The Catholic Church's most notable theologians have for centuries demeaned women as inferior beings that culminated in the massive witch burnings inaugurated with the publication of the "Witch's Hammer" with the full blessings of Pope Innocent VIII who gained the Chair of Peter by bribery and despite the known fact he had fathered at least three children out of wedlock with the publication of his bull Summis desiderantes affectibus on December 9, 1484. He charged that women were responsible for "horrid offences, have slain infants yetr in the mother's womb...blasted the produce of earth..the cause of terrible and piteous pains ans sore diseases...hender men from performing the sexual act..perpetrating the foulest abominations and filthiest excess..." He appointed two Dominican monks to pursue the the heretical pravities. Henry Kramer and James Sprenger proceeded to write the "Malleus Maleficarum" (Witches Hammer) which has been described as a "monstrosity full of intellectual debauchery." The publication was authenticated by the University of Cologne in which it was concluded "Therefore it is a grave error to preach that witchcraft cannot be."
They dealt at length with "Whether Children Can be Generated by Incubi and Succubi" which they concluded with the authority of Augustine is be factual and "Concerning witches who copulate with Devils and Why is it that Women are chiefly addicted to evil superstitions." Their teachings echoed Augustine's in which they stated "...God allows the devil more power over the venereal act, by which Original Sin is handed down...because of its natural nastiness..." They offered up a number of accounts of how men had been deprived of their penis. Some would be considered hilarious if it had not been the fact that they resulted in the torture and killing of thousands of innocent victims. Here is one example of the depravity that the perpetuated:
" And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers...put them in a bird's nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report?...For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch...she told him to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked...when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding because it belonged to a parish priest." This publication ran over thirty editions between 1487 and 1669 from the presses of Germany, France, England and Italy and by the end of 1554 the Holy Office reported that over 30,000 witches had been destroyed who if left unpunished would have brought the world to destruction. How many died? The Encyclopedia Britannica in its article on Witchcraft states that estimates run from hundreds of thousands to a million.
It is not surprising that the extent of the torture and burning of women and even young children for the crime of witchcraft has been mute by historians simply because the cause was taken up by both Protestants and Catholics. But the most notable fact is that it had a significant affect of the sexual mentality of Western civilization that is only abating in the most recent of times.
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