Pope Innocent VIII

Pope Innocent VIII (1484-92) was moved by the compaints of two Dominican Inquisitors, Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger, that local ecclesiastical authorities in Germany refused to aid them in their pursuit of heretical witchcraft. Sprenger and Krämer described some of their cases to the pope and elicited from him the famous Bull called, from its opening Latin words, Summis desiderantes. The similarity in terminology of this and earlier papal documents, its particular emphasis upon preaching, and its lack of dogmatic pronouncement on the subject of witchcraft place it squarely in the tradition of papal concern for heresy and disbelief. Its circulation with Sprenger and Krämer's later handbook, the Malleus Maleficarum, gave it both a wider circulation and a more direct role in subsequent witch persecutions than it might otherwise have had (Kors & Peters 107).

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Pope Innocent VIII copyrighted 1996-1998 to Shantell Powell.