The Witch Hammer

Heinrich Kramer "Henricus Institor" was a German churchman and inquisitor. With his widely distributed book "Malleus Maleficarum", which describes witchcraft and endorses detailed processes for the extermination of witches, he was instrumental in establishing the period of witch trials in the early modern period.
Born in Schlettstadt, now Sélestat, Alsace on 1430. He joined the Dominican Order at an early age and while still a young man was appointed Prior of the Dominican house of his native town.
At some date before 1474 he was appointed Inquisitor for the Tyrol, Salzburg, Bohemia and Moravia. His eloquence in the pulpit and tireless activity received recognition at Rome and he was the right-hand man of the Archbishop of Salzburg.
In 1495 he was summoned by the Master General of the Order, Joaquin de Torres, O.P. to Venice and gave very popular public lectures and disputations. They were worthy of presence and patronage of Patriarch of Venice. He also wrote treatises Several Discourses and Various Sermons upon the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist (Nuremberg, 1496); A Tract Confuting the Errors of Master Antonio degli Roselli (Venice, 1499); followed by The Shield of Defence of the Holy Roman Church Against the Picards and Waldenses which were quoted by many authors. He was appointed as papal nuncio and his assignment as inquisitor was changed to Bohemia and Moravia by Pope Alexander VI in 1500.
Summers observes that 17th-century "Dominican chroniclers, such as Quétif and Échard, number Kramer and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their Order".
He passed his last days intensely writing and preaching until his death in Kroměříž in Moravia, in 1505.