DOUBT AND INQUIRY
This reference to Xorguinas shows that witches were already well known in Spain, and we can assume from subsequent developments that their principal seat was in the mountainous districts along the Pyrenees, penetrating perhaps from France and favored by the ignorance of the population, its sparseness and poverty.[469]The earliest case, however, that I have met of prosecution by the Inquisition was in 1498, when Gracia la Valle was burnt in Saragossa. This was followed in 1499 by the burning of María, wifeof García Biesa and, in January 1500, by that of three women, Nanavina, Estefabrita and Marieta, wife of Aznar Pérez. There was an interval then until 1512, when there were two victims, Martina Gen and María de Arbués. There was no other in Saragossa until 1522, when Sancha de Arbués suffered, and the last one in the record is Catalina de Joan Díez, in 1535.[470]Persecution would seem to be more active in Biscay, for Llorente quotes from a contemporary MS. a statement that in 1507 there were burnt there more than thirty witches, leading Martin de Arles y Andosilla to write a learned treatise on the subject, printed in Paris in 1517.[471]It would seem that, in 1517, there was a persecution on foot in Catalonia, for the Barcelona inquisitors were ordered to visit the mountainous districts, especially in the diocese of Urgel, to publish edicts against the witches and to prosecute them with all rigor.[472]Doubtless there were other developments of which no trace has reached us, and there was every prospect that Spain would be the seat of an epidemic of witchcraft which, if fostered by persecution, would rival the devastation commencing throughout the rest of Europe.
The time had scarce come for a change of policy, but there is a manifestation of a spirit of doubt and inquiry, very different from the unreasoning ferocity prevalent elsewhere. Arnaldo Albertino tells that, in 1521, at Saragossa, by command of Cardinal Adrian, he was called in consultation by the Suprema, over two cases, when he pronounced the Sabbat to be a delusion.[473]Possibly one of these cases may have been the woman who, we have seen, was burnt at Saragossa in 1522, but the effect of such a discussion is visible, in this same year 1522, in an Edict of Grace addressed to the witches of Jaca and Ribagorza, granting them six months in which to come forward and confess their offences.[474]Considering that, about this time, Leo X and Adrian VI were vigorously promoting the massacre by wholesale of witches in the Lombardo-Venitian valleys, and resenting any interference with the operation of the inquisitors, such action on the part of the Suprema is of marked significance.
It evidently felt the matter to be one requiring the most careful consideration and, on the outbreak of a witch-craze in Navarre, stimulated by the secular authorities, it assembled, in 1526, a “congregation” in Granada, laid the papers before it and asked its examination of the whole subject, which was condensed into six questions, going to the root of the matter: 1. Whether witches really commit the crimes confessed, or whether they are deluded. 2. Whether, if these crimes are really committed, the culprits are to be reconciled and imprisoned, or to be delivered to the secular arm. 3. Whether, if they deceive and do not commit these things, they are to be similarly punished, or otherwise. 4. Whether the cognizance of these crimes pertains to the Inquisition and if so, whether this is fitting. 5. Whether the accused are to be judged on their confessions without further evidence and to be condemned to the ordinary punishment. 6. What will be a wholesome remedy to extirpate the pest of these witches.[475]The mere submission to rational discussion of such a series of questions shows a desire to reach a just method of treatment, wholly at variance with practice elsewhere, when legislators and judges were solely occupied with devising schemes to fight the devil with his own weapons and to convict,per fas et nefas, the unfortunates who chanced to incur suspicion.[476]
DOUBT AND INQUIRY
The ten members of the congregation were all men of consideration and included the Licentiate Valdés, in whom we may recognize the future inquisitor-general. On the first question, as to reality or delusion, the vote stood six to four in favor of reality, Valdés being one of the minority and explaining that he regarded the proofs of the accusations as insufficient, and desired inquisitors to be instructed to make greater efforts at verification. The second question was of the highest importance. For ordinary heresy, confession and repentance ensured exemption from the stake but, in the eagerness to punish witchcraft, when a witch confessed it was customary to abandon her, either formally or informally, to be punished by the secular authorities for the crimes assumed to be proved against her—usually sucking the blood ofchildren or encompassing the death of adults. Obedience to the Scriptural injunction of not suffering a witch to live was general.[477]On this point there was wide variety of opinion, but the majority decided that, when culprits were admitted to reconciliation, they were not to be remitted to the secular judges, to be punished for homicides, for such homicides might be illusory, and there was no proof beyond their confessions; after they had completed the penance assigned to them, if the secular judges chose to try them for homicide, the Inquisition could not interfere. This decision was adopted in practice and, some years later, was cited in justification of protecting convicted witches from the secular courts.
ACTIVE PERSECUTION
On the third question, votes were too much divided for any definite result. On the fourth there was substantial affirmative agreement. On the fifth, five voted that confession sufficed, but Valdés limited its sufficiency to the minor inflictions of exile, vergüenza and scourging. With regard to the final question, as to remedial measures, it is worthy of remark that only three suggested greater activity and severity of the Inquisition; nearly all favored sending preachers to instruct and enlighten the ignorant population; two proposed reforming the regular clergy, and one the secular beneficed clergy; several thought well of building churches or monasteries on the spots where the Sabbats were held; one recommended an edict promising release from confiscation for those who would come forward within a specified time, and two voted that the Inquisition should give material aid to the poorer suspects, in order to relieve them from temptation. Valdés further presented detailed instructions for inquisitors, the most important of which were that the statements of witches implicating other parties were not to be accepted as satisfactory evidence, and that, when accused to the Inquisition, it should be ascertainedwhether they had already been tortured by the secular judges.[478]Halting as these deliberations may seem, they manifest gleams of wholesome scepticism and an honest desire to reach the truth, when elsewhere throughout Christendom such questions were regarded as beyond discussion. Yet for awhile the Suprema was not prepared to allow these opinions to influence action. In 1527 there was an outbreak of witchcraft in Navarre, the treatment of which by Inquisitor Avellaneda he reports in a letter written, in response to an inquiry from Iñigo de Velasco, Constable of Castile. Witchcraft, he declared, was the worst evil of the time; he had written to the king and twice to the Suprema urging a remedy, but neither at court nor on the spot was there any one who understood its cure. For six months he had been laboring in the mountains, where, by the help of God, he had discovered many witches. In a raid on the valley of Salazar he had captured a number and brought them to Pampeluna where, with the regent and members of the Royal Council and other doctors and lawyers, the whole subject was discussed; it was agreed that witches could be carried through the air to the Sabbat, and that they committed the crimes ascribed to them—principally, it would seem, on the strength of an experiment which he had tried with one of his prisoners. On a Friday at midnight he allowed her to anoint herself with the magic unguent which they used; she opened a window overhanging a precipice, where a cat would be dashed to pieces, and invoked the demon who came and deposited her safely on the ground—to be recaptured on Monday with seven others, three leagues away. These were all executed, after which he prosecuted his researches and discovered three places of assemblage—one in the valley of Salazar, with two hundred and fifty members, of whom he had captured sixty, another with eighty members in another valley and a third near Roncesvalles with over two hundred. Fifty had been executed and he hoped, with the favor of God to despatch twenty more. He had discovered that which, if proper assistance were given to him, would redound to the great service of God and benefit to the Republic for, without God’s mercy, the evil would grow and the life of no one would be safe. To gratify the curiosity of the constable, Avellaneda proceeded to give a detailed account of the wonders and wickedness of the Sabbat and the evils wrought by witches. In spite of all hisefforts the demon urged them on to still greater crimes by showing them phantoms of those who had been executed, pretending that he had resuscitated them and would resuscitate all who might be put to death. This evil, he concludes, is general throughout the world. If the constable wishes to ascertain whether there are witches in his district, he has only to observe whether the grain is withered while in bloom, or the acorns fail in the mountains, or there are children smothered, for wherever these things occur, there are witches.[479]Altogether, Avellaneda affords a typical illustration of the manner in which witchcraft was created and spread by the witch-finders.
There is no reason to suppose that Avellaneda was reproved for the exuberance of his zeal, for his policy was continued in 1528, when the witch epidemic was extending to Biscay, and the civil authorities were arresting and trying offenders. More eager to assert the jurisdiction of the Inquisition than to adopt the conclusions of the congregation, on February 22, 1528, Inquisitor-general Manrique ordered Sancho de Carranza de Miranda, Inquisitor of Calahorra, to go thither with full powers to investigate, try and sentence, even to relaxation, the witches who are reported to have abandoned the faith, offered themselves to the devil and wrought much evil in killing infants and ruining the harvests. He is to demand from the civil authorities all who have been arrested and the papers concerning their cases, for this is a matter pertaining to the Inquisition. A thorough inquest is to be made in all infected places, and edicts are to be published summoning within a given time and under such penalties as he sees fit, all culprits to come forward and all cognizant of such offences to denounce them.[480]There is in this no injunction of prudence and caution, no requirement that the cases are to be submitted for confirmation to the Calahorra tribunal; Carranza is provided with a fiscal and a notary, so that he can execute speedy justice and the Edict of Grace is replaced by an Edict of Faith.
It is not until 1530 that we find evidence that the discussion of 1526 was producing a change in the view taken of witchcraft and of the methods of its repression. A carta acordada, addressed to all the tribunals, enjoined special caution in all witchcraft cases, as it was a very delicate matter to handle, and this was followed by another manifesting a healthy scepticism and desire to repress popular superstition, for it stated that theensalmadores, who cured diseases by charms, asserted that all sickness was caused by witches, wherefore they were to be asked what they meant and why they said so.[481]
ZEAL RESTRAINED
The practical position assumed by this time may be gathered from a letter of December 11, 1530, from the Suprema to the Royal Council of Navarre, when a fresh outbreak of the witch-craze had, as usual, brought dissension between the tribunal and the secular courts, for the latter refused to acknowledge the exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and complained of its delays and the leniency of its sentences, in comparison with the speedy and unsparing action demanded by popular clamor. The Suprema now, in reply to the complaints of the Royal Council against the Calahorra tribunal, replied that this matter of the witches was not new; on a previous occasion there had been the same altercation; some of the cases which had caused the most complaint had been brought to the court and had, by order of the emperor, been examined by learned men when, after much debate, it was ordered that the prisoners should be delivered to the inquisitors who, after examining them, should try those pertaining to their jurisdiction and surrender the others. There was much doubt felt as to the verification of the crimes alleged, and the Suprema deplored the executions by the secular courts, for the cases were not so clear as had been supposed. In view of all this, inquisitors were enjoined to use caution and moderation, for there is so much ambiguity in these cases that it seems impossible for human reason to reach the truth. When the same questions had arisen elsewhere, the Suprema had ordered the inquisitors to act with the greatest circumspection,for these matters were most delicate and perilous, and some inexperienced judges had been deceived in treating them. The Suprema therefore deprecated a competencia; it entreated the Royal Council to hand all cases over to the tribunal, which would return those not subject to its jurisdiction, and the inquisitors would be ordered to remove the censures and fines—which shows that the quarrel had been pushed to extremes.[482]There was equal determination in resisting the claims of the episcopal courts to jurisdiction. In 1531 the Saragossa tribunal complains of the intrusion of the Bishop of San Angelo, who had refused to surrender a prisoner and had invited the tribunal to join him in prosecuting witches in places under his jurisdiction. To him the Suprema accordingly wrote, asserting the exclusive cognizance of the Inquisition and requiring him to deliver to the tribunal any prisoners whom he had arrested.[483]
The cautious and sceptical attitude assumed by the Suprema was all the more creditable because the leading authorities of the period were firm in their conviction of the reality of witchcraft. Arnaldo Albertino, himself an inquisitor who, in 1521, had deemed the Sabbat an illusion, writing about 1535, says that since then, on mature consideration, he had reached the opposite opinion; he now accepts all the horrors and crimes ascribed to witches and argues away the can. Episcopi. Alfonso de Castro, another writer of the highest distinction at this time, gives full credence to the most extravagant stories of the Sabbat, and he disposes of the can. Episcopi by asserting that it referred to an entirely different sect.[484]
Notwithstanding all this, the Suprema pursued its course in restraining the cruel zeal of the tribunals. The craze was spreading in Catalonia, where it required the Barcelona tribunal to submit to it for confirmation all sentences in these cases. In 1537, it returned, July 11th, a number of sentences, with its decisions as to each, and instructions as to the future. The tribunal was chafing under the unaccustomed restriction, and the fiscal was scandalized at the solicitude displayed for the friendless wretches who, everywhere but in Spain, were deprived of the most ordinary safeguards against injustice, but the imperturbable Suprema maintained itstemperate wisdom. The utmost care, it said, was to be exercised to verify all testimony and to avoid conviction when this was insufficient. Arrests had been made on the mere reputation of being witches, for which the inquisitors were reproved and told that they must arrest no one on such grounds, nor on the testimony of accomplices, nor must those who denied their guilt be condemned asnegativos. When any one confessed to being present at the killing of children or damage to harvests, verification must be sought as to the death of the children at that time, and of what disease, and whether the crops had been injured. When such verification was made, arrests could follow and, if the character of the case and of the accused required it, torture could be employed.[485]It will be noted how much more scrupulous was the care enjoined in these cases than in those of Moriscos and Judaizers, and the limitation on the use of torture is especially observable, as that was the universal resort in witchcraft throughout Europe.
ZEAL RESTRAINED
It was difficult to enforce these rules in Barcelona. The result of the visitation of Francisco Vaca was a long series of rebukes, in 1550, largely concerning the procedure in witch cases and eventually leading to the dismissal of Inquisitor Sarmiento, although his offences were simply what was regarded, everywhere but in Spain, as the plain duty of those engaged in a direct contest with Satan, represented by his instrument the witch. Sarmiento is told that he made arrests without sufficient proofs and accepted the evidence taken by secular officials without verifying it, as required by the practice of the Inquisition, and, whereas the Suprema ordered certain precautions taken before concluding cases, he concluded them without doing so, and subjected parties to reconciliation and scourging that were not included in the sentence. Although the Suprema had ordered all sentences of relaxation to be submitted to it, he had relaxed seven persons as witches, in disregard of this, and when repeatedly commanded to present himself, he had never done so. Then the fiscal was taken to task because he had been present at the examination of witches, conducting the interrogation himself, putting leading questions, telling them what to confess and assuring them that this was not like a secular court, where those who confessed were executed. In the case of Juana, daughter of Benedita de Burgosera, he told her that she was a witch, that her mother had made her a witch and hadtaken her to the Bach de Viterna, and he detailed to her the murders committed by her mother. In witch cases he caused arrests without presentingclamosasor submitting evidence, but when he learned that a visitor was coming he fabricated and inserted them in the papers. In this the notary del secreto was his accomplice besides taking part in the examinations, bullying the accused and making them confess what was wanted by threats and suggestions. The alcaide of the prison had allowed one of the prisoners, who endeavored to save himself by accusing others, to enter the cells and persuade the prisoners to confess and not to revoke; the alcaide had also urged the women to confess, telling them that they were guilty and promising them release if they would confess and, when taking back to his cell a man who had revoked his confession, he so threatened the poor wretch that he returned and withdrew his revocation.[486]Elsewhere than in Spain such methods of securing confession were the veriest commonplaces in witch trials.
Meanwhile the chronic witchcraft troubles in Navarre had called forth, in 1538, a series of enlightened instructions to Inquisitor Valdeolitas, who was sent with a special commission. He was told to pay no attention to the popular demand that all witches should be burnt, but to exercise the utmost discretion, for it was a most delicate matter, in which deception was easy. He was not to confiscate but could impose fines to pay salaries. He was to explain to the more intelligent of the people that the destruction of harvests was due to the weather or to a visitation of God, for it happened where there were no witches, while the accusations of homicide required the most careful verification. TheMalleus Maleficarum—that Bible of the witch-finder—was not to be believed in everything, for the writer was liable to be deceived like every one else. The demands of the corregidores for the surrender of penitents, to be subsequently punished for their crimes, were not to be granted, under the decision of the congregation of 1526. Then, a year later, October 27, 1539, the Calahorra tribunal was notified that the Royal Council of Navarre had agreed to surrender thirty-four prisoners; one of the inquisitors was to go to Pampeluna to examine the cases; those pertaining to the Inquisition were to be tried in strict conformity with the instructions and the rest were to be left with the civil authorities.[487]
In the instructions to Valdeolitas there is a phrase of peculiar interest, prescribing special caution with regard to the dreams of the witches when they sally forth to the Sabbat, as these are very deceitful. This, so far as I have observed, is the earliest official admission of the view taken in the can. Episcopi that the midnight flights were illusions. We have seen how this was denied by Albertino and de Castro. Ciruelo admits that there are two ways in which the Xorguina attends the Sabbat, one by personally flying, and the other by anointing herself and falling into a stupor, when she is spiritually conveyed, but both are the work of the demon and he admits of no distinction in the punishment.[488]Bishop Simancas, also an inquisitor, has no doubt as to the bodily transportation of the witch to the Sabbat; he admits that most jurists hold to the theory of illusion, as expressed in the can. Episcopi, but theologians, he says, are unanimous in maintaining the reality; he argues that the can. Episcopi does not refer to witches, and that stupor with illusions is much more difficult to comprehend than the truth of the Sabbat.[489]
ZEAL RESTRAINED
With such a consensus of opinion as to the truth of the Sabbat, orAquelarreas it came to be called (from a Biscayan word signifying “field of the goat”) it is not surprising that the Suprema advanced slowly in designating it as an illusion, although practically its instructions assumed that no reliance was to be placed on the multitudinous testimony of its existence, of the foul horrors enacted there and of the presence there of other votaries of Satan. A curious case, occurring at a somewhat later period, may be alluded to here as showing the conclusion reached on the subject, and as throwing light on the auto-suggestion and hypnotic state which lay at the bottom of the Sabbat, although its connection is merely with the carnal indulgence that formed a prominent feature of the nocturnal assemblies. In 1584 Anastasia Soriana, aged 28, wife of a peasant, denounced herself to the Murcia tribunal for having long maintained carnal relations with a demon. The tribunalwisely regarded the matter as an illusion and dismissed the case without action. Twelve years later, in 1596, she presented herself to the tribunal of Toledo, with the same self-accusation and again, after due deliberation, she was discharged, although in any other land it would have gone hard with her.[490]
Meanwhile the Suprema continued the good work of protecting so-called witches from the cruelty of the secular courts and of restraining the intemperate zeal of its own tribunals. The craze, in 1551, had extended to Galicia, where at the time there was no Inquisition. Many arrests had been made and trials were in progress by the magistrates, when a cédula of August 27th, evidently drawn up by the Suprema for the signature of Prince Philip, addressed to all officials, informed them that the matter of witchcraft was a very delicate one in which many judges had been deceived, wherefore, by the advice of the inquisitor-general, he ordered that all the testimony should be sent to the Suprema for its action, pending which the accused were to be kept under guard without proceeding further with their cases or with others of the same nature.[491]Then, in September, 1555, the Suprema forwarded to the Logroño tribunal two memorials from some towns in Guipúzcoa, with an expression of its sorrow that so many persons shouldhave been so suddenly arrested, for, from the testimony at hand and former experience, it thought that there was little basis for such action, and that wrong might be inflicted on many innocent persons. The evidence must be rigidly examined and, if it proved false, the prisoners must be discharged and the witnesses punished; if there was ground for prosecution, the trials might proceed, but the sentences must be submitted for confirmation and no more arrests be made without forwarding the testimony and awaiting orders. Six months later, in March, 1556, the Suprema concluded that the cases had not been substantiated; more careful preliminary investigations were essential for, in so doubtful a matter, greater caution was needed than in other cases.[492]
The secular authorities were restive under the deprivation of their jurisdiction over the crimes imputed to the witches; they continued to assert their claims, and the question came up for formal decision in 1575. The high court of Navarre had caused the arrest of a number of women and was trying them, when the Logroño tribunal, in the customary dictatorial fashion with threats of penalties, issued a summons to deliver all the prisoners and papers. This was duly read, November 24th, to the alcaldes, while sitting in court, to which they replied that the parties had been arrested under information that they had killed children and infants, that the women had had carnal intercourse with goats, and had killed cattle and injured harvests and vineyards with poisons and powders, and had carried off many children at night from their beds, while stupefying the adults with powders, of all of which as alcaldes they were the lawful judges. Therefore they appealed to the inquisitor-general against the penalties threatened and promised that, if the prisoners had committed heresy, they would be remitted to the inquisitors after undergoing punishment according to law. Finally they complained of the disrespect shown them and asked for a competencia.
MODERATION
The alcaldes further sent a memorial to the king, setting forth their claims to jurisdiction for crimes other than heresy, protesting against the assumption of the inquisitors to be sole judges of what pertained to them, to inhibit proceedings in the interim, and to interfere with the death-penalty which the alcaldes might decree. The royal court also petitioned the king in the same sense, addingthat the prisoners spoke a dialect unintelligible to the inquisitors and that, if the cases were transferred, the king would lose the confiscations, which promised to be large. All this proved vain. A letter of the Suprema to the tribunal, in 1576, informs it that the alcaldes had been ordered to surrender all the prisoners and the papers in the cases.[493]While this matter was in progress, a similar controversy arose about numerous witches in Santander, for a letter of January 10, 1576, instructs the Logroño tribunal that it can proceed against them for anything savoring of heresy, requiring the secular judges meanwhile to suspend proceedings; the facts are to be carefully verified and everything is to be submitted to the Suprema.[494]
The use made by the tribunals of the jurisdiction thus secured for them, under the cautions so sedulously inculcated, may be gathered from a case in the Toledo tribunal, in 1591, which further shows that witchcraft was not wholly confined to the mountainous districts of the east and north. The vicar of Alcalá had arrested three women of Cazar, Catalina Matheo, Joana Izquierda, and Olalla Sobrina. During the previous four years there had been four or five deaths of children; among the villagers, the three women had the reputation of witches, and sixteen witnesses testified to that effect. The vicar tortured them and obtained from Catalina a confession that, some four or five years before, Olalla asked her whether she would like to become a witch and have carnal intercourse with the demon. Then Joana one night invited her to her house where she found Olalla; the demon came in the shape of a goat, they danced together and after some details unnecessary to repeat, Olalla anointed the joints of her fingers and toes, they stripped themselves and flew through the air to a house which they entered by a window; placing somniferous herbs under the pillows of the parents, they choked to death a female infant, burning its back and breaking its arms. The noise aroused the parents and they flew with the goat back to Olalla’s house. All this she ratified after due interval and repeated when confronted with Olalla, who had been tortured without confessing and who denied Catalina’s story. As for Joana, she had likewise overcome the torture, but she had told the wife of the gaoler that one nightsome fifteen witches, male and female, had forcibly anointed her and carried her to a field where they danced, Catalina being one of the leaders and Olalla a follower. This she repeated to the vicar, adding stories of being present when the children were killed, but taking no part in it, after which she duly ratified the whole. At this stage the vicar transferred his prisoners to the tribunal. Catalina, at her first audience, begged mercy for the false witness which, through torture, she had borne against herself and the others. Sixteen witnesses testified to the deaths of the children, and she was sentenced to torture, when, before being stripped, her resolution gave way and she repeated and ratified the confession made to the vicar. Joana asserted that her confession to the vicar had been made through fear of torture and she overcame torture without confessing, as likewise did Olalla. The outcome was that Catalina was sentenced to appear in an auto with the insignia of a witch, to abjurede levi, to be scourged with two hundred lashes, and to be recluded at the discretion of the tribunal. The other two were merely to appear in the auto and to abjurede levi, without further penance. This was not strictly logical, but anywhere else than in Spain, all three would have been tortured until they satisfied their judges, and would then have been burnt after denouncing numerous accomplices and starting a witchcraft panic. As it was, the Toledo tribunal had no more witchcraft cases up to the end of the record in 1610.[495]
THE LOGROÑO AUTO OF 1610
The tribunal of Barcelona was more rational in 1597. In a report to the Suprema of a visitation made by Inquisitor Diego Fernández de Heredia, there occur the entries of Ana Ferrera, widow and Gilaberta, widow, both of Villafranca, accused by many witnesses of being reputed as witches and of killing many animals and infants, in revenge for little annoyances. Also, Francisco Cicar, of Bellney, near Villafranca, numerously accused as a wizard using incantations, telling where lost animals could be found, enchanting them so that wolves could not harm them, and killing the cattle of those who offended him. Here was the nucleus of a whole aquelarre for Villafranca, but all these cases are marked on the margin of the report as suspended, and nothing came of them.[496]The Logroño tribunal also showed its good sense,in 1602, when a young woman of 25, named Francisca Buytran, of Alegria, accused herself in much detail, before Don Juan Ramírez, of witchcraft, including attendance at the aquelarre. She was brought before the tribunal, which dropped the whole matter as being destitute of truth; again the magistrates sent it back, asking that it be revived and prosecuted and, when this was refused, they scourged her in Alegria as an impostor who defamed her neighbors.[497]
Yet it was reserved for this same tribunal to give occasion to an agitation resulting in a clearer understanding than had hitherto been reached of the nature of the witch-craze, and rendering it impossible for the future that Spain should be disgraced by the judicial murders, or rather massacres, which elsewhere blacken the annals of the seventeenth century. One of the customary panics arose in Navarre. The secular authorities were prompt and zealous; they made many arrests, they extorted confessions and hastily executed their victims, apparently to forestall the Inquisition. The tribunal reported to the Suprema, which ordered one of the inquisitors to make a visitation of the infected district. Juan Valle de Alvarado accordingly spent several months in Cigarramundi and its vicinity, where he gathered evidence inculpating more than two hundred and eighty persons of having apostatized to the demon, besides multitudes of children, who were becoming witches, but who were yet too young for prosecution. The leaders and those who had wrought the most evil, to the number of forty, were seized and brought before the tribunal. By June 8, 1610, it was ready to hold the consulta de fe, consisting of the three inquisitors, Alonso Becerra, Juan Valle de Alvarado and Alonso de Salazar Frias, with the episcopal Ordinary and four consultors. In his vote, Salazar analyzed the testimony and showed its flimsy and inconclusive character; he seems to have had no scruples as to the reality of witchcraft, but he desired more competent proof, while his colleagues apparently had no misgivings.[498]
This was not the only retrograde step. For seventy-five years the Suprema had consistently repressed the ardor of persecution and had favored, without absolutely asserting, the theory of illusion, but its membership was constantly changing and it nowseems to have had a majority of blind believers. On August 3d it presented to Philip III a consulta relating, with profound grief, the conditions in the mountains of Navarre and the steps already taken. Since then further reports showed that the demon was busier than ever in misleading these poor ignorant folk, and the evil had increased so that there now were more than twenty aquelarres to which they gather, and the evil was still spreading; the people were greatly afflicted with the damages endured, and parents who saw their children misled were so desperate that they wanted to put them to death. An Edict of Grace was published, but the demon so blinded them that few took advantage of it, and these speedily relapsed. The progress of the infection was such that the powerful hand of the king was absolutely required for its rigorous repression, and the popular ignorance was so dense that orders should be issued to the Archbishop of Burgos and the Bishops of Calahorra, Pampeluna and Tarazona, whose dioceses were concerned, and to the Provincials of the Religious Orders, to send pious and learned men to instruct the people, while the vigilance would not be lacking of the inquisitors, who would shrink from no labor.[499]The Suprema evidently regarded the emergency as most serious, calling for united effort to withstand the victorious onslaught of the demon. It had wholly forgotten the wholesome caution which it had inculcated so sedulously since 1530 and there was imminent danger that Spain would be swept into the European current of witch-extermination.
Whether the pleasure-loving king organized the projected preaching crusade we do not know, but he was sufficiently impressed to promise that he would honor with his presence the coming auto de fe, which was fixed for November 7th. Something distracted his attention and, at the last moment, it was announced that important affairs would prevent his attendence. The disappointed inquisitors, on November 1st, wrote to the Suprema expressing their regret and reporting that there would be thirty-one persons in the auto, besides a large number of prisoners whose trials were under way.
THE LOGROÑO AUTO OF 1610
Thus far twenty-two aquelarres had been discovered, and the accused were so numerous that the special favor of heaven would be necessary to overcome the evil. Accompanying this was a letter to the king, enclosing two of the sentences con méritos,to enlighten him as to the ravages of the devil among his subjects. This sect of witches, they said, was of old date in the Pyrenees, and had of late spread over the whole region; the inquisitors were devoting their lives to its suppression; they were fighting the devil at close quarters, and they hoped to excite the royal zeal to lend the Inquisition efficient support. These letters bore the signature of Salazar as well as those of his colleagues.[500]
Great preparations had been made to render the auto impressive. Crowds assembled from a distance, and it was reckoned that in the processions there were a thousand familiars and officials. Two days were required for the solemnities and on the second day, to finish the work between dawn and sunset, many of the sentences had to be curtailed for, as usual, they were con meritos, with full details of the abominations of the aquelarres and the crimes of the culprits. All the grotesque obscenities, which the foul imaginations of the accused could invent to satisfy their prosecutors, were given at length, and doubtless impressed the gaping multitudes with the horror and detestation desired. One novelty in the sensual delights of the aquelarre was that the feast was usually composed of decaying corpses, which the witches dug up and conveyed there—especially those of their kindred, so that the father sometimes ate the son and the son the father—and it was stated that male flesh had a higher flavor than female. There were also the usual stories of the destruction of harvests by means of powders, of sucking the blood of infants, of bringing sickness and death by poisons so subtile that a single touch, in a pretended caress, would work its end. When the demon reproached them with slackness in evil-doing, two sisters, María Presona and María Joanto, agreed to kill the son and the daughter of the other, aged 8 and 9, and they did so with the powders. It was natural that a population, placing full credence in the existence of malignity armed with these powers, should be merciless in the resolve for its extermination. Yet the auto, in its absolute outcome, could scarce be classed with the murderous exhibitions to which the Spaniard had grown accustomed. In all there were fifty-three culprits, of whom but twenty-nine were witches of either sex. Of these there were eleven relaxed—five, who had died in prison, in effigy with their bones, and fivenegativoswho had not been induced to confess. There was but one relaxation of a buen confitente,María Zozaya, whose terrible confession overshot the mark, as it showed her to be a dogmatizer. Even under this excitement the Inquisition maintained its rule not to execute those who confessed and repented; under any other jurisdiction the eighteen who were reconciled would have been burnt, and of these apparently only five were scourged.[501]
Merciful as was this, the effect of the auto was to cause a revulsion of feeling among the more intelligent. When the local magistrates were proceeding as usual to arrest suspects, the alcaldes of the Royal Court of Navarre, early in 1611, interposed by arresting them in turn for exceeding their powers and prosecuted them to punishment. This incensed the Logroño tribunal which, on May 17th, addressed an energetic protest to the viceroy; the action of the local authorities had been of the utmost service, not only in sending culprits to the Inquisition, but in leading to many spontaneous self-accusations; this had now all ceased, and those who had confessed were beginning to retract; the tribunal had relied upon the court for aid in exterminating this accursed race and now it was protecting them. Possibly the tribunal may also have invoked the authority of the Suprema but, if so, it can have found no sympathy, for there also had there been a change of heart and a return to the old policy. On March 26th it had ordered the publication of an Edict of Grace, which Salazar was deputed to carry with him on a visitation to the infected districts and, after some delay, he started with it, May 22d, on a mission destined to open his eyes and put a permanent end to the danger of witchcraft epidemics in Spain.[502]
PEDRO DE VALENCIA
To this a contribution of some weight, though by no means so influential as has been reckoned, was made by Pedro de Valencia, a disciple of Arias Montano, and one of the most learned men of his time. At the request of Inquisitor-general Sandoval y Rojas, he composed an elaborate “discourse” on witchcraft, addressed to Sandoval under date of April 20th. In this, after premising the great grief and compassion with which he had read the relations of the auto of the previous November, he proceeds to discuss three hypotheses. The first is rationalistic; there is no demon, the aquelarres are assemblages for sensual indulgence, to which the members go on foot, and the presiding demon is a man disguised. The second is illusion, produced by a pact with the demon, who gives to the witch an ointment throwing her into a stupor during which she imagines all that is related of the aquelarres, whence it follows that the evidence of the witch as to those whom she has seen there is not to be accepted. The destruction of cattle and harvests is the work of the demon, or may be accomplished by poisons. The third supposition, believed by the vulgar, in conformity with the evidence and confessions, is the most prodigious and horrible of all, and against this he brings his strongest arguments in full detail. Pedro does not express any positive conclusion of his own, but his reasoning all tends to support the second hypothesis—of stupor and illusion produced by the demonic ointment, and from this he deduces the result that witches are by no means innocent. They delight in the crimes which they believe themselves to commit, and desire to persevere in their apostasy from God and their servitude to the devil. Men sometimes become heretics through ignorance and mistaken zeal, but these seek the devil in all his hideousness for the purpose of partaking in foul and unhallowed pleasures. They merit any punishment that can be inflicted on them, for such rotten limbs should be lopped off, and the cancer be extirpated with fire and blood. Their conspiracies to kill and the crimes which they commit and the injuries inflicted on their neighbors, before and after these dreams deserve all this and greater rigor.
This virtual equalization of criminality in illusive and actual witchcraft was not likely to be of benefit to so-called witches, but there was wisdom in the caution which Pedro urged on judges, to assure themselves of the reality of alleged crimes and not, through preconceived views, to so direct their interrogatories as to lead ignorant, foolish, crazy or demoniac persons, like thewitnesses and the accused in these cases, to testify or to confess to extravagances, because they see that it is expected and hope to gain the favor of those holding the power of life or death. Similar stories were told of the early Christians and, in view of all this, and the utter legal insufficiency of the witnesses, the whole tissue of evidence and confessions vanishes into smoke. Amid all these deceits, the prudence of the judge should seek the true and the probable, rather than monstrous fictions for, if he desires to find the latter, he will be fully satisfied by the miserable lying women before him—disciples, by their own confession, of the father of lies.[503]
The inconsistencies in this discourse suggest that probably Pedro had stronger convictions than he deemed it wise to express. It is possible that Inquisitor Salazar may have read the paper and have been somewhat influenced by it, when he started in May on the visitation which proved to be the turning-point in the history of Spanish witchcraft, but we have seen that, in the consulta de fe of the previous June 10th, his attention had already been aroused by the contradictions and unsatisfactory character of the evidence on which the tribunal was accustomed to act and, when once his mind was directed to investigating the problems thus suggested, the close acquaintance with facts afforded by the visitation enabled him to reach conclusions vastly more definite than any which his predecessors ventured to form.