When Did Witches on Broomsticks First Appear?

Alie Ward says women on broomsticks first appear in manuscripts in the 1400s, and two works from the church in the 1480s changed European history and concepts of witchery.

Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull, a communication between the pope and the people, called the Sumis Desiderantis Effectibus, meaning desiring with supreme ardor. It declared the reality of witches and witchcraft, called them dangerous, and gave state-sanctioned authority to hunt witches in what is now Germany. A German clergyman, Kramer, wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, also called the hammer of witches. The book is where a lot of the imagery, or quoted knowledge, of witch practices comes from: witches traveling and flying, working in service to the devil, and using the most unassuming objects, wood, bone, and root, for evil purposes. Tools of the home were soon given malevolent powers, feeding a paranoid attitude that witchcraft hides in the least expected place. Reading the work leaves Kramer as no fun at parties, an absolute wet blanket.

The notion spread and took off through the 1500s. Apart from the broom, flight and travel were part of the same paranoia of witchery, with witches going on flights together to cause mayhem and mischief.