Summis desiderantes affectibus is a papal bull issued on December 5, 1484 by Pope Innocent VIII. It condemned an alleged outbreak of witchcraft and heresy in the region of the Rhine River valley, and deputized Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, authors of the Malleus maleficarum, as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany. Papal bull of Pope Urban VIII, 1637, sealed with a leaden bulla. ... Jump to: navigation, search December 5 is the 339th day (340th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Events January 25 - Peter Arbues, chief of the Spanish Inquisition, is assassinated when he is praying in the cathedral at Saragossa, Spain July 6 - Portuguese sea captain Diogo Cão finds the mouth of Congo River December 5 - Pope Innocent VIII gives the inquisition a mission to hunt heretics and... Innocent VIII, né Giovanni Battista Cibo (1432 – July 25, 1492), pope from 1484 to 1492, was born at Genoa, and was the son of Aran Cibo who under Calixtus III had been a senator at Rome. ... The term witchcraft (and witch) is a controversial one with a complicated history. ... Heresy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. ... The Rhine canyon (Ruinaulta) in Graubünden in Switzerland Length 1. ... Heinrich Kramer (1430?-1505) was a churchman and inquisitor. ... James Sprenger was born in Basel between 1436 and 1438. ... The Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches or the Hexenhammer) is considered by many to be the classic Roman Catholic text on witchcraft, although it was in fact condemned by the Inquisition in 1490, and never officially used by the Catholic Church. ... Pedro Berruguete. ...

This papal bull led to one of the severest witchhunts in European history. A witch-hunt is a search for suspected witches; it is a type of moral panic. ... World map showing Europe (geographically) When considered a continent, Europe is the worlds second-smallest continent in terms of area, with an area of 10,600,000 km² (4,140,625 square miles), making it larger than Australia only. ...

The full text, translated into English, from Innocent VIII's Papal Bull can be found at Wikisource. Wikisource, The Free Library, is a Wikimedia project to build a free wiki library of primary source texts, along with translations of source-texts into any language and other supporting materials. ...