church authority. The pope commissioned
two German monks, Heinrich Kramer and
Jacob Sprenger, to prepare a report on
witchcraft. The result wasMalleus Malefi-
carum, or The Hammer of Witches, which
helped its readers learn to recognize the
tell-tale signs and marks of a witch, de-
scribed the sexual perversions, murders,
spell-casting, and other wrongdoing, and
demanded that Christians actively search
out and destroy witches.
At the church’s prompting, witches
were rounded up by the hundreds and
burned publicly. The witch hysteria was
especially strong in Germany and Switzer-
land, even as the Protestant Reformation
was splitting these regions into two hostile
religious factions. In France, a member of
the court of King Charles IX announced
that ten thousand witches were at his com-
mand, which set off a rampant anti-witch
hysteria in which thousands of people were
accused by friends and family.
In Scotland, a witch panic was set off
by King James VI (later King James I of
England, the first of the Stuart dynasty).
Having traveled to Denmark to marry his
bride Princess Anne of Denmark, James
and his party were beset by a furious
storm. The captain of his ship blamed the
storm on witchcraft, to which several Dan-
ish women willingly confessed. Back in
Scotland, James authorized the torture of
suspected witches. Several dozen suspects
were burned at the stake before the perse-
cutions died down at the end of the 1500s.
Nevertheless, witchcraft remained a capital
offense in Scotland until 1735.SEEALSO: Catholicism; James IWolsey, Thomas ..............................
(1475–1530)
English churchman and statesman who
was chaplain to Henry VII and Henry VIII.
Born the son of a butcher in Ipswich, he
was educated at Oxford, where he served
as a master of Magdalen College. Ordained
a priest in 1498, he was appointed as the
rector of Limington parish in Dorset. In
1503 he became a chaplain to Sir Richard
Nanfan, an English governor of Calais who
introduced Wolsey to the royal court. He
became the royal chaplain to King Henry
VII, who sent him as a diplomat to Scot-
land and the Netherlands.
After Henry VIII came to the throne
in 1509, Wolsey won an appointment as
the royal almoner, who was responsible for
distributing alms to the poor. He orga-
nized an invasion force for an assault onThe title page of “Malleus maleficarum” or
“Hammer of Witches,” the Inquisition’s 1519
manual on detecting and dealing with
witchcraft. SPECIALCOLLECTIONSLIBRARY,THE
UNIVERSITY OFMICHIGAN.
Wolsey, Thomas