Summis desiderantes affectibus, (Latin for Desiring with supreme ardor), sometimes abbreviated to Summis desiderantes [1][2] was a papal bull regarding witchcraft issued by Pope Innocent VIII on December 5, 1484.Background
Belief in witchcraft is ancient. in the Hebrew Bible states: "Let there not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or daughter in the fire, nor a fortune-teller, soothsayer, charmer, diviner, or caster of spells, nor one who consults ghosts and spirits or seeks oracles from the dead."
Early Irish canons treated sorcery as a crime to be visited with excommunication until adequate penance had been performed. Pope Gregory VII wrote to Harald III of Denmark in 1080 forbidding witches to be put to death upon presumption of their having caused storms or failure of crops or pestilence. According to Herbert Thurston, the fierce denunciation and persecution of supposed sorceresses which characterized the cruel witchhunts of a later age, were not generally found in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era.[3]
The early Church distinguished between "white" and "black" magic. The latter was generally dealt with through confession, repentance, and charitable work assigned as penance.[4]
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Pope Innocent VIII (Latin: Innocentius VIII; 1432 – 25 July 1492), born Giovanni Battista Cybo (or Cibo), was Pope from 29 August 1484 to his death in 1492. Born into a prominent Genoese family he entered the church and was made bishop in 1467 before being elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pope Sixtus IV. He was elected Pope in 1484, as a compromise candidate, after a stormy conclave. He was elected Pope in 1484, as a compromise candidate, after a stormy conclave. As pope, he personally endorsed and gave official Church approval to the Malleus Maleficarum, a controversial fifteenth century guide to witch hunting which asserted it was common knowledge that witchesat random and placed them in birds' nests.[1]
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