IN the midst of the disasters of the collapsing secular world, which, alas, we do not so much read of as experience in various places, the Ancient Rising Sun, who was perverted through the ineluctable damage caused by his downfall, has never ceased, since the beginning, to taint the Church, which the New Rising Sun, the human Jesus Christ, has made fruitful through the shedding of His own Blood, with the poison of various heresies. Nonetheless, he attacks through these heresies at that time in particular, when the evening of the world declines towards its setting and the evil of men swells up, since he knows in great anger, as John bears witness in the Book of Apocalypse [12:12], that he has little time remaining. Hence, he has also caused a certain unusual heretical perversity to grow up in the land of the Lord – a Heresy, I say, of Sorceresses, since it is to be designated by the particular gender over which he is known to have power. He contrives these things through countless forms of assault, and this one is carried out in the form of individual works. This is clearly daunting to conceive of, exceedingly loathsome to God and hateful to all believers in Christ, since in accordance with their agreement with Hell and treaty with Death they submit themselves to the foulest slavery in return for fulfilling their filthy acts of depravity. This heresy also consists of losses that are inflicted in the form of daily misfortunes on humans, domestic animals and the fruits of the earth through the permission of God and with the co-operation of demons.

In the midst of these evils, we Inquisitors, Jacobus Sprenger together with the very dear associate delegated by the Apostolic See for the extermination of so destructive a heresy, though very insignificant among the Professors of Holy Theology in the Order of Militant Preachers, nonetheless considered with a pious and grieving mind what remedy or solace should be administered to people as a salutary cure, and thought it right to set our shoulders to this work before all other remedies, confident that by the mellifluous generosity of Him Who gives to all plentifully and Who, having taken the pebble from the altar with tongs, touches the lips of the imperfect and cleans them, we will bring everything to the desired conclusion.