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The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum. By Christopher S. Mackay. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2009. Pp. x, 657. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-521-74787-5.)
Between i486 and 1669 the famous witch-hunting manual, Malleus Maleficarum, underwent twenty-eight editions, all in Latin. It was for two centuries one of the best known treatises on the nature of witchcraft, recommending harsh investigations and punishment. After 1900 this text had an even wider circulation owing to a spate of (often inadequate) translations into German, English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Polish, Croatian, Dutch, and even Vietnamese. On the Internet it is available in Latin, in various translations, and as an audio recording. Parts of it have even been set to music. Unfortunately, many of these versions appealed to prurient or sensationalist interests; lacked the necessary scholarly apparatus required for understanding a complex late medieval exercise in canon law, theology, and demonology; and were often inaccurate. This was notably true of the English version produced by Montague Summers, the gothic fantasist (London, 1928). Recognizing these difficulties, scholars especially in Germany and the Englishspeaking world have published reprints of the original Latin edition (Göppingen, 1991; New York, 1992), an improved but abridged English translation by R G. Maxwell-Stuart (Manchester, UK, 2007), a much improved translation into German by W Tschacher, Wolfgang Behringer, and Günter Jerouschek (Munich, 2000), and an elaborate (and expensive) two-volume edition of an edited Latin text with introduction, notes, and an English translation by the classicist Christopher S. Mackay (Cambridge, UK, 2006). The massive volume under review is a reasonably priced...