The flying phallus and the laughing inquisitor: penis theft in the Malleus Maleficarum  

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"The flying phallus and the laughing inquisitor: penis theft in the Malleus Maleficarum" is an essay by American scholar Moira Smith[1].

Excerpt:

In Western art, the penis-bird is also a common theme from antiquity to the present. This figure takes many forms in ancient art, ranging from a simple phallus with wings to a full bird with wings, eyes, feet, and tail feathers. John Boardman has cataloged twenty-seven examples of the phallus-bird in Greek art dating from 600 to 430 B.C. The winged phallus was very common in ancient Rome; the image was incorporated into rings, pendants, and finger-rings that were commonly worn by boys as good luck charms. Like other phallic objects, these were probably designed to counter the evil eye. Some pieces depict animated penises, including penises with eyes actively attacking representations of giant eyes (Johns 1982:62-75). However, many other examples show the phallus-bird in frankly erotic and humorous contexts (Boardman 1992). (6)

One example from the early fifteenth century is of particular interest because it is contemporary with the Malleus Maleficarum. It is a German trinket box with a carving on the side that shows a woman picking phalluses from a tree full of phallic "fruit" (Kohlhaussen 1928:92). Where Kramer's story had the disembodied members shut up in a nest in a tree, here they are part of the tree itself. The theme of phalluses as a type of fruit or other crop, often tended by women, has many parallels in erotic art from antiquity to the present (Johns 1982:opp. 48; Kronhausen and Kronhausen 1987:39; Melville 1973:208). (7) This theme, which may have been familiar to Kramer, is another parallel to the nest of penises motif.

See also

• Disembodied penis