In his extensively annotated two-volume Latin edition and English translation of the Malleus maleficarum, published in 2006, Christopher Mackay finally laid the ghost of Montague Summers, its first English translator. Summers's 1928 English translation was erroneous, tendentious and unfortunately enduring. But the name of Summers, a self-professed ‘Reverend’ who made a cottage industry of translating (and promoting the theories embodied in) early modern demonological treatises, does not occur in the present volume, perhaps a modern instance of justifiable damnatio memoriae. Mackay otherwise has taken full advantage of the best recent scholarship on the Malleus and its authors, and his fifty-eight-page introduction is just about the useful minimum that a scholarly translator ought to provide. It is a judicious and intelligent introduction to a complicated text produced by complicated authors and, with the text, it is now the only English translation worth using. Its paperback format makes it ideal for classroom use, and its arrangement of the text makes reference to the Latin edition very easy.

The first of two maps depicts southern Germany and a few immediately relevant and adjacent regions, from Cologne to Como and west-east from Metz to Regensburg, while the second is a detail of the first, depicting chiefly Swabia, the territory most closely associated with the life and travels of Henricus Institoris, the more important of the work's two authors.

In the first part of his introduction Mackay asserts the long-disputed collaboration between Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, persuasively suggesting that Sprenger, the Cologne academic theologian, was responsible for book i, with its theological substance and scholastic style, and Institoris for books ii and iii. The second part considers the purpose and audience of the Malleus, from sermon material for the authors' own Order of Preachers (and especially its inquisitors of heretical depravity) to instructions for perhaps otherwise reluctant inquisitors and magistrates concerning the method of prosecution of diabolical witchcraft. The third part deals with the early publication history of the work and its additional materials – the self-justification of the authors, the 1484 subsequently attached papal letter Summis desiderantes affectibus of Innocent viii, and the approbation by part of the theology faculty of Cologne. The third part is a detailed and very helpful outline of the work, the fourth a discussion of the four main (direct or indirect) sources for the theory of diabolical sorcery, Thomas Aquinas, Johannes Nider, Nicolau Eymerich, and Antoninus of Florence, followed by a helpful discussion of the structure of disputed questions.

The section on ‘Intellectual context’ deals with Satanism, the elaborated theory of sorcery found in the Malleus, and the role of an omnipotent but alarmingly permissive God. There is also a properly cautionary discussion of the alleged misogyny of the Malleus – the authors are conventionally hostile, but not misogynistic in any original way, a case also made recently by Tamar Herzig in the journal Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 1 (2006), 24–55. The section on ‘Historical background’ deals with the process of inquisition (more exactly, although not noted here, ‘inquisition of heretical depravity’), torture and contemporary magical practices.

Mackay concludes with an overall assessment of the work and a helpful list of suggested further readings. From my own point of view the most serious omissions from the list are chiefly Stuart Clark, Thinking with demons: the idea of witchcraft in early modern Europe (Oxford 1997); Claudia Heymann, Nicolaus Eymerich (vor 1320–1399) ‘praedicator veridicus, inquisitor intrepidus, doctor egregius’: Leben und Werk eines Inquisitors (Münster 2001); Alain Boureau, Satan the heretic (Paris 2004; English translation 2006); Michael Bailey's fine study of Nider, Battling demons (University Park, Pa 2003); Hans Peter Broedel, The Malleus maleficarum and the construction of witchcraft: theology and popular belief (Manchester 2003); and the very useful and reliable Encyclopedia of witchcraft: the western tradition, edited by Richard Golden (Santa-Barbara–Oxford 2006), in which the article on the Malleus by Wolfgang Behringer is at vol. iii. 717–23. But Mackay does include the woefully neglected but immensely useful work by Anders Piltz, The world of medieval learning (Oxford 1981).

Mackay carefully and helpfully describes his use of the reproductions of the first edition of the work by André Schnyder (1991) and Gunther Jerouschek (1992) in numbering the internal divisions of the English text. He also lists and identifies every writer cited in the Malleus, provides a list of locations in the Corpus Iuris Canonici where canons identified only by their opening words may easily be found, the standard abbreviations for the parts of a quaestio disputata found in modern editions of Aquinas, and a discussion of several key words in the translation. Along the way Mackay makes several very helpful points about the proper and improper use of the term ‘Roman Catholic Church’ (p. 32 n. 12), and he uses Thomas Kuhn's Structure of scientific revolutions (Chicago 1962) to insist upon the reader's understanding of the work in its own time (pp. 33–4).

Mackay's translation is accurate, catching the sometimes feverish and often plodding prose of the authors. Footnotes are necessarily kept to a minimum, but they are usually there and informative when called for. They are occasionally mordant. In his note to a well-known passage in part ii concerning the lechery of parish priests, Mackay points out that Institoris has been taken in by a joke, ‘taking at face value … the author's credulity (and lack of a sense of humor)’ (p. 328). Each section is followed by a brief note on the identified primary sources for its argument.

Of course not all later theologians and witchfinders accepted the categorical arguments of the Malleus. But Mackay's fine work indicates some, at least, of the reasons for its durability and importance – its claims based on earlier and respected authorities, its relentless focus on one phenomenon and its manically exhaustive and fascinating description of what diabolical sorceresses did. One could agree with it or argue with it, and witchfinders did, for nearly two centuries.