Manuais inquisitoriais: a bruxa vista sob a ótica do "Malleus Maleficarum e Directorium Inquisitorum" (séculos XIV a XVI)

Abstract

The Malleus Maleficarum and the Directorium Inquisitorum were two inquisitorial manuals that served as a guide and gave support to the inquisitors to persecute Witches and put an end to the plagues of heresy. These ideas, in a crisis scenario, surrounded the imaginary of a society in transition, marked by the passage from the medieval world to the modern world (14th-16th centuries). Guided by these manuals, we sought to understand how the Catholic Church, especially through the Tribunal of the Holy Office, identified and associated the women with the figure of the Witch, their association with Christian heresies, and the justifications for their persecution and, in many times, their sentence to death. In addition, we did a geographic and chronological mapping of the Malleus Maleficarum editions to comprehend this phenomenon of witchcraft as something nonpunctual and not regional, but as an attempt to construct a space of collective memory.