every identified subject matter has its own academic specialization, and the opinion of a scholar whose expertise is in a different field should not be given undue weight (in this case Mackay is in the most specialized academic field, see here.
 * 14) Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living people WP:PROVEIT (use of this questionable source may damage Behringer's reputation)

Also citations fail to apply WP:WTW. --Asterixf2 (talk) 01:11, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Jenny Gibbons (S02)
Anchor: S02

This source is neither verifiable nor reliable. It was discussed here and it failed to get consensus that it is reliable and verifiable. Therefore it should be removed for similar reasons to those described in.

Furthermore:
 * 1) Is it a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, or a magazine (or newspaper) known to have an effective fact-checking operation? WP:RS, in its sections WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:NEWSORG, strongly (and sensibly) indicates that these are the only sources that are assumed to be reliable. WP:RSVETTING

--Asterixf2 (talk) 01:11, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Section Reception (C02)
Anchor: C02

This section can be read here.


 * 1) There is consensus to leave the text in the article (and no consensus to remove it).
 * 2) There is no consensus to add HTML comment tags ("&lt;!-- --&gt;").
 * 3) In response to Ryn78's opposition in ANI case that I am advancing POV (which I consider most prominent - I am only saying what secondary sources do with WP:DUE):  arbitration source Disregard for rulings of the Arbitration Committee will result in a temporary ban of up to one year.
 * 4) Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. WP:DUE
 * 5) I have added attribution.

--Asterixf2 (talk) 03:23, 14 November 2016 (UTC); added link to a section --Asterixf2 (talk) 13:08, 14 November 2016 (UTC); clarification --Asterixf2 (talk) 13:14, 14 November 2016 (UTC); replaced bold formatting with red --Asterixf2 (talk) 15:42, 14 November 2016 (UTC); added link to the exact place where Ryn78 says I am advancing POV --Asterixf2 (talk) 16:39, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Section Controversies
I have raised the quality of Mackay sourcing (replaced interview with a book) and added mention of Midelfort with attribution and another opinion by Raiswell with attribution. Due to conflict of interest in case of Midelfort, source name need to be mentioned (there is potential for personal, financial, or political gain to be made from the existence of the publication WP:INDEPENDENT) Following the content of the Midelfort piece, I have used the same word as he did, that is that Behringer merely suggested sole authorship.

For Midelfort, see also.

Here is a link to the version of this section with my proposals (note addition of Midelfort and Raiswell in the last paragraph with the indication of COI for Midelfort and update of Mackay sourcing - interview replaced with his book). Richard Raiswell says that Mackay's study  (reference in the link to the version of this section in preceding sentence).

--Asterixf2 (talk) 01:11, 14 November 2016 (UTC); added a link --Asterixf2 (talk) 13:54, 14 November 2016 (UTC); explicit mention of statement by Raiswell --Asterixf2 (talk) 17:57, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Brauner (S03)
Anchor: S03

Brauner is an excellent source and was discussed before in. I was in fact considering if she is not a secondary source for literary interpretations and descriptions because she writes in a book I use the Lyon edition of the Malleus for better readability also she is cited for example by Broedel.

--Asterixf2 (talk) 01:11, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Paragraph with successors in lead (C03)
Anchor: C03

Concerns the paragraph The book had enormous influence in its time that continued for a couple of centuries. [...] Malleus was ubiquitous, but at the end of the 16th century its role as a theoretical authority was superseded by Demonolatry by witch-hunter Nicholas Rémy and Magical Investigations by Jesuit Martin del Rio.


 * 1) There is consensus to leave this text in the article (and no consensus to remove it).
 * 2) There is no consensus to hide it in a note.
 * 3) I have added additional note with opinion by Reginald Scott. (link to the note)

--Asterixf2 (talk) 03:23, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Other
I have made various other edits.

--Asterixf2 (talk) 01:11, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: It looks like you tried to push in your version (again) without reaching any agreement, then you argued on the talk page that consensus has been reached. Who do you think you're fooling?
 * For example, you claimed there is consensus to leave the Reception section text in the article, although no one agreed to that except you. We haven't even discussed the text of that section yet, which is why I commented it out - as is common practice - until we've had time to discuss it. You can't just invent a consensus when no discussion of that section has even occurred yet. "Consensus" means that both sides agree, not just you.
 * On the issue of the text claiming "Malleus was ubiquitous" as a theological authority: you claimed "There is consensus to leave this text in the article" which again is made up - no one else agreed to that, and we haven't discussed that paragraph very much (if at all).
 * You again claimed the Behringer and Gibbons sources aren't reliable, this time based on the strange argument that they failed to gain consensus at RS; but you also failed to gain consensus for your idea that they aren't valid. You don't win by default just because no consensus was reached.
 * You claimed Midelfort has a "conflict of interest" but without giving any indication of what that conflict of interest might be, much less any proof. Again, you can't just make things up.
 * You claim that Behringer "has not claimed he [Kramer] was a sole author" and alleged that Behringer is only referring to the name on the front page (apparently this is your justification for claiming "all secondary sources" list Sprenger as co-author) when in fact Behringer emphatically states that Kramer was the sole author and points out why Sprenger couldn't possibly have written it. I've also cited other historians who say this, such as Jenny Gibbons. Midelfort additionally refers to still other historians who have taken the same view, and he says that these historians have made the better case.
 * You also keep claiming that all secondary sources claim the Malleus gained nearly universal approval, although again these historians I've cited have argued otherwise. If you're not even willing to admit the obvious fact that there are historians who disagree with Mackay, then this is hopeless. We can't present both sides of the issue if you won't even acknowledge that there ARE two sides of the issue despite the sources I've presented. Stubbornly refusing to admit the obvious isn't helping your cause.
 * On Brauner, you just repeated your claim that she's an "excellent source" but without giving any justification for that, nor any rebuttal to the reasons I've presented why she shouldn't take precedence over historians. Can you present any reasons why a literature professor is more qualified than historians who specialize in the time period?
 * Finally: I keep asking you to stop adding umpteen numbers of new sections for no reason, because 1) this discussion is really a single thread, with only the two of us discussing it, which means it makes no sense whatsoever to have dozens of separate threads; 2) Having so many sections means I either have to tediously respond all over the place, or reply in one large note at the bottom (which you always complain about). Let's keep this in one thread, so both of us can just conveniently make one response each time. Ryn78 (talk) 04:19, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Please note that Ryn78 tries to appear plausible here about points made in other sections above. This comment is not focused on my other edits. --Asterixf2 (talk) 15:34, 14 November 2016 (UTC); added info about warning --Asterixf2 (talk) 16:16, 15 November 2016 (UTC); changed 'warned' into 'alerted' --Asterixf2 (talk) 23:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: You didn't reply to a single response I made yesterday, but you did fall back on your habit of linking to your old arguments which I've already refuted (such as your claims about Behringer) and changing the article back to your own POV without consensus. When are you going to actually respond to my arguments? Since you're inevitably going to ask for a pointless link to my arguments rather than just scrolling upwards slightly, here's a link to the arguments I made yesterday:
 * But you already know where those arguments are.
 * I was going to suggest a possible compromise for finally resolving this, but you'll just ignore it. Respond to my previous arguments linked above first. Ryn78 (talk) 08:39, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have updated the note above to explicitly remind you about the warning alert . I suggest you not to continue this particular thread but instead comment in appropriate subsections. --Asterixf2 (talk) 21:20, 15 November 2016 (UTC); changed 'warning' into 'alert' --Asterixf2 (talk) 23:45, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That "warning" you referenced is both not a warning and not valid. Since you seem unwilling to defend your edits on the talk page, consensus is against them. --Adam in MO (talk) 21:35, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As you insist, I have changed 'warning' into 'alert' to be more in line with policies. The user has been alerted. Therefore, I disagree with your conclusions. --Asterixf2 (talk) 23:45, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You still aren't making any sense. This is going to be my final effort before I make another ANI post regarding you. I'll remind you that the last two didn't go so well for you. Are you going to address the concerns that Ryn has posted here or not?--Adam in MO Talk 00:58, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I will when I see any appropriately posted. --Asterixf2 (talk) 01:15, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I will revert every single off topic, meta post you make. Every. Single. Time. Now please respond to criticisms of your proposed edits. As I see it you are refusing to participate in the D in BRD, therefore I will hat the thread as no consensus for inclusion.--Adam in MO Talk 02:01, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As I see it, your comments don't make sense. Every. Single. Time. In other words, I am not refusing to participate. Perhaps you should have a look at WP:TALK. --Asterixf2 (talk) 02:18, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok since you aren't defending your edits I'm going to hat this section as "no consensus for inclusion".--Adam in MO Talk 02:48, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: You justified completely ignoring all of my arguments by referring me to an "alert" you had given me with a link to a Wikipedia rules page; but that rule merely suggests having different subsections if separate issues are being discussed. It does NOT justify your practice of spreading the debate out into 25 (literally twenty-five - count 'em) sections and subsections well beyond the number of actual issues and to the point that it becomes completely unmanageable. It certainly doesn't justify your habit of entirely ignoring all my comments day after day and then claiming that consensus has somehow been reached. That rule page also says "be concise" and "comment on content, not on the contributor", which you aren't doing.
 * If you really want to insist on using multiple sections for a two-person debate with only a few issues under dispute, then you at least need to keep the sections to a reasonable limit. My main concern is that it becomes absurdly time-consuming to wade through so many sections just to find the right places to reply to each day's new comments. It's far easier for both of us to just make one concise new reply to each day's new content at the bottom of the discussion. I keep asking you to have some consideration for the time restrictions of other people, but you won't do that.
 * In any event, there's absolutely no reason you can't reply just because my comments are in one note. That's one of the most ridiculous excuses I've seen. Ryn78 (talk) 06:35, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to ignore time-wasting edits on this article
I boldly propose that instead of wasting time here with editors who won't respond to good faith attempts at discussion, that edits to the page, excepting simple spelling, markup, or grammar corrections, must have talk page consensus before being posted to article. Enough time has been spent on petty bickering with people who can not work collaboratively. --Adam in MO Talk 04:34, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Adamfinmo: That sounds good to me. BTW, my reply yesterday wasn't meant as opposition to your decision to close discussion; I was just replying to some of his recent comments (which weren't about article content but rather about the debate itself). Right now, there is no discussion over article content, so you might as well close it. Ryn78 (talk) 05:49, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Asterix: Most of your changes to the article were fine, but I restored the HTML comments around the Reception section since there is a lot of unbalanced content in it that we haven't even begun to discuss yet. Please stop removing these comments, since the reason for them has been explained many times (it's standard procedure to comment out disputed material that hasn't been discussed). Ryn78 (talk) 05:49, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * LOL Oppose this and similar future proposals unless explicitly stated otherwise. Ryn78: All my changes are fine. Your "friendly" talk is void. You have commented it out. Remove propaganda and hoaxes from the article. The material was discussed at ANI and also above. PS. Adamfinmo Interesting approach that you claim that your "off-topic" comments are perfectly fine, only mine don't fit here. Stop modifying and removing my commnents,, ,  as you have been also warned here. You (in particular Ryn78/GBRV/Adamfinmo) are not the owners of this talk page or article, please consult WP:OWN. --Asterixf2 (talk) 12:00, 17 November 2016 (UTC); added clarification about modification of my comment by Adam in MO --Asterixf2 (talk) 17:57, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I will continue to remove all off-topic and meta posts. All talk page posts must be discussion about how to improve the article, as I have done here. You flatly refuse to discuss your proposals and you have already stated that you will refuse consensus anyway. The best corse of action is to simply revert your edits to the article and ignore your silly rants. We have consensus for that now. --Adam in MO Talk 13:33, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Asterix: My "friendly talk" was an attempt to move forward, but you insist on being belligerent. The rest of your response is stuff I've already responded to so many times I've lost count. There's no need to keep repeating myself since you'll just ignore it yet again. Ryn78 (talk) 06:35, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Fresh start
Per Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, Asterixf2 is indefinitely topic banned from the topic of witchcraft, broadly construed. If anyone wishes to discuss the events that led to the topic ban, please do so on my talk page, not here.

Given the current disorganized state of this talk page, unless someone objects, I plan on waiting a few days and then archiving all discussions above this section.

I would like you all to help by looking over the current mess, identifying any open issues, and creating a single, well-labeled section for each issue. That way we can start fresh and make this look like a normal Wikipedia talk page again. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:51, 20 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Since the issues mostly overlap, I think it's better to have only one section. Most of the other debates I've been in had a single section, and any sub-threading just developed as a natural result of people replying with indentation. This also makes it a lot easier to find the correct place to reply, otherwise you have to hunt through several sections to find the stuff you want to reply to, since the diffs only give a vague idea of where each new response is located. Ryn78 (talk) 03:07, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Scapegoat
The article seems to be an attempt to scapegoat secularism for Christian use of the Malificarum "Christian" not specifically Catholic. It fails to cite whether the "secular" courts were acting under religious views of their own in using it which would be bias and original research by those making the specific claims it was secular and secularism to blame for its use. 96.31.177.52 (talk) 08:07, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Index librorum prohibitorum
On Google books there is an edition of the Index of Forbidden Book (year 1666) that lists the Malleus Maleficarum: - 84.222.30.38 (talk) 15:59, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Introduction
It endorses extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a detailed legal and theological theory. The sources added to this claim are totally irrrelevant, instead they seem to be focusing on Kramer's personal misogyny. - Neptuunium (talk) 11:13, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Direct quote?
@User:GBRV: If this is a direct quote from a historian, then it needs to be indicated as such; right now, it's not, so it looks like we're saying Kramer was "demented" and his sexual preferences were "rather stunning" in Wikipedia's voice. Which, y'know, maybe he was, but it's not Wikipedia's place to make that judgment. Who's being quoted here, and what's the extent of the quote? We need to indicate it with quotation marks and a direct attribution, at least. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 13:42, 16 October 2018 (UTC) Huh, don't know how I missed the attribution. Sorry about that. That said, there's no ending quotation mark, so there's no way to tell when the quote ends. A quotation that long should probably be set as a block quote. It also seems a little out of place for a "background" section; it seems to be more than background, but that's a question for another day. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 13:47, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Reception section
There's a bunch of stuff commented out of the "Reception" section here. Who wants to take a look? Elizium23 (talk) 19:57, 16 June 2021 (UTC)