Historically, the understanding of women labeled as witches differed drastically from what it came to mean when Christianity became the dominant force in Europe. Historian P.G. Maxwell-Stewart notes: In the world of late antiquity or the early Middle Ages, it is impossible to define someone as a witch (as opposed, for example, to an amateur herbalist, a heretic or a scold), and none of the legislation of the time attempted to do so. Offenders were designated offenders by virtue of their performing various actions or wearing certain objects declared by the legislation to be condemned or forbidden. For all practical purposes, the “witch” had not yet been invented. There were only practitioners of various kinds of magic, both male and female, who might belong to any rank of ecclesiastical or lay society, and whose actions might, or might not, bring them within the compass of canon or secular law, depending on external factors that were usually local but could, from time to time, be more ...

The Malleus Maleficarum ( Hexenhammer in German) is a witchhunting manual from the 1400s. It is a disturbingly evil book that has lead to the death of thousands during the witchhunts (though some sources do debate its impact). It was written by Dominican clergymen Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, though Kramer appears to have written the bulk of it. Allegedly, Sprenger’s name was attached to give it more credibility, because Kramer was a known pest in his area.  It was the first book to deal with witchcraft, though an earlier work, the Formicarius , touched on the topic. The story goes that the entire existence of the book was is the result of Kramer being angry at not being allowed to ask probing, inappropriately sexual questions to a woman during a heresy trial. So he went back to Cologne and wrote an entire book to explain his views.  It is almost three separate books in one, and each section isn’t really related to any of the others. They were intended for d...