Jacob Sprenger

Jacob Sprenger (also James,[1] 1436/1438 – 6 December 1495) was a Dominican inquisitor and theologian principally known for his association with a well-known guide for witch-hunters from 1486, Malleus Maleficarum.

[2] In 1481 he was appointed as an Inquisitor for the Provinces of Mainz, Trier and Cologne, a post that demanded constant traveling through an extensive district.

[3] Sprenger was named along with Heinrich Kramer in the 1484 papal bull Summis desiderantes of Pope Innocent VIII and reprinted in the infamous Malleus Maleficarum.

[7] In a 1631 work most concerned with innocence, and opposed to the Malleus Maleficarum, Friedrich Spee attributes authorship of the book to "Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer.

[9] The Harvard President and Puritan Increase Mather cited "Sprenger" as a reference to the Malleus Maleficarum in an influential pro-witch-hunting work published in 1684,[10] as well as another work published in 1692, the same year as the Salem Witch Trials: "Witches have often (as Sprenger observes) desired that they might stand or fall by this trial by hot iron, and sometimes come off well.