Book contents
Question 34
from PART III
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2015
Summary
METHOD Fifteen of bringing an end to proceedings involving the Faith and of passing sentence is when the person denounced for heretical depravity is found not to inflict but to break acts of sorcery. The procedure to be followed in the case of such a person is as follows. He uses either | lawful or unlawful remedies, and if he uses lawful ones, then he should be judged not a sorcerer but a worshipper of Christ (these lawful remedies were explained at length at the beginning of the present Part Three). If, on the other hand, he uses unlawful ones, then a distinction should be made on the basis of whether they are unlawful absolutely or in some specific regard. If they are absolutely unlawful, then this is the case in two different ways, the remedies being implemented either with or without harm to one's neighbor, though either way with an express invocation of demons. If, on the other hand, they are unlawful in some regard, for instance by taking place without an express, though not without an implicit, invocation of demons, such acts are judged to be the sort called vain rather than unlawful by the canonists and by certain theologians, as was explained above in Question One of this last part of the whole work. Therefore, any judge, whether ecclesiastical or civil, does not have to rebuke the first and last group and in particular ought rather to praise the first and tolerate the last, since the canonists claim that it is lawful to smash vanities with vanities. Nonetheless, the judge ought not to tolerate in any way those who do away with acts of sorcery through an express invocation of demons, and especially not those who commit such acts to the harm of a neighbor. (They are said to follow their practice to the neighbor's harm | when the sorcery is removed by being inflicted on someone else, and it makes no difference whether or not the woman upon whom it is inflicted is herself a sorceress, or whether or not she is the one who inflicted the sorcery, or whether it is a human or any other creature.)
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- The Hammer of WitchesA Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 640 - 648Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009