When people hear the term “witch trials,” they tend to think of Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600s. The practice, however, originated in Europe and was much older. THE POPE’S BUTCHER, the debut novel of Joseph Gioconda, takes the reader into this bloody, fascinating world. Gioconda uses his skills as an attorney and Catholic seminary graduate to tell the story of Father Heinrich Institoris, a Catholic inquisitor from the 1400s whose mission in life is to destroy witches. As Inquisition courts spring up across Europe, Institoris is drawn deeper into this obsession, vowing “justice”–i.e., death–for any woman he suspects of witchcraft. Playing Die Hard‘s John McClain (aka Bruce Willis) to Institoris’s Hans Gruber (aka Alan Rickman) is Sebastian, a young seminarian who serves as the novel’s moral compass. Can he stop the inquisitor, and the Church that backs him, from an unholy killing spree?
Institoris appears to be based on Heinrich Kramer, aka Henricus Institor, a German prior who embraced Pope Innocent VIII’s 1484 objective to end witchcraft with perhaps more exuberance than His Holiness imagined. Kramer didn’t kill suspected witches, however; he subjected them to the Inquisition. His writings, especially the Malleus Maleficarum (translation: Hammer of Witches), were popular, but his methods were not. Resistance from one Helena Scheuberin, who disrupted Kramer’s sermons and spat on him in public, and criticism from Georg Golser, bishop of Brixen, who accused Kramer of having “presumed much that had not been proved,” effectively ended his stint as an inquisitor.
Gioconda wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter. In the first paragraph, we see Father Institoris arriving in Brixen, “the first territory within his jurisdiction where he could enjoy hunting witches.” From there, Gioconda’s natural storytelling ability takes over. The characters are one-dimensional–Institoris is one cackle short of being a Disney villain–and there is surprisingly little theology for a book about Catholic demonology. Yet the thrilling plot, historical details, and gruesome-but-not-gratuitous violence will keep most readers turning the page.
Immersing the reader in the bloody but fascinating world of medieval witch trials, Joseph Gioconda’s debut is a thrilling take on a little-known historical episode.
~Anthony Aycock for IndieReader