Or maybe a different kind of hammer, there are a lot of witches about.
The Hammer of Witches.
The Malleus Maleficarum..
The Malleus is based on the biblical pronouncement “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18) and draws on Scripture and the works of Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas as support. It maintains that because God acknowledged witches, to doubt witchcraft is heresy. The book is divided into three parts and organized as questions answered by opposing arguments. Part 1 concerns how the Devil and his witches, with “the permission of Almighty God,” perpetrate a variety of evils upon men and animals, including succubi and incubi, instilling hatred, obstructing or destroying fertility, and causing the metamorphosis, or shape shifting, of human beings into beasts. God permits these acts; otherwise, the Devil would have unlimited power and destroy the world.
Part 2 describes how witches cast spells and bewitchments and do their evil and how these actions can be prevented or remedied. Particular emphasis is given to Devil’s Pacts, a key to proving heresy. The existence of witches and their maleficia is treated as unassailable fact, and wild stories of Sabbats and other abominations are presented as truth. Most of the stories are from the inquisitions conducted by Sprenger and Kramer and from material of other ecclesiastical witchcraft writers.
Part 3 sets forth the legal procedures for trying witches, including the taking of testimony, admission of evidence, methods of interrogation and torture, and guidelines for sentencing. Judges are instructed to allow hostile witnesses because everyone hates witches. Torture is to be applied if the accused do not confess voluntarily. Judges are permitted to lie to the accused, promising them mercy if they confess, a tactic readily employed by Kramer. This, the text argues, is all done in the best interest of society and the state. The Malleus allows for light sentences of penance and imprisonment in certain cases but urges execution of as many witches as possible. Most of the instructions on sentencing pertain to death.
Sauce: https://occult-world.com/malleus-maleficarum-the-witch-hammer/