I stumbled on an online copy of a 15th century witch hunting manual the Malleus Maleficarum. Here is a link if you are interested: https://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/index.htm

Apparently, this document was used in official proceedings for around 300 years. It's full of all the usual stuff, sucubi, hail storms, witches making men's private parts appear to vanish, formalised trial procedures etc. I've been discussing this document with the reddit philosophers and it got me thinking how the authors of this document arrived at some of the detailed descriptions of witch activity. Did they just make it up or was there a methodological reasoning that led them to some of their conclusions? Was their thought process similar to modern conspiracy theorists?

For example, in their section entitled: Whether Witches may work some Prestidigatory Illusion so that the Male Organ appears to be entirely removed and separate from the Body. Here https://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/mm01_09a.htm

How did they arrive at the conclusion that witches were removing men's penises? Did they completely make this up or was there a spate of missing penises in the early 1400s that had people concerned?

In this one: How they are Transported from Place to Place, https://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/mm02a03a.htm , they mention witches flying on broomsticks an/or chairs. Their reasoning seems to be very loosely based on claims of non-witches being mysteriously transported from place to place then directly leads to: therefore broomsticks. Was there urban legends prior to this or did these guys make this up specifically for this document?

Did anyone from church heirarchy vet this document before it was released into circulation? It seems many, many people were tortured and killed based on some pretty sketchy reasoning.

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[edit] Kind of answering my own question a bit here, someone posted this link in another thread, apparently there was a "penis panic" in 1400s Central Europe. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/72227/6-penis-panics-around-world