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In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a Papal Bull concerning the practice of Witchcraft. He was not the first to do so: several of his predecessors had written on the subject and what should be done about it. Innocent’s was different, in that it was much more widely read than earlier ones. Thanks to the European invention of moveable-type printing by Johannes Gutenberg around 1432 (it had been used in China many centuries earlier) it was easy for the Church to issue many copies of Innocent’s Bull. Without it, each copy would have had to be laboriously handwritten by Monks, thus global suppression began thanks to the humble printing-press. All over Europe, Priests read that clergy; laymen; and laywomen were not treating the threat posed by Witchcraft seriously enough. Innocent insisted that it was the duty of every Roman Catholic (and that meant almost everyone, for the Church was so powerful) to help his Inquisitors search out Witches. The people they sought were those of herbalists and midwives, continuing on the medical remedies of nature handed down from generation to generation; these evil devil worshipping human beings, were country folk, men, women, and children, dancing in a field to celebrate a harvest that would allow them to eat for another year. These whores of the devil, were moral women whom believed that it was impossible for a woman to become pregnant without laying with a man, call her ‘Mary’, call her ‘Madonna’, even Divinity whose office it belongs, to the glory and honour of the worshipful name of Jesus Christ and for the exaltation of the Holy Orthodox Faith, and for the putting down of the abomination of heresy, especially in all Witches in general and in each one severally of whatever condition. The book went on to inform on how proceedings should be initiated against alleged Witches; the manner in which they should be arrested; how witnesses should be questioned; the use of torture; and the sentence. Judges were warned not to touch any person with their bare hands and to wear a bag around their neck containing salt that had been consecrated on Palm Sunday. In the same bag there should be herbs, similarly blessed and enclosed in consecrated wax (ironic… the Catholic vilifying the Witch, is wearing a gris-gris bag around his neck!). Witches should be lead backwards into the court and if the Judge had to approach the suspect he must first cross himself and approach her ‘manfully’. In this way, the two Monks wrote, “with God’s help the power of that old Serpent will be broken”. Thus, the Papal Bull of Pope Innocent VIII, as was issued in 1484 by the Catholic Church of Rome, is to be found within the following pages along with that of the Malleus Maleficarium of 1486, which led to the torture and murder of thousands and thousands of innocent Witches, male, female, children, and animals. This is why so many still hate the Church and her peoples for their legacy… cannot defy the Laws of Nature. These slaves of the Beast, were simple, innocent, and unthreatening Ancestors of Druids; Priestesses; and Practitioners who walked the earth before Rome had a single brick laid in its walls, and who do you think the Ancestors of Jesus (a human) were? Innocent’s Bull encouraged two Monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger to publish the “Malleus Maleficarium”, or “Witches Hammer”, which was essentially a Witch-hunters manual. It explained why Witchcraft was such a terrible thing, why it was the duty of all good Catholics to stamp it out and how to tell if someone was practicing the black arts. In their rant against Witchcraft, Kramer and Sprenger, who were Inquisitors themselves, list the types of Witch. They accused Witches of having sexual relationships with the Devil and working with him to spread his dark ways. The book detailed how a trial should proceed, beginning with a notice that was to be fixed to the walls of the parish church (or town hall). It was worded: Whereas we, the Vicar of ……….……… do endeavour with all our might and strive to preserve the Christian people entrusted to us in unity and happiness of the Catholic Faith and to keep them far removed from every plague of abominable heresy… Therefore, we the aforesaid Judge to
