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IN THE 15TH CENTURY, MEN FEARED WITCHES WHO COULD STEAL THEIR PENISES.
One of many bizarre beliefs put forth in the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th-century German witch-hunting manual by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, was the opinion that witches could steal men's penises. Kramer wrote that witches "can take away the male organ." He didn't mean Lorena Bobbitt-style, clarifying, "not indeed by despoiling the human body of it, but by concealing it with some glamour."
In a 2002 paper published in the Journal of Folklore Research, Moira Smith pointed to male sexual insecurity as a driver of the witch hunts. "Many of the crimes (maleficia) attributed to witches concerned sexuality: copulation with incubus devils, procuring abortions, causing sterility and stillbirth, and impeding sexual relations between husbands and wives," she wrote.
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