Sprenger and Kramer wrote a book entitled Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer), which essentially turned witch-hunting into a religiously sanctioned sport. Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps as many as a million, were arrested, tortured, and killed at the hands of the Inquisition. These horrific acts forced esoteric interests deep underground, and the cultural memory of the terror associated with being declared “deviant” because of one’s ideas or beliefs continues to affect us today.
