For the song by AFI, see Black Sails in the Sunset. The Malleus Maleficarum (commonly rendered into English as Hammer of [the] Witches; Der Hexenhammer in German) is a treatise on the prosecution of witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, a German Catholic clergyman.The book was first published in Speyer, Germany, in 1487.he Malleus Maleficarum often makes reference to the Bible and Aristotelian thought, and it is heavily influenced by the philosophical tenets of Neo-Platonism. It also mentions astrology and astronomy, which had recently been reintroduced to the West by the ancient works of Pythagoras.