Between the end of the Middle Ages and the late 18th century, over 50,000 Europeans were persecuted, tortured and executed on charges of witchcraft. The witch hunt was sparked by a Dominican monk named Heinrich Kramer. He was obsessed with the idea that witches were part of a satanic conspiracy. To prevent the impending apocalypse, he wrote a book that would become a guide and legal treatise for the persecution of witches in the Christian world: "Malleus Maleficarum".
—Ulf Kjell Gür