INSTITORIS HENRICUS; and SPRENGER JACOBUS Malleus maleficaru

Sale 2107 - Lot 211

Price Realized: $ 4,320

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

INSTITORIS [or KRAMER], HENRICUS; and SPRENGER, JACOBUS. Malleus maleficarum . . . editio novissima. 5 parts in 4 volumes, bound in 3. 4to, late 18th-/early 19th-century 1/4 vellum, worn; occasional browning and minor spotting, Volume 4 lacks title. Lyon: Claude Bouregeat, 1669

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The definitive early edition of the notorious witch-hunter's manual originally published circa 1487 and here expanded to include 20 further 15th-17th century texts on witchcraft and demonology by Nider, Molitor, Grillandus, Menghi, and others. "From a psychiatric standpoint Sprenger and Kramer's work remains significant for its highly detailed descriptions of the behavior of witches, given within the context of determining genuine cases of demonic possession. If we agree with Johann Weyer [see lot 325] that witches were possessed by nothing more than mental illness, then the Malleus maleficarum may be viewed--grotesque as it may seem--as a contemporary handbook of psychopathology, and an early document in the history of psychiatry"--Norman 1991. Zilboorg, pages 144-74.