Demonic Sex
In line with Kramer’s apparent interests at the Innsbruck trial, where he drew censure for vigorously cross-examining a suspected witch on her sexual history, the Malleus is packed with descriptions of fornication. Amongst the acts described the most shocking (and implausible) is witches having sex with devils, and sometimes becoming pregnant by them. To argue this, Kramer had a theological difficulty: demons were known from a number of esteemed sources including the Bible to be incorporeal, and so how could they possibly have sexual intercourse with flesh-and-blood people? Furthermore, how could they also impregnate women without physical members or biology?
Using what was then cutting-edge science, Kramer’s argument is that devils are incorporeal, but use the air’s water vapour to take their seemingly-corporeal form: ‘devils and disembodied spirits can effect this condensation by means of gross vapours raised from the earth, and by collecting them together into shapes in which they abide’ (Malleus Part II, Question 1, Chapter 4). As for the semen, it is simply related that demons assumed the form of women, copulated with men, and preserved the semen, later to impregnate women who had sex with them in a male form, a theory taken from Thomas Aquinas.
Kramer’s unfamiliarity with sexuality is clear in the accounts. He describes a woman, on her way to have sex with her lover, who met a devil disguised as a young man. ‘I am the devil’, he said, ‘and if you wish, I will always be ready at your pleasure, and will not fail you in any necessity’. Despite already having a lover, and presumably preferring not to burned alive for eternity, the woman apparently agreed, and ‘continued for eighteen years, up to the end of her life, to practise diabolical filthiness with him’ (Malleus Part II, Question 1, Chapter 1).
‘It is common to all of them to practise carnal copulation with devils’, (Malleus Part II, Question 1, Chapter 2) says Kramer, and he has the facts to back this up. The Inquisitor of Como had to burn 41 witches in 1485 alone. Bear in mind that this statistic preceded the publication of the Malleus and the maelstrom of accusation and paranoia it caused. As well as satisfying their lust, witches are said to be ‘bound to indulge in these lewd practices in order that the ranks of their perfidy might be increased’ through offspring and bragging to other women.
