Note on Translations
The various Latin terms used to describe witchcraft, maleficium, sortilegium, and veneficium, and their vernacular counterparts, brujería, Hexerei, sorcellerie, and stregoneria, have generated a kaleidoscopic range of definitions since the Middle Ages. Medieval understandings of the magic practitioner shifted as early modern theologians, jurists, intellectuals, and unlettered people created a set of characteristics that resulted in a cumulative stereotype of witches and witchcraft in many parts of western Europe. Some prominent themes included the notion of witches as heretics, evil deeds (maleficia) caused by diabolical means, attendance at witches’ dances, night flight, and interaction with demons and the devil. Overall, from the middle of the fifteenth century, learned notions of witchcraft became increasingly defined by heresy and diabolism, and witches took shape as part of an anti-Christian cult. While considering the inherent limitations of any one of the many definitions promoted over the centuries, this book draws from Wolfgang Behringer’s definition of witchcraft as “a generic term for all kinds of evil magic and sorcery, as perceived by contemporaries.”1 This definition reflects most closely the variegated, ephemeral, and sometimes inconsistent understandings of witchcraft in early modern Navarra.
The translations used in this book reflect the Spanish terms as presented in the records. I translate brujería as “witchcraft” and use the term “witch” to describe anyone that was called a bruja by her peers in early modern Navarra. When the records refer to brujos y brujas, I translate this as “male witches and female witches” so as to not render the male witch invisible. I use the term “sorcery” for the Spanish hechicería and use “sorceress” to refer to anyone labeled an hechicera by her peers. I also do not differentiate between hechicera and bruja, as they were used interchangeably in the secular trial records.2 It was common for villagers to describe the accused with the phrase “bruja, hechicera,” sometimes even supplementing the label with “mala cristiana” (bad Christian). Though the Inquisition differentiated between these labels according to the level of diabolical involvement, scribes, villagers, and jurists did not, so I privilege the terminology used by villagers in their reports over my own definitions of a witch or sorceress, or those proposed by other scholars. I do not place the word witch in quotations, nor do I preface it with “so-called,” but rather refer to them as witches and sorceresses as did their neighbors. In doing so, I do not imply that the witches prosecuted here were genuine heretics who followed a pre-Christian, nature-based, or diabolical cult. I do not believe that the witches in these trials of early modern Navarra corporally attended witches’ gatherings, interacted with or worshiped the devil, or partook in the activities of an anti-Christian cult. But it is irrelevant whether or not I believe that witch belief corresponded with a physical reality. Those who did believe in witchcraft absolutely considered it to be real.3 The witches of Navarra were real in that villagers, magistrates, clerics, and others assumed them to be potentially dangerous members of their communities. Equally real was the devastation a witchcraft accusation brought not only to the accused but also to their families, friends, and even progeny.
Another translation choice made here retains place-names in their original Spanish. Spanish Navarra is not rendered in its French and English Navarre. As such it precludes the need to specify “Spanish Navarre” throughout, and joins other scholars who do not privilege anglicized names. I use the place-names of Navarra and Castilla, as did the eminent Spanish witchcraft scholar Gustav Henningsen, but diverge from his usage of the term “Basque.” While the subjects of our study no doubt spoke Basque, early moderners in this region would neither have used that term nor identified as such.4 The only reference to a Basque identity in our records appeared when a witch from the French side of the geopolitical border was identified as being from the “pais vasco” and not Navarra. The single other reference to Basque was the term “vasgonada,” meaning a speaker of the Basque tongue. Given the absence of the term “Basque” from the sources, and the fact that this book exclusively looks at Navarra and not the other three Basque provinces in Spain, this book does not use Basque as a marker of identity.
A final note of translation addresses the witches’ gathering, which was referred to by the unique term akelarre in trials both during and after the witch panic of 1609. Trials before this date used neither akelarre nor the term “sabbath,” rather they referred to ayuntamientos de brujas (witches’ gatherings), bailes (dances), and conventículos (conventicles). The term “sabbath” in the context of witchcraft was not commonly used by early moderners, and never in Navarra. While a few early modern demonologists used “sabbath” and “synagogue” a handful of times (including Pierre de Lancre in reference to the French Basque trials of the early seventeenth century), it was not until the twentieth century that translators adopted this term to denote witches’ gatherings. Future scholarship on early modern European witchcraft will benefit from dialogue with decolonizing methods that—among other things—advocate for privileging local, indigenous terms and avoiding anachronistic ones. As premodern scholars engage more meaningfully with diverse approaches and linguistic theories, perhaps future witchcraft studies will move away from the blanket term “witch” and treat the bruja, the sorcière, the Hexen, and the strega, allowing us to better appreciate the complexities and nuances of the captivating and provincial world of witchcraft.
1. Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 10. I join Ronald Hutton in following “the mainstream scholarly convention” of using this definition but share his expansive understanding of its modern usages as will be discussed in the epilogue. See Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), ix–x.
2. Cristina Tabernero and Jesús María Usunáriz Garayoa demonstrate that while the semantic range of these terms is broad and varied, their usage functioned synonymously within early modern trials in Navarra. For an analysis of these terms’ histories, usages, meanings, and functions, see their “Bruja, brujo, hechicera, hechicero, sorgin como insultos en la Navarra de los siglos XVI y XVII,” in Modelos de vida y cultura en Navarra (siglos XVI y XVII), ed. Mariela Insúa (Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra, 2016), esp. 381–91.
3. Though the sources I engage with, specifically, witch trial records processed by the secular tribunals of Navarra from 1525 to 1675, do not support a study of the elements of reality in early modern witchcraft, I appreciate and respect the work of scholars who seek to locate actual practices and the constructions of experiences of reality. See Edward Bever, The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition, and Everyday Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) for a compelling study of the intersections of witchcraft and the constructions of reality.
4. The anthropologist Mikel Azurmendi (1942–2021) has written about the anachronism of using “Basque” as an identity. Azurmendi, Las brujas de Zugarramurdi: La historia del aquelarre y la Inquisición (Almuzara: Spain, 2013), 18–21. In a conversation with the late Dr. Azurmendi (summer 2012, Donostia), he argued that the only “identity” these Basque speakers would have had related to their villages and their animals.