1581 NOVUS MALLEUS MALEFICARUM by B. Spinei DEMONOLOGY WITCHES antique OCCULT

Novus Malleus Maleficarum sub quaestione de strigibus sue maleficis,

r.p.f. Bartholomaei Spinei Ord. Praed...

Coloniae apud Maternum Cholinum ; 1581

(Novus Malleus Maleficarum, on the question of witches or sorcerers, R. P. F. Bartholomaei Spinei, Ord. Praed., Professor of Theology, and most worthy Master of the Apostolic Palace Chapel.)

[8] lvs., 398 pp.

Original 16th centtury leather decorated in gilt, spine with raised bands.


Title page restored due to paper loss on the right-hand side.

This is one of the central pieces of sixteenth-century demonological literature. It brings together the treatises on witchcraft by the Dominican Bartolomeo della Spina (1475-1546), a theology professor in Padua, an influential inquisitor and demonologist who gathers his most important works, originally published in the twenties of the century.
The core is the Quaestio de strigibus, where Spina, in his authority as Master of the Sacred Palace, defends the physical reality of nocturnal flight, the witches’ sabbath, and the devil’s pact, and thus the legitimacy of pursuing witches as heretics; to this are added the De praeeminentia sacrae theologiae, which asserts the primacy of the theologian over the jurist when judging these matters, and the four Apologiae de lamiis against Gianfrancesco Ponzinibio, a jurist who in his Tractatus de lamiis had argued that much of what witches confess is demonic illusion and that their trial fell under secular jurisdiction: the Spina-Ponzinibio controversy is one of the foundational debates on the reality of the crime of witchcraft and on who had the competence to punish it.

It contains the printer’s woodcut mark on the title page, the vegetal crown with the motto Benedices coronae anni benignitatis tuae.


-VD 16, p. 8325; cf. Schulte III/1, 444. -

Rare first edition of this compilation.

A kind of supplement to the classic "Malleus Maleficarum" by Sprenger and Institoris.

Spina, a Dominican from Pisa, was a strict Scholastic and advisor to Pope Paul III at the Council.

His demonological views are based on three works published in Venice in 1525:

the "Quaestio de strigibus et lamiis,"
the "Tractatus de praeeminentia sacrae theologiae super alias omnes scientias et praecipue humanarum legum," and the
"Apologiae tres de lamiis adversus Ioannem Franciscum Ponzinibium iurisperitum,"

printed here together for the first time.

Size: 4 by 6"

Text in Latin
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