The Legal Landscapes

Early modern Spanish legal culture consisted of ambiguous laws, inconstant codes, and special juridical privileges. In short, it was a messy patchwork of competing powers ranging from local ecclesiastic courts to the emerging early modern state.⁵ And as the legal profession and therefore legal systems grew, savvy early modern Europeans exploited the complicated jurisdictions to their own advantages, even becoming quite litigious.⁶ While the wealthy tended to invoke court systems to settle disputes over estates, inheritances, and seignorial duties and rights, the peasantry turned to the courts, too, for their own justice regarding dowries, contracts, and other personal matters.⁷ As the courts increased in popularity, legal procedures and criminal prosecutions became increasingly complicated. The inquisitorial system, judicial torture, and a search for other suspects converged to provide a mechanism with which to prosecute those crafted as witches.⁸

In Navarra, disputes usually appeared before a village alcalde, priest, or seignorial figure, offering villagers several means of settling their disputes in the primera instancia (“first instance”).⁹ These tribunals resided within local municipalities consisting of the alcalde (municipal magistrate), regidores (council members) and the sindico procurador (city attorney).¹⁰ If the alcalde decided he could not address the situation properly at the primera instancia—in crimes such as witchcraft—he would transfer it to another court for adjudication. Navarra’s royal courts, though reorganized by Castilla in the early sixteenth century, drew from the medieval fueros that allowed them to draw from traditional preeminence.¹¹ The royal tribunals included the royal court, which served as the regular court, and the council, which oversaw appeals. Alongside the tribunals, the Diputación (standing judicial committee) supported the courts, and the Cámera de Comptos attended to economic and financial matters, while the ecclesiastical and military courts functioned independently, retaining immunity from interference at the hands of the royal tribunals.¹²

The episcopal tribunal, the curia diocesana, held jurisdiction over the diocese, adjudicating a wide range of issues as they pertained to clerics and members of the orders, as well as those of the secular orders. Cases handled by Navarra’s episcopal court included matters of benefices and offices, civil processes over debts, and criminal cases of violation of ecclesiastical discipline. It also held authority over some laity in relation to execution of testaments, graves, religious foundations, and above all, issues surrounding marriage (promises and nullity).¹³ Still, as with other early modern regions, the delimitations of each jurisdiction could be blurred. The nature of the issue at hand could be called into question, as the spiritual and temporal realms overlapped often.¹⁴ Throughout Europe, the judicial lines between secular and ecclesiastical courts were tested, but Spain possessed yet another arm wrestling for power: that of its Inquisition.

¹ These dates emerge from the unpublished database of Gustav Henningsen and do not represent other inquisitorial tribunals outside the one with oversight of Navarra. There was a witch trial in 1507, though likely in Durango and not in Navarra. For an excellent analysis of this unclearly documented event, see Iñaki Bazán, “Superstición y brujería en el Duranguesado a fines de la Edad Media: ¿Amboto 1507?,” Clio & Crimen 8 (2011): 191–224.

² Here I categorize a witch trial as one where the court sustains a primary focus on the defendants’ alleged practice of sorcery or witchcraft. Other trials involving issues of sorcery, witchcraft, or the fallout from the witch panic exist in the ADP, but I omit them as they do not align with the criteria I define. An example of an episcopal court trial related to witchcraft that does not fit into the definition of a witch trial is that of accused witches from the village of Erratzu who brought forth complaints of an abusive priest who forced their confessions of witchcraft. For this related trial, see Homza, Village Infernos, 144–46.

³ These figures are in dialogue with data from the scholarship of Usunáriz which lists fifty-three cases of witchcraft in the royal tribunals, while this study draws from approximately thirty-five. See Usunáriz, “La caza de brujas,” 316, 320.

⁴ I defer to the Inquisition figures offered by Henningsen (unpublished database, 2016) and Usunáriz (“La caza de brujas,” 316, 320) in their scholarship.

Established in 1478 by Isabel and Fernando, the Inquisition merged spiritual concerns with political imperatives. Its original aims addressed concerns of conversos (converted Jewish populations) but extended to all forms of heresy.¹⁵ Reaching throughout Spain, its peripheries, and across the Atlantic, this exceptional judicial arm prosecuted numerous heresies against European, mestizo, and African descendants until its final abolition in 1834. Its tribunals prosecuted multiple crimes including crypto-Judaism, Lutheranism, bigamy, blasphemy, bestiality, homosexuality, and witchcraft, assuming that these crimes included heretical acts. The Inquisition functioned through a complex combination of its own ministries, intelligence agencies (composed of commissioners and lay agents), and, of course, the participation of parishioners during Spain’s reformation.¹⁶ Navarra’s tribunal was initially seated in Pamplona, then moved to Estella, later to Tudela, and then to Calahorra in 1540 where it remained for three decades. The tribunal ultimately settled in Logroño in 1570, a town some eighty kilometers southwest of Pamplona (see table 2).¹⁷

The Inquisition and Witchcraft

Throughout the Inquisition’s three centuries of existence, thousands of people accused of witchcraft and sorcery fell to its prosecution under the category of Supersticiones. Despite this, the Inquisition’s role in prosecuting witchcraft was less energetic than is sometimes assumed, and relatively few were handed over to secular authorities for execution.¹⁸ It has also been argued that the Holy Office was more temperate toward accusations of witchcraft than many secular and ecclesiastical courts in Europe as witchcraft was not the most important crime it sought to punish.¹⁹ Owing to the relatively small number of those sentenced to death, the heresy of witchcraft has been referred to as the Inquisition’s “forgotten crime.”²⁰ Still, nearly five thousand trials fell under Supersticiones from 1540 to 1700, which included crimes ranging from witchcraft to sorcery to unsanctioned prayers.²¹ The Inquisition’s tribunal in Navarra alone processed hundreds of cases of Supersticiones. While perhaps less persecuted than other crimes, sorcery and witchcraft were of concern to the Inquisition, and it sought jurisdiction over these transgressions with vigor.

Maleficent magic since antiquity had been tried by secular courts, but the establishment of the papal Inquisition in the early thirteenth century challenged this prosecutorial control.²² Laws in Castilla from 1370 and 1387 confirmed the heretical nature of sorcery and its punishment by the secular court if committed by the laity and by the ecclesiastical judiciary if clergy were involved. A royal decree in 1500 ordered secular justices to seek diviners and arrest and punish them, thereby reinforcing secular control of the crime. Thus, at the time of the Spanish Inquisition’s creation, witchcraft and sorcery remained mostly in the hands of the secular courts though in some regions episcopal courts tried witches. While a few inquisitorial tribunals prosecuted several witches, such as Saragossa (1498–1500), Toledo (1513), and Cuenca (1515),²³ the early Inquisition did not actively pursue crimes of witchcraft, sorcery, and other “superstitions.”²⁴ This did not mean the Inquisition was disinterested, as reflected in an agreement reached between the tribunals of Aragon and the king in 1512, which allowed for inquisitorial jurisdiction over witchcraft in cases where heresy was involved.²⁵ As a crimen mixti, the secular component of witchcraft precluded the Inquisition’s exclusive control of witch trials. Doubts also remained as to whether heresy was an immutable component of witchcraft. Furthermore, the Inquisition, influenced by the tenth-century Canon episcopi that attributed witchcraft to demonic illusions, maintained its skepticism of the reality of diabolical witchcraft.²⁶ If the diabolical pact and witches’ gatherings did not occur in reality, was heresy even involved? But the increased centrality of the diabolical pact shifted the vision of witchcraft and, as the Inquisition would argue, placed the crime in its hands. A pact with the devil, of course, was inherently heretical.

Regional differences shaped each tribunal’s vigor for certain crimes.²⁷ Navarra’s inquisitorial tribunal would in its life-span process hundreds of witch trials, fight fiercely for its judicial rights over this bedeviling crime, and sponsor one of the largest witch panics in the early modern period.²⁸ Influenced by both its sprawling and mountainous geography and demography of rustic Basque-speakers, the volume of witch trials treated by the tribunal of Logroño was remarkably robust. Navarra, and other regions of northern Spain, experienced notably larger numbers of trials featuring diabolism and maleficia than southern Spain.²⁹ The Muslim influence in southern Spain largely shaped this trend, as Islamic cosmologies allowed for magical practices that did not necessitate a diabolical pact. Northern Spain, however, consisted mostly of Old Christian populations, which tended to be better acquainted with demonological thought and seemed more inclined to utilize and support the local courts, both factors that generated a greater number of witchcraft denunciations than in areas with higher Muslim populations. Old Christian populations, such as Navarra’s majority, also tended to resist the Inquisition’s judicial intrusion.³⁰

The stronger the secular court, the more influence it had over the prosecution of witches. Weak inquisitorial tribunals, therefore, had a constricted range of influence to take the witches as their own, while tribunals in a position of strength easily wrestled suspected witches from local courts. It was not uncommon for the Inquisition to try witches that were initially arrested by secular courts, and even within the strong royal tribunals of Navarra this occurred, usually during the chain trials. While the royal judges of Navarra were often forced or chose to surrender witches to inquisitors, they nonetheless tried more witches than most (if not all) secular courts in Spain.³¹

Navarra’s inquisitorial tribunal navigated several inconvenient factors. Its vast oversight included the entire Basque-speaking region of Spain, an expansive and mountainous territory that in addition to Navarra, included Guipúzcoa, Álava, and Vizcaya. The unique Basque tongue presented great linguistic challenges to the inquisitors, as few villagers spoke Castellano and even fewer inquisitors spoke Basque. Further, this newly conquered kingdom persevered in its strong and proud identity and conspicuously resented the Inquisition and its loss of judicial power to the foreign interlopers. The amphibious definition of witchcraft and its ambiguous legal classification only complicated matters further. It is within this setting, soon after its creation, that the tribunal in Navarra engaged in its first jurisdictional battle with the royal court over the crime of witchcraft, testing the limits of both courts in a contest over who would retain control of this witch project over the next century.³²

The First Battle, 1525

Thirteen years after the 1512 concordia declared the Inquisition could prosecute witchcraft and related matters of heresy, the Inquisition tested Navarra’s royal tribunals following the swift actions taken by one of its magistrates. In 1525, the many small villages dotting the Valleys of Roncesvalles and Salazar teemed with brujos and brujas gathering in the fields to concoct poisons made from toads, ruin crops and wheat fields, and engage in unnatural and diabolical sex.³³ These scandalous reports spread throughout the Pyrenean valleys, prompting Navarra’s council to dispatch one of its magistrates, Pedro Balanza, to investigate the horrors of “the brujos and brujas of the valley of Roncal” and other parts.³⁴ Beginning in January, Balanza and his retinue of some twenty assistants interrogated and arrested dozens of accused witches, executing an unknown number without first bringing the accused to Pamplona. The council had directed Balanza to take this immediate action, an unusual order that invited criticism—and the Inquisition—to its door. And by May, after his colleagues received a report claiming some eighteen witches had been executed, fellow jurists Dr. Redín and Dr. Artega implored Balanza to refrain from ordering any further executions without consulting with the rest of the council. At the heart of their concern lay the ire—and unwanted attention—additional actions might elicit from the Inquisition. Their reinvigorated interest in procedure became clear as their letter underscored “especially with this difference that the inquisitors have with us … we beg you, that before you sentence or execute anyone, you share the cases you had concluded with us.”³⁵ The imprudence of Balanza and the council of Navarra intensified the animosities between them and the Inquisition, provoking even episcopal disapproval.

Pedro Balanza’s expeditious executions elicited the attention of Pamplona’s vicar general, Juan de Rena. Rena wrote to the council in June 1525 citing a “certain altercation” between the inquisitorial and secular courts, which in turn brought the inquisitor Fresneda to Pamplona where he met with Rena. Together they approached the council and petitioned to review the cases, a request that resulted in an “altercation of sorts.”³⁶ But the council stood firmly by its right to judge this evil sect, exposing the limitations of the Inquisition’s ability to force cooperation. Given this “unfortunate situation,” the Inquisition then turned to yet another judiciary for reinforcement: the royal council of Castilla in Madrid. The vicar continued in his letter to warn Pamplona’s obstinate judges that Inquisitor Fresneda was now forced to turn “to the Court of Castilla and inform Your Majesty, asking him to decide to whom pertained the knowledge of this issue.”³⁷ In the meantime, however, so that “such evil was not left unpunished,” the council of Navarra had and would continue to proceed with the cases.

The witches of Navarra, amplified by Balanza’s aggressiveness, had attracted the attention of the Inquisition, the vicar general, and, ultimately, the king of Spain, Charles V. Aware of the many watchful eyes, the council continued to urge circumspection, admonishing Balanza to act with restraint and awareness, and reminding him “there are many jurisdictions, and if we do not do things judicially, the kingdom could have reason to complain about us.”³⁸ The council sought, through caution and discretion, to remain autonomous and free from inquisitorial interference. And though the Inquisition would later complain that “this business of the witches causes much work,” it was not a “business” it sought to relinquish. Still, the Inquisition did not successfully intervene in this first battle over Navarra’s witches, its impotence revealing its own lack of clear protocols on witchcraft and making obvious its need for an official approach if it was to be effective in the future.

Within a year of this judicial battle, Inquisitor General Alonso Manrique called a meeting to deliberate on the Inquisition’s approach to the prosecution of witchcraft. Gathering in Granada, the council—consisting of ten inquisitors and elite men—deliberated on questions regarding witchcraft ranging from basic definitions to procedural guidelines.³⁹ One question they considered was whether witches actually committed the crimes to which they confessed or not. They debated also if those who did commit these crimes should be exiled, “relaxed” (sentenced to death), or handed over to a secular court after their reconciliation so they may be punished further for their actions. Also in question was whether knowledge of these evil deeds and their punishments should even concern inquisitors at all.⁴⁰ Their deliberations and determinations, though by no means unanimous or unequivocal, shaped the Inquisition’s attitude and approaches to witchcraft for the remainder of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth.⁴¹

A unanimous understanding of whether witchcraft occurred in reality eluded the council. While a majority of six decided that witches did attend witches’ gatherings, four maintained that their attendance was imagined. If the witches had not physically engaged in the witches’ gathering and its accompanying maleficia, there was no secular crime, only spiritual transgression. Yet more than half of the group believed these acts occurred on the physical plane, thus maintaining blurred jurisdictional lines concerning witchcraft and complicating the manner of its prosecution.⁴² Regardless of the witches’ crimes, all in attendance agreed that the Inquisition should maintain involvement with the prosecution of witchcraft.⁴³ Some argued that inquisitors should punish witches for crimes related to matters of faith, while a secular judge should punish them for their temporal crimes. Another participant suggested that the matter should be left up to the inquisitors according to each case but agreed the Inquisition could turn the accused over to the secular justices once it concluded with the case.⁴⁴ Another participant voted that witches condemned to the Inquisition’s perpetual prison should never be released to secular authorities, regardless of their temporal crimes. Asserting inquisitorial dominance, two others decreed that under no circumstances should witches ever be referred to secular judges.⁴⁵

The sophisticated conclusion reached by one inquisitor, the licenciado Valdes, underscores the difficulty of proof in cases of witchcraft. Noting the struggle in determining whether witches actually committed the crimes to which they confessed, Valdes encouraged improved sophistication in investigations, such as an inspection of the unguents witches claimed to use for their maleficia. If these investigations confirmed that the witches had in fact committed the crimes, the inquisitors should then consider the pact made with the devil and the heresy entailed by such an act. And as heretics, they “must be given the ordinary penalty that is usually given, which the laws provide.”⁴⁶ Mercy was to be shown in exchange for confession, the willingness and sincerity of the confession reducing the severity of the punishment. Valdes privileged the Inquisition’s authority, concluding “once the witches have completed the penance from the inquisitors, the secular judges can proceed to punish them for the deaths, damages, and other crimes they have committed.”⁴⁷

The council of Granada thus produced an official order of operations for judicial procedures. The Inquisition was to be afforded the right to decide if heretical acts were involved, and if they were indeed present, inquisitors would mete out justice first and then pass along the witches to answer for their secular crimes. Though the Inquisition now armed itself with an official set of protocols, this by no means guaranteed that the secular courts—especially those as fiercely independent as the royal court and council of Navarra—would accept or respect it. And remaining at the very center of this limited resolution was the inherent ambiguity of the very definition of witchcraft.

Castilla’s Ruling on Witches, 1530

Several years after Balanza from Navarra’s council executed multiple accused witches, Castilla’s council weighed in on the ongoing judicial battle between the inquisitorial and secular courts in Navarra. Recall that the licenciado Fresneda had assured Castilla’s council he would keep it abreast of Navarra’s witch issues, a promise that prompted its judicial opinion. Referring to certain accused “poisoners” being held by the royal tribunals, the licenciado Aguirre from the council of Castilla reminded Navarra that “this business of the witches is not new, yet another time the royal council proceeded in other similar cases and had the same altercation it is having now with the inquisitors of that kingdom.”⁴⁸ He stressed that after much deliberation during the previous dispute, it had been determined that imprisoned witches and their cases were to be remitted to the Inquisition for examination, and assuming they had qualities pertaining to heresy or apostasy, they would remain under that jurisdiction. He accepted, however, that “those who do not have heretical qualities shall be remitted to the royal council and to the other secular judges of this kingdom, even though there has been much doubt as to whether these homicides and other crimes had actually been confirmed.”⁴⁹ This, along with the porous definition of witchcraft, provided the Inquisition with the autonomy to select the cases over which it sought oversight and discard the ones it did not. Castilla’s conclusions reinforced those reached by the Inquisition in Granada a few years prior.

The council of Castilla based its decisions heavily on the procedural irregularities and questionable executions of the secular court in 1525. These hasty actions informed its conclusions that Navarra’s judges “should not have jurisdiction over these cases, rather they should turn over these cases to the inquisitors of that kingdom” so that they can determine what applies to them.⁵⁰ Castilla’s distrust of Navarra’s royal tribunals had prompted their support of the Inquisition’s right to determine “what is theirs” and what should remain with the royal council. While Castilla’s judicial power over the royal tribunals was limited, its interest in the issue of Navarra’s witchcraft was palpable. Still, their involvement and clarifications did little to resolve the issues between the battling jurisdictions, or articulate a clearer definition of witchcraft, and thus the next group of witches brought with it another skirmish between the two courts.

Inquisition Triumphant, 1539–40

Following a decade of respite from the witch trials of 1525, dozens of witchcraft accusations throughout the Valley of Salazar emerged in the spring of 1539, reigniting the battle over prosecutorial rights between the royal tribunals and the Inquisition. These witches, including the town’s alcalde Lope Esparza, were said to attend gatherings where they made poisons with toads and dead infants to destroy crops and livestock.⁵¹ They also allegedly engaged in profane sex and disavowed God, the saints, and the holy mother church.⁵² These secular and spiritual crimes invited a legal challenge between the two competing interests. The secular magistrates arrested and imprisoned the alcalde, along with a dozen others, for witchcraft. Alerted to this situation, the Inquisition wrote to Navarra’s council immediately, making clear its intent to examine “what appears to be information pertaining to the Holy Office … in this matter of the witches.”⁵³ The inquisitors argued the material within the charges belonged to them, as some of the accused had confessed to renouncing God “and things of this nature rightfully should be determined by [the Holy Office].” Highlighting the reports of heresy and apostasy, the inquisitors fought for their legitimate power and promised to deal with the witches in a manner “conforming to justice and according to their rights.” And they informed the council of their forthcoming visit to Pamplona.⁵⁴

The inquisitors arrived at Pamplona’s royal tribunals with support from the Crown. In a letter to the Inquisition’s tribunal, the inquisitor Dr. Olivan reported: “We received a letter from Your Majesty sending us to Pamplona to deal with this business of the witches imprisoned in the royal jails; we were diligent in doing so, conforming to Your Majesty’s mandate.”⁵⁵ By aligning inquisitorial activity with the will of the king, Dr. Olivan justified his intervention and preemptively prevented defiance by the judges from Navarra. He further substantiated his role with mention of the “lettered men, theologians, and jurists” with whom he consulted about the cases. As a result of his investigations, and in consulting with the viceroy and the judges of the royal council, it was concluded that many witches indeed had characteristics that fell under the Inquisition’s purview and that it would “see justice in these cases.”⁵⁶ Following this show of power, dozens of witches were processed by the Holy Office, despite their confessions to multiple secular crimes including murder and crop destruction. Navarra’s secular court remained in possession of only four.

In addition to sentencing forty-nine witches, the Inquisition hosted its public auto de fé in Pamplona and not Calahorra where its tribunal stood. It boasted that these witches had been adjudicated by the most “zealous and experienced” lawyers in existence.⁵⁷ Though the Inquisition argued it was better served to proceed with witch trials due to its meticulous attention to the quality of its cases, it nevertheless penanced and reconciled thirty children under fourteen for witchcraft and apostasy.⁵⁸ Eight witches over the age of fourteen were abjured de levi (slight suspicion of heresy) and two de vehementi (strong suspicion), while nine adult female witches were reconciled. By drawing from the ambiguous nature of witchcraft and highlighting the witches’ apostasy and heresy, the Inquisition had triumphed in its intervention.

Within a week following the auto de fé, Inquisitor Olivan took care to communicate the Inquisition’s actions to the Council of Castilla while simultaneously justifying its right to legal oversight. He wrote to Madrid: “I have already written the king [about] how we concluded the cases of these witches and others that pertained to us, decided upon by the consultants who were the best lawyers in the city and people with experience and jealous of our holy Catholic faith,” and it was determined they should be processed by the Inquisition and thus an auto de fé was held.⁵⁹ Within six months of its initial inquiries, the witch situation in the Valley of Salazar concluded. The bulk of the witches landed in the Inquisition’s tribunal, while four (including the town alcalde), received punishment from the secular tribunals.⁶⁰ This event demonstrated inquisitorial power, while also revealing that the royal court was sometimes a natural place for witch trials to begin, though not always conclude. Though unevenly, the witches in these chain trials were shared between the courts, and sentences were handed down on both sides of the judicial divide.

For nearly two decades following this “business of the witches,” few accusations of witchcraft and sorcery reached judicial ears, and neither tribunal processed many trials for these crimes. The royal tribunals prosecuted two isolated trials (1551 and 1561), and the Inquisition’s tribunal sentenced seven people charged with Supersticiones.⁶¹ But this peace would be ruptured by a chain of witch trials that rattled villages throughout the valleys, resulting in the accusation of dozens of witches, the deaths of several accused witches in the secular judges’ hands, and the Spanish Inquisition’s decisive intervention.

The Clash Continues, 1575–76

In August 1575, two young boys from the village of Anocíbar accused their aunt María Johan of taking them to the witches’ gatherings. These brothers, aged eight and ten, also implicated two other villagers, María Xandua and Miguel Zubiri. The children alleged their aunt had renounced her faith, made a pact with the devil, and poisoned the wheat fields. Charged with diabolism, heresy, apostasy, and maleficia, María Johan, María Xandua, and Miguel Zubiri were arrested by the royal court.⁶² These accused witches, imprisoned in Pamplona, inspired officials and town alcaldes to search for—and find—other witches throughout the region. While the potential for a repeat from 1525 lingered, there were differences from fifty years prior. Situated against a backdrop of established contentions regarding jurisdiction over witches’ secular and spiritual crimes were the directions of the council in Granada, support from Castilla, and legal precedent from 1540.

Following notice of these imprisoned witches, the Inquisition issued strong reminders to the royal council of the protocol surrounding witchcraft and its ultimate authority. But the secular authorities had already executed María Johan on October 25, only two months following her accusation, and within a month, Miguel Zubiri was executed as well at the Taconera within Pamplona’s city walls. These public executions triggered a chain of witch trials as they inspired officials in other villages to conduct their own inquiries that in turn encouraged villagers to provide accusations. The search for witches lasted until 1576, a phenomenon noted by the villager María de Ciáurriz who reported there had been no witches “until the executions of those accused witches of Anocíbar.”⁶³ Within weeks of María’s public execution in Pamplona, Inquisitor Salvatierra wrote a forceful letter to the tribunals informing them he was aware of the large number of witches (thirty-six) they had imprisoned. He knew they had executed some (three, according to him) and had also interrogated others under torture. He reminded the jurists that these actions defied what had been decided and asserted the Inquisition’s rights over the “knowledge and punishment of the crime of heresy and of those who have had a tacit or explicit pact with the devil.” It was clear the imprisoned witches were “heretics and apostates of the holy Catholic faith” as they had renounced God and worshiped the devil, and as such “they pertain to the knowledge of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.”⁶⁴

Inquisitor Salvatierra tied the Inquisition’s involvement to its grave concerns for the souls of delinquents. While omitting the maleficia present in their confessions, Inquisitor Salvatierra highlighted the presence of the diabolical pact in the testimonies he had received from the council. This key point, he argued, transcended mere legal struggles on the temporal plane; it had dire effects for the very souls of the sentenced. Echoing previous doubts about the secular authorities’ competence, Salvatierra invoked the grave consequences of the council’s past failures, arguing that “what is worse, the judges have condemned and executed the witches in fire, and since they were excommunicated and the secular judges do not have the power to absolve them, they died in mortal sin and out of the brotherhood of the Roman Church.”⁶⁵ This was not the first time this concern had been raised, as the vicar general Rena had similar worries about the damnation of the unfortunate souls in 1525. Salvatierra concluded with the sarcastic admonition they follow “the form and order of the law, of which they should not be ignorant.”

The royal council vigorously defended its actions, highlighting the crimes against the kingdom that placed the witches in its hands. Its response to the Inquisition emphasized that the accused witches had murdered “children and animals, and the women have had unnatural sex with goats and killed animals and damaged vineyards and fields with poisons and powders.”⁶⁶ It focused on the secular crimes that wrought havoc on society and neighbors and concluded that “the royal council have been and will continue to be the judges.” After asserting their legitimate oversight of these cases, however, the council assured the Inquisition that “in the process of the prosecution of these crimes, if one or more of the accused have committed a crime of heresy or apostasy, then and only then, will they be remitted to the inquisitors, after they have been sentenced by this tribunal.”⁶⁷ The council guarded its right to prosecute the crimes of maleficia, while simultaneously promising to release heretics and apostates to the Inquisition—but only after they had judged them for their earthly crimes. The inquisitors had problematically decided on a similar order of operations with themselves taking the lead. It was therefore not so much who got the witches, but who got them first. Should heresy or maleficia take precedence in the judicial order of operations?

The secular magistrates wrote to the Crown in defense of their jurisdiction. The council informed King Phillip II of their hard work and conscientious attention to the present witch trials, and of their “service to God and to Your Majesty, cleaning the land of these evil people.” By framing their work as a service to God in addition to a royal task, they placed their efforts on an equal plane with the assistance offered by the Inquisition. They coupled this sacred work with the term “evil people,” thereby emphasizing the antisocial nature of these criminal subjects, delinquents best handled by royal authorities. They assured the king, “when we note that one of them has committed a crime of heresy or apostasy, only then will we refer it [to the Inquisition], having been first punished by us for the other crimes they have committed.”⁶⁸ While agreeing to turn the witches over to the Inquisition, the council simultaneously challenged the judicial order of operations.⁶⁹

To their justifications as guards of both social and spiritual order, the council added another, more pragmatic, reason for its authority: administrative convenience. The magistrates argued that inquisitorial privilege brought great inconveniences to the Crown, as “the inquisitors are outsiders of this kingdom and the delinquents are from within and there are many of them and they do not speak the Romance language, rather a Basque tongue very insular and different from the common Basque. It is very clear, they cannot proceed against them with the brevity and quick handling that we are used to here.”⁷⁰ Thus beyond the linguistic challenge laid an administrative one, as the inconveniences in translating their “strange tongue” would delay the speed of justice.⁷¹ The council also raised the issue of finances (arguably of greater concern than indicated), bemoaning “and the other thing is, the chamber and fiscal of Our Majesty has lost a great amount of money and wealth, when these offenders should be condemned [but are not].” The royal treasury sought to lessen the expenditures of initiating these proceedings but failing to see them to fruition. When delinquents were later pardoned by the Inquisition, as had happened in 1540, their material goods were no longer available for the royal tribunals’ confiscation.

In a second letter to the king, also from November 1575, the council of Navarra mounted another objection to inquisitorial interference. Abandoning generalities and addressing the recent deaths of María Johan and Miguel Zubiri, the fiscal guarded its rights to the “thirty something women and three men” that the Inquisition sought by emphasizing the accused witches’ deeds of maleficia. He argued: “The inquisitors generally do not know much about those said crimes. And if we [turn the witches over] to them and they beg for mercy, they will never get punished with the rigor of our tribunals, the likes of which is necessary and appropriate for such ills.”⁷² Their concern was, again, for the crimes that affected villagers, their livelihoods, and social order.⁷³ If the Inquisition pardoned all witches at will, what message would that broadcast to the populace? Further, what of the secular tribunal’s right to punish criminals in its midst?⁷⁴ Underlying the difference in persecution was the focus of each tribunal and the porous definition of witchcraft itself.

The council’s struggle for prosecutorial power reached a crescendo when it threatened to mount a court battle against the Inquisition. The royal tribunals’ unmistakably titled memorandum “On the part of the judges of the Superior Court of Navarra, in the business with the inquisitors of Logroño regarding the witches” asserted nine major points of contention. The argument against the inquisitors’ abilities to properly decide which cases belonged to whom emerged in the fifth article stating: “The inquisitors do not have to be judges, though it is claimed, yet they are tasked to be able to know and determine which cases pertain to them and which do not, and this is to the detriment of the jurisdiction of the judges.”⁷⁵ The unfairness of inquisitorial privilege to decide who held authority over this crimen mixti was punctuated by the fact that an inquisitorial position did not in fact require a formal training in the law.⁷⁶ Meanwhile, as the two judicial arms wrestled, dozens of witches, including María Xandua, remained stuck between them.

Astute early modern litigants and their procuradores navigated legal categories and exploited competing judiciaries according to their own needs. Xandua’s procurador strategically utilized both the battle between the tribunals and the ambiguous nature of this crimen mixti. Hoping to pause María’s death sentence, Pedro Larramendi pushed for her remittance to Logroño, arguing immediately after Miguel’s death: “It seems that my client was accused of crimes of heresy, apostasy, and idolatry. This [secular] jurisdiction is neither competent to understand nor determine these crimes. Thus, I ask this case to be remitted to the inquisitors as the competent judges.”⁷⁷ After stressing the unreliable admissions produced under torture, and the children’s unsubstantiated accusations, he urged the council to revoke its sentence and “refer this case to the Inquisition, as I have asked. Or rather, free my client or amend the sentence she has been given.” He also asked the council of Castilla to intervene in any manner it saw fit. Larramendi’s vehement defense, the looming threat of Castilla’s intervention, and the pressure of the Inquisition’s watchful eyes proved to be successful in securing Xandua’s release. And, despite the aggressive posturing and letters from Navarra’s council, not only Xandua, but all the remaining witch trials ended up with the Inquisition. While documentation of the specific events that led to the witches’ transfer remains unknown, the council did not transfer Xandua to the inquisitors without resistance. It prolonged her case for months by reexamining all the witnesses, including the children, an anomalous level of scrutiny compared to other trials. But finally, on the March 14, 1576, María Xandua’s dossier arrived at the Holy Office and her body in its secret jails.⁷⁸ After enduring torture and detrimental prison conditions for over a year, María had finally arrived in the inquisitorial arms in Logroño. And she was not alone.

Into Inquisitorial Arms, 1576–77

Along with María Xandua came dozens of brujos and brujas from the Valley of Larraun in Navarra. Though the royal council successfully meted out sentences to nearly a dozen witches, the diabolical definition of witchcraft relied upon during the chain trials unintentionally bolstered inquisitorial authority and sent dozens of witches flying its way. Now in possession of María Xandua, the inquisitors interviewed her accusers, the brothers Miguel and Martín de Olagüe. An inquisitorial relación related the sobering conclusion to the first case of the 1575–76 chain trials, one triggered in Anocíbar by suspicions of María Johan’s bedeviling seizures. It reported:

The boys were brought before this Holy Office and having been examined separately … revoked all they had deposed and admitted to raising false testimony against María Xandua and her accomplices, and that they never went to the witches’ gatherings nor saw anyone there. And that all they falsely deposed was at the urging of certain people.⁷⁹

The young boys admitted to the inquisitors they had raised false testimony against María Xandua, their aunt María Johan, and Miguel Zubiri on the advice of unnamed others, likely the abbot of Anocíbar, Pedro Esaian, who eagerly reported their allegations.⁸⁰ While their testimony finally exonerated María Xandua’s soul, it did not save her life. Over a year had passed since her transfer from the royal jails into the secret jails, and she became ill, dying in inquisitorial hands. Following the boys’ recantations, the Inquisition afforded her a Christian burial. And the pivotal case of Anocíbar that sent ripples of heightened witch fears and chain trials throughout Navarra ended with the Inquisition’s simple conclusion: “And the boys returned to their homes.”⁸¹

While the Inquisition’s involvement in Anocíbar came too late to save María Johan, Miguel, and his wife Graciana de Iráizoz, it processed all of the accused from the Valley of Larraun. And its intervention ensured that never again would the royal tribunals execute another witch. While the Inquisition did not “relax” any witches to the secular authorities for execution, several witches tragically perished within its secret jails. Still, the Inquisition’s interference in this period’s witch concerns resulted in the absolution of thirty-eight accused female witches and eight male witches, with three sentences of exile handed out.⁸²

The Inquisition triumphed in this event by drawing from the ambiguous nature of this crimen mixti and highlighting the heretical acts committed by the accused.⁸³ Ironically, the secular tribunals’ overreliance on a diabolical definition of witchcraft used during this wave also served to carry the accused into inquisitorial arms. And following the auto de fé of 1577, neither the secular nor the inquisitorial tribunals engaged with “this business of the witches” for nearly two decades.⁸⁴

Liminality, 1595

Almost twenty years of freedom from witch trials ended abruptly with the “discovery” of a large group of male and female witches by the alcalde Fermín Andueza from the Valley of Araiz in 1595.⁸⁵ Within his palace, Fermín Andueza and his son Pedro imprisoned villagers and extracted confessions of numerous secular and spiritual crimes. Their oddly prolific confessions ranged from using ointments to fly to the witches’ gatherings to spreading poisons made from toads to having “carnal access with Belzebut.”⁸⁶ Following these peculiar confessions, all seventeen villagers—including children under twelve—were referred to Navarra’s royal court. They ratified their confessions in front of the council, only to retract their initial depositions soon after. Despite the tender age of many of the accused villagers and the consistent allegations of coercion and outright threats at the hands of the antagonistic Andueza, the council accepted their initial admissions and sentenced some to whippings and exile. Sadly, many of the accused began to fall ill and died within the unhealthy prison walls, including the two youngest sisters, aged nine and thirteen.

Their procurador argued that Andueza had forced their original depositions with threats to burn, mutilate, and kill them unless they confessed.⁸⁷ Despite their desperate condition, including starvation and death—and the unequivocal accusations of heresy and apostasy—he did not petition for a transfer to the Inquisition. His defense focused instead on the irregularities of this case. But news of these accused male and female witches attracted the attention of an inquisitorial commissary who alerted the inquisitors at Logroño.

Inquisitor Lombrera from Logroño’s tribunal submitted a report to the inquisitor general on the situation of these accused witches in April 1595. He reported that “having gotten news” that the royal court had imprisoned some witches, the tribunal requested the original procesos, and a commissary then examined them “to discover if they have committed a crime of apostasy or other sins against the faith.”⁸⁸ While the witches had confessed to diabolically fornicating, worshiping the devil, and renouncing God, crimes falling squarely within the Inquisition’s domain, it had no interest in the case. Following its successful acquisition of the witches in 1576, and the clear presence of heresy in this case, why would the Inquisition decline jurisdiction?

Inquisitor Lombrera’s letter suggests that the witches’ revocations and the overall weakness of this case informed their ambivalence. He reported that all of the accused had revoked their confessions and warned the Inquisition to proceed “with caution in this case because of its poor quality.” Lombrera found the Inquisition’s involvement in witchcraft to be more trouble than it was worth, lamenting that the “business with the witches has caused the Inquisition much work, waste, and grief; they yield from it little fruit, as experience has shown and as the letters and decrees of the Suprema show us.”⁸⁹ While Inquisitor Lombrera emphasized that little good could come from this particular case, he acknowledged the tribunal would ultimately defer to the Suprema’s directions. In a noteworthy gesture of concern, the inquisitor pushed for a swift response, informing the inquisitor general that the accused were still imprisoned and many had died.

Sadly, the accused witches from Inza remained in Pamplona. Lombrera explained to the royal council, “For the moment these cases do not belong to the Holy Office, and so we resend them to the judges,” adding that if something further seemed to pertain to the Catholic faith, to send it their way at that time.⁹⁰ After eight months of harsh imprisonment, the surviving accused male and female witches of Inza were finally freed, with a single sentence handed down to a male witch. But the witches of Inza had remained in the hands of the royal tribunals. In this case, the Inquisition exploited the equivocal definition of witchcraft and chose to remain unburdened by a sketchy case produced, under duress, by an unpopular and unjust alcalde.

For more than three decades, the various tribunals of Navarra remained uninvolved with witches. From 1577 until 1610, not a single witch was processed by the Logroño tribunal nor the royal tribunals. But beneath the surface of this calm facade lay the deep caldera of witch belief, beliefs that held the potential to morph into witch fears, and even panic, given the proper conditions.

The Witch Panic, 1609–1614

Four years after the Inquisition’s auto de fé in November 1610, the Suprema issued its new protocols featuring thirty-two clauses that sought to avoid another witch panic and prevent indiscretions such as child testimonies, mass denunciations, and accusations in the absence of any proof.⁹¹ Its first clause advocated accountability in proving whether or not a crime had even occurred and promoted thorough investigations that privileged alternate, nonpreternatural explanations. In a similar vein, the Suprema’s third clause advocated confirmation of “whether they really go to the meadows and gatherings to cause the harm they confess to,” which spoke both to a legitimate search for proof and harkened back to concerns from the council in 1526.⁹² In addition to recommending investigations of the purported damage caused by witchcraft, the Suprema urged an education campaign. It advised inquisitors to have local preachers explain to villagers that natural misfortunes occur in the absence of witchcraft.⁹³ The Inquisition acknowledged “the deep regret felt by the Holy Office and in particular by the Council, for the vexations and violence which the alcaldes of the villages without judicial authority … have inflicted on the accused.”⁹⁴ Further, they ordered that “the sanbenitos of the persons relaxed in the auto de fé of 1610 and of the rest who were reconciled … are never to be hung on display.”⁹⁵ Interestingly, the Suprema alluded to the jurisdictional conflicts between the Inquisition and the royal tribunals in its twenty-seventh clause, declaring: “The inquisitors are to leave the [secular] court or any other justices free to prosecute and punish these offenses without impeding them judicially or extrajudicially, or by other obstructions or personal intercession.”⁹⁶ Not only did the Holy Office discourage involvement in matters of witchcraft, it encouraged silence.

The Suprema of the Inquisition ordered: “There should be silence in these issues. Make it clear to the commissioners and confessors, so they approach this orderly. And that only in the necessity of someone making a confession should this issue be raised, and they must preserve the same secrecy as in the other cases dealt with by the Holy Office.”⁹⁷ The Inquisition, the one whose tribunal in Navarra persistently voiced its interest in the witches and sorceresses of the region for nearly a century, now urged silence and privacy in matters of witchcraft. The new instructions concluded with a directive to bind together all the materials and suggestions from the Supreme Council so that it “shall always be at hand to guide the inquisitors in future cases.”⁹⁸

The Inquisition’s new policies worked. Never again would Spanish soil host a witch panic, nor would another witch receive a sentence of execution by the Inquisition (nor by the royal tribunals of Navarra). These new safeguards, forged from the protocols of 1526 and informed by reforming efforts of education, ensured that another witch panic would not occur under the Inquisition’s supervision. Still, throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century (from 1613 until 1694), 167 people accused of Supersticiones fell to Logroño’s jurisdiction, though most cases treated heterodox practices and few were accused of witchcraft.⁹⁹ While the Inquisition came no closer to an unequivocal definition of witchcraft, it had decided to approach this crimen mixti with greater caution and skepticism. And both the inquisitorial court and royal courts of Navarra maintained this caution, for the most part, for the remainder of the century. The witch panic and its lingering effects prompted updated and concise protocols for cases of witchcraft and would dictate the Inquisition’s approach to witchcraft until its final dissolution in 1834.

The Last Witches of Both Courts, 1647

María de Ollo, a sixty-year-old healer and beggar in Pamplona, reportedly possessed “good hands,” and many villagers sought her effective services. But her ability to heal exposed her to accusations for the capacity to harm, and her extensive fama for sorcery and witchcraft led to her arrest in April 1647.¹⁰⁰ Imprisoned alongside María de Ollo was seventy-eight-year-old María Yrisarri, another healer from Pamplona. Though she, too, was a poor, old woman engaged in unauthorized healing practices, she did not suffer from the same mala fama as María de Ollo and remained free from accusations of maleficia. María Yrisarri emphatically denied she had done wrong, arguing instead her healing gifts came from God, as a local abbot had once assured her. True, she had blessed certain sick people, but only by using the “words of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”¹⁰¹ If she cured in the name of God, could there even be a diabolical pact? Was this even heresy?

In June 1647, the procurador for María de Ollo and María Yrisarri argued for his clients to be transferred to the Inquisition. He opposed the royal judges’ sentence of torture and asserted these cases belonged to the Holy Tribunal as they included “some type of heresy.”¹⁰² The royal court responded there was no reason to submit the cases to the Inquisition, insisting instead “our court will continue with the justice of this case where it began and where it will stay until its conclusion.”¹⁰³ Though the court refused to relinquish authority over these women, within several months the council agreed to send the proceso of María Yrisarri to the Inquisition’s tribunal for review.¹⁰⁴

This decision infuriated the court’s fiscal who petitioned the council to reverse its decision to surrender the case to the Inquisition. Emphasizing the witches’ criminality, he argued: “The accused have caused many evils in this city and to different people, causing illness and even worse. And they have the reputation of being witches, sorceresses, and for these reasons it pertains to our court and Supreme Council to punish them for the crimes they have committed against the republic.”¹⁰⁵ He underscored the secular nature of their crimes, reinforcing the tribunals’ jurisdiction over these women. But to this standard argument he added compellingly that proof of a diabolical pact or other heresy remained absent from the case, whereas “on the other hand it is known that they have committed crimes pertaining to our court and council.”¹⁰⁶ No proof existed to suggest their maleficia was a result of heresy or a diabolical pact; meanwhile reports undeniably pointed to injury of neighbors and goods.

Though physically remaining in the royal jails, the Marías appeared in the Inquisition’s relaciones from January 1648.¹⁰⁷ According to its summary, the Inquisition had asked the tribunals to remit the “accused and the original trial,” a request with which the fiscal only partially complied.¹⁰⁸ In September 1648, the inquisitors began to examine the witnesses from María Yrissari’s original records to determine whether or not the case involved heresy. Their reports made clear that their attention was primed for heretical acts and concluded she made “an implicit pact with the devil and that she was also suspected of heretical acts.”¹⁰⁹ But before her transfer could occur, seventy-eight-year-old María Yrisarri died in the royal jails on November 9, 1648. It had been a year and a half since her procurador first requested her transfer to the Inquisition.

That same month of November, María de Ollo arrived at the Inquisition’s secret jail after the calificadores (inquisitors designated to assess whether it fell to their jurisdiction) confirmed she “had an implicit and explicit pact with the devil and was suspect of heretical acts” and formally charged María with heresy.¹¹⁰ The relación emphasized her “superstitions,” the report of her attendance at the witches’ gathering, kissing the devil’s backside, and the raising of toads.¹¹¹ Though María arrived in the inquisitorial jail in November 1648, the inquisitors did not grant her an audience until February 1649. There, she confessed to her healing practices but asserted they were done in conformity with God’s will. Within a month of her interrogation, sixty-year-old María became very ill and was transferred to a hospital where she died on May 11, 1649.¹¹² More than two years had elapsed since her initial arrest.

The trials of 1647 elucidate that accused sorceresses and witches caught between these judicial struggles could at times suffer deadly results even in the absence of a formal sentence. The royal tribunals focused on reports of maleficia and the fama of the accused, while the Inquisition sought instead acts that could be deemed heretical and diabolical. The concerns of the villagers centered around the fama of these women who claimed to heal illnesses but also elicited fear among their neighbors. The contrast between the trials of these sorceresses processed under both tribunals reflects the ambiguous nature of witchcraft and its complicated legal categorization.

The Last Sorceress of Navarra, 1675

María Esparza, accused of infanticide, quackery, and various acts of maleficia, marked the conclusion of “this business of witchcraft” for the court and council of Navarra. The villagers from her town of Asiáin reported that this chronic beggar held “the public opinion, fama, and reputation that she is a sorceress and that her husband was too, and this has been and continues to be the public voice and common knowledge.”¹¹³ Further damning María, four medical experts reviewed the case records but examined no body and no physician’s notes. Surprisingly, they declared her healing “did not come from a natural virtue nor from the strength of natural remedies nor from the natural virtues of certain words, nor from miracles; it clearly came from the hand of the devil.”¹¹⁴ This ruling surprises, not because the belief in preternatural powers faded from elite mindscapes, but rather the establishment that the sickness or death of the alleged victim was unnatural proved difficult, and even more so without an examination of the body.¹¹⁵ But twelve witness testimonies against her, and the deafening silence of any testimony on her behalf, sufficed for the magistrates’ merciless sentence of public humiliation, two hundred lashes, and ten years’ exile from the kingdom.

María’s procurador mounted a vigorous defense and sought the Inquisition’s intervention. He explained that her cures centered around mere simple prayers and rightfully blasted the medical testimony as “ignorant,” ridiculing their diagnoses in the absence of an examination of the body. But his defense had been shrugged off by the court; thus he argued that her case belonged before the Inquisition, insisting the secular jurists “must remit this case to the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition.”¹¹⁶ The court did not wish to relinquish its jurisdiction and fought vigorously over its right to María’s prosecution. She had, after all, committed much maleficia for some time and admitted her husband had been a brujo. She engendered the fear of the villagers, extorted clients, begged relentlessly, and was a bad neighbor and a bad Christian.¹¹⁷

The court did not deny the possibility that the Inquisition could have some jurisdictional claims over María. It argued instead for the order of operations. Echoing debates over the sequence of sentencing between the two courts from 1526 and 1575, the royal council confirmed the court’s sentence, while promising the Inquisition “after its execution, we will then remit the case to the Inquisition.”¹¹⁸ Undaunted, a commissary of the Inquisition pressed the request for her case to be submitted for its review and reported there were heretical elements that fell under its purview. The council was forced to submit her case to the Holy Office in December 1675. Meanwhile, María Esparza remained imprisoned in the royal jails while her case lulled in the doldrums, awaiting the Inquisition’s decision. But the Inquisition did not want her.

María Esparza—accused of sorcery and heterodox healing—appeared in its relación as but a passing entry, an aside:

María de Esparza, from the town of Asiáin in the kingdom of Navarra, was denounced to the Holy Office on the twenty-fifth of November in a letter written by the commissary of the Holy Office in Pamplona. He said she had been sentenced by the council for sorcery… . On the thirteenth of January of 1676 … three calificadores agreed in unison that her case did not have the quality of pertaining to religion.¹¹⁹

María’s last chance for a milder sentence at the hands of the Inquisition had failed. It did not want her at this late time. In the meantime, the secular authorities did not want to feed her.

Her procurador pleaded with the court to resume her daily allowance as she was starving. Once again, María was caught in the crosswinds of the two powers: The court of Navarra argued it should not have to support her, since it had paused its sentencing only at the Inquisition’s request for review of her case. And the Inquisition argued since she was not in its prisons it held no responsibility toward her whatsoever. Ultimately María escaped from the royal jails, was recaptured, and received a severe sentence of two hundred lashes and exile from the kingdom of Navarra. The last witch trial before the royal tribunals of Navarra ended with a note from her warden: Juan Saturtegui reported it took six days by horseback to lead María Esparza out of Navarra. Taking her hand, he led her across the border into Aragon, and warned her to never again return home.¹²⁰

Never again was another trial of witchcraft or sorcery held by the royal court and council of Navarra. And in the seventeen cases that came before the Inquisition’s tribunal following María Esparza, only one person received sentencing; the rest were absolved or suspended.¹²¹ At this late date, perhaps the royal court and council and the Inquisition’s tribunal at Logroño could agree finally on one thing: “This business with the witches has caused the Inquisition much work, waste, and grief; they yield from it little fruit.”

The presence of both the Spanish Inquisition’s tribunal in Logroño and Navarra’s semiautonomous royal tribunals created an entangled legal situation for trials of witchcraft and sorcery. Both jurisdictions struggled for judicial rights over these souls accused of witchcraft for 150 years, and each raised arguments as to why its tribunal was most appropriate. The royal tribunals argued that the Inquisition’s emphasis on confession and penance was not adequate punishment for secular crimes that impacted neighbors and property, and highlighted that many inquisitors did not have adequate legal training. The Inquisition, however, relied on a definition of witchcraft and sorcery that inherently privileged heresy, therefore placing these crimes in its own hands. Further complicating matters, Navarra’s specific linguistic and geographical situation, and remarkably strong secular court, tested the limits of power for the Spanish Inquisition in matters of witchcraft at the regional level, revealing that though omnipresent, the Inquisition was not omnipotent. And while following the witch panic newly implemented inquisitorial policies prevented another witch panic and mirrored a steep decline in witch trials processed in the royal tribunals, the courts of law and public opinion continued to hold extreme power over individuals, sometimes with devastating consequences.

1. Florencio Idoate Iragui, La Brujería en Navarra y sus Documentos (Pamplona: Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1978), 258.

2. From Aristotle to Hobbes, premodern intellectuals disputed vigorously the soul and its relationship to being human. It is this duality of the soul’s site of the spirit and human intellect and free will that I use to describe these jurisdictional disputes as a “struggle for the soul.” For more on the early modern soul and its debates, see Richard Serjeantson, “The Soul,” chap. 6 of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, ed. Desmond M. Clarke and Catherine Wilson, online edition (Oxford Academic, May 2, 2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199556137.003.0007. For a shorter definition of the soul as the seat of intelligence, see Michael Edwards, Time and the Science of the Soul in Early Modern Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 65–68.

3. The cases of judicial overlap are found in the Spanish Inquisition’s Relaciones de las causas, cases submitted by each inquisitorial tribunal to the Suprema, the supreme seat of the Inquisition in Madrid. As this chapter treats only witches tried by both the royal tribunals and the Inquisition’s tribunal with oversight of Navarra, it only briefly examines the witch panic as it related to shaping inquisitorial policy toward witchcraft.

4. Peio Monteano brings into focus how strongly Navarra resisted Castilla’s 1512 conquest in his thorough analysis of it; see La Guerra de Navarra (1512–1529): Crónica de la conquista española (Pamplona: Pamiela, 2010).

5. In his description of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century legal systems in Castilla, Richard Kagan described the administration of justice as “plagued by a bewildering array of lesser courts and tribunals, the jurisdictions of which were often poorly defined.” See Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile 1500–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 35.

6. Neither Navarra nor Spain was unique in this, as litigiousness characterized much of early modern Europe. For example, in his studies of Venice, Jonathan Seitz has shown how litigants frequently sought justice in a wide array of courts. See Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1 and throughout.

7. Besides individuals, larger entities also used the courts to settle disputes. Mid- sixteenth-century Sevilla offers a tantalizing example of this when, at one point, it was engaged in eighty-five lawsuits against the high court of Granada! See Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 16.

8. For more on the evolution of legal procedures and the roles of different courts, see Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016), 68–78, 81–95.

9. Cases of the first instance tended to be smaller issues, such as local business practices or clarification of property lines, disputes that could be settled privately or informally in smaller tribunals. See José María Imízcoz Beunza, Elites, Poder y Red Social: Las élites del País Vasco y Navarra en la Edad Moderna (Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, 1996), 120. While its focus lies in the eighteenth-century seignorial powers, see Jesús María Usunáriz Garayoa, Nobleza y señoríos en la Navarra Moderna: Entre la solvencia y las crisis económica (Navarra: EUNSA, 1997), 3–6 for an introduction to early jurisdictional issues.

10. Imízcoz Beunza, Elites, Poder y Red Social, 120–22.

11. Rafael García Pérez, Antes Leyes que reyes: Cultura Jurídica y Constitución Política en la Edad Moderna (Navarra, 1512–1808) (Milan: Giuffrè Editores, 2008), 101 and 113 for examples of instances where the fueros and ius comune (common laws) informed penalties.

12. For more on the functions of the royal courts of early modern Navarra, see chap. 1 in María Dolores Martínez Arce, Aproximación a la Justicia en Navarra durante la edad moderna: Jueces del Consejo Real en el siglo XVII (Pamplona: Ediciones Fecit, 2005). For a complete list of the royal courts’ members, activities, and resolutions, see the comprehensive studies of Rocío García Bourrellier, María Dolores Martínez, and Sergio Solbes Ferri, vols. 1–2 (1513–1829) of Las Cortes de Navarra desde su Incorporación a la Corona de Castilla (Pamplona: EUNSA, 1993).

13. García Pérez, Antes Leyes que Reyes, 318. Defendants were represented by lawyers who were employed by the bishop and held in a jail called the bishop’s tower. Lu Ann Homza, Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Navarre, 1608–1614 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), 17.

14. For example, in 1693 an accused murderer escaped secular justice by seeking refuge in a church. The royal courts ordered him removed by force from the church, provoking the bishop’s ire. So angered by this perceived imposition on his jurisdiction, the bishop excommunicated all the magistrates of the court and council of Navarra and sentenced them to exile from the diocese. This action caused the courts to be suspended as it left only two magistrates unaffected by the excommunication despite the invention of the viceroy and the Cámara de Castilla. See García Pérez, Antes Leyes que reyes, 322.

15. See Henry Kamen’s The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), “The Coming of the Inquisition” for more on its original foundations.

16. Born from an international Inquisition symposium, Ángel Álcalá et al.’s Inquisición española y mentalidad inquisitorial (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1984) provides a useful overview of the structure, organization, and functions of the Inquisition. See especially “La infraestructura social de la Inquisición” (123–46) for the importance of networks of commissaries and familiars.

17. Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (New York: MacMillan, 1907), 1:368.

18. Execution was not performed by the Inquisition; rather, heretics with death sentences were released or relajado (“relaxed”) to secular authorities. See Gustav Henningsen and John A. Tedeschi, eds., in association with Charles Amiel, The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986).

19. Kamen suggests that two important reasons for this were that some inquisitors were skeptical of the reality of diabolical witchcraft and that the tribunal made no claims to exclusive jurisdiction. Furthermore, the Inquisition’s goal focused on confessions and penance more so than punishments. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, 193, 270–71.

20. E. William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 255.

21. Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras, “The Database of the Inquisition,” in Henningsen and Tedeschi, The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe, 58.

22. Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 41.

23. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, 270.

24. There was a witchcraft event that occurred in 1507 likely in Durango.

25. This accord also included the crimes of usury, blasphemy, and bigamy. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, 75.

26. The Canon concluded it was heretical to believe that people, mostly women, held preternatural powers. For a deeper analysis of this often-cited canon, see Chris Halsted, “‘They Ride on the Backs of Certain Beasts’: The Night Rides, the Canon episcopi, and Regino of Prüm’s Historical Method,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 15, no. 3 (Winter 2021): 361–85.

27. As William Monter has shown, the priorities and punishments among the Inquisition’s various tribunals differed from one another. The chapters of Frontiers of Heresy reflect the regional and temporal differences among crimes of focus and punishments among several tribunals. See p. vii for the book’s contents, and p. x for a list of useful tables of comparison.

28. Separating the thousands of trials by region is beyond the scope of this project, thus general information and overall numbers regarding witchcraft under the Logroño tribunal inherently include witches in Guipúzcoa, Álava, and Vizcaya. The witches I examine closely, however, are restricted to trials that pertain specifically to Navarra.

29. Henningsen referred to this difference between the southern and northern portions of Spain as “the geography of witchcraft.” Gunnar Knutsen examines this difference between northern and southern Spain in Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons: The Spanish Inquisition Trials for Superstition, Valencia and Barcelona (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), xi.

30. Knutsen, Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons, 176.

31. Few studies have been conducted on secular witch trials in early modern Spain, thus it is possible Navarra’s royal tribunals tried more than all others. For example, the meticulous work done by María Tausiet shows the neighboring kingdom of Aragon’s secular court tried two witches. See Urban Magic in Early Modern Spain: Abracadabra Omnipotens (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Ponzoña en los ojos: Brujería y superstición en Aragón en el sigo XVI (Madrid: Turner, 2004).

32. This differs sharply from witchcraft cases in the Republic of Venice where the Inquisition had free exclusive jurisdiction over Venetian witch trials. Only cases that were seen to impinge governmental authority, such as trials with prominent male defendants, were sometimes contested. Seitz, Witchcraft and Inquisition, 2, 33.

33. The complete trial records of this witch event do not survive, but surviving archival records, letters from the royal council, complaints from the vicar general, an inheritance petition regarding the accused witches’ confiscated goods, and allusions to this episode by both courts—and the Council of Castilla in Madrid—provide an approximation. Idoate’s transcriptions in La Brujería supply crucial archival records that have since deteriorated and are no longer legible. See AGN, TR_35728 (1525); AGN, 1525_CO_PS1.1, Leg. 66, N. 4; Idoate, La Brujería, 249–75.

34. Idoate, La Brujería, 25.

35. Idoate, La Brujería, 252.

36. AGN, 1525_CO_PS1.1, Leg. 66, N. 4, fol. 1r.

37. AGN, 1525_CO_PS1.1, Leg. 66, N. 4, fol. 3r–v. Italics mine.

38. Idoate, La Brujería, 257.

39. See Lu Ann Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 153–63, for a thorough transcription of this meeting.

40. AHN, Inq., Lib. 1231, fol. 634r.

41. One main constraint for Spain’s Inquisition was that heresy was supposed to be a component of witchcraft for the Inquisition to hold jurisdiction over it. See Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, 270–76, for a discussion on the Inquisition’s uncertainties regarding the realities and thus heresies of witchcraft. See also Gustav Henningsen, “La Inquisición y las Brujas,” Ehumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 26 (2014): 133–52.

42. To be sure, this confusion over the definition of witchcraft was not only a problem with which Spain’s Inquisition and its secular courts grappled, as legislating an unclear, but grave, crime proved difficult. Spain’s Inquisition discussed its roles in witchcraft trials repeatedly from 1525 through 1610 trying to settle who held jurisdiction, while the Papal Inquisition in Venice did not struggle with this, holding on firmly to its understanding of witchcraft as inherently heretical. See Homza, Village Infernos, 89–91; Seitz, Witchcraft and Inquisition, 35.

43. Edward Peters, Inquisition (New York: Free Press, 1988), 101.

44. In canon law, perpetual imprisonments were often handed down to reconciled heretics. In the early years of the Inquisition, it was not uncommon for this sentence to be served in local jails or individual homes, and not in the Inquisition’s secret jails. Stephen Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 82–83.

45. AHN, Inq., Lib. 1231, fol. 634v.

46. AHN, Inq., Lib. 1231, fol. 635r.

47. AHN, Inq., Lib. 1231, fol. 635r.

48. AGN, TR_AS.Titulo.9, Faja 1, No. 8, fol. 2r.

49. AGN, Tr AS.Titulo.9, Faja 1, No. 8, fol. 2r.

50. AGN, Tr AS.Titulo.9, Faja 1, No. 8, fol. 2r.

51. Idoate provides analyses and primary source excerpts from the witches of the Valleys of Salazar and Roncal in La Brujería, 61–67, 283–97.

52. AGN, TR_63994 (1540), fols. 1r–3r.

53. AHN, Inq., Lib. 322, fol. 258v.

54. AHN, Inq., Lib. 322, fol. 259r.

55. AHN, Inq., Lib. 785, fol. 220r. The tribunal was situated in Calahorra at this date of December 1539.

56. AHN, Inq., Lib. 785, fol. 220v.

57. AHN, Inq., Lib. 833, fols. 11r, 13r–15r.

58. Sentences handed out by the Inquisition varied from absolutions (uncommon) to relaxations (executions handled by secular authorities). Penance required defendants to renounce their offenses and receive punishments such as fines, banishment, or wearing a sanbenito. Reconciliation incurred heavier penalties such as flogging, confiscation of belongings, and long prison or galley work sentences. See Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, 199–200.

59. AHN, Inq., Lib. 833, fol. 11r. Italics mine.

60. AHN, Inq., Lib. 833, fol. 13r; AGN, TR_63994 (1540).

61. Henningsen, unpublished Relaciones de las causas data for all Supersticiones in the Logroño tribunal (2016).

62. AGN, TR_69853 (1575). Idoate provides useful information and transcriptions in La Brujería, 307–48.

63. Idoate, La Brujería, 113.

64. AHN, Inq., Lib. 831, fol. 100r.

65. AHN, Inq., Lib. 831, fol. 100r. Italics mine.

66. Archivo General de Simancas, Simancas (hereafter AGS), Inq., P.R. 28–65; AHN, Inq., Lib. 831, fol. 98v.

67. AGS, Inq., P.R. 28–65. Italics mine. A copy of this document exists in the AHN, Inq., Lib. 831, fol. 99r.

68. AGS, Inq., P.R. 28–65.

69. Challenges to legal definitions fueled interjurisdictional disputes far beyond Navarra and the crime of witchcraft as regional studies of witchcraft have shown time and again. For an overview of the contexts of legal conflicts, I recommend Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 68–94.

70. AGS, Inq., P.R. 28–65.

71. See Peio Monteano for a thorough discussion of the different dialects in Navarra and the roles of linguistic factors on legal and social culture. El iceberg Navarro: Euskera y castellano en la Navarra del siglo XVI (Pamplona: Pamiela, 2017).

72. AHN, Inq., Lib. 831, fol. 101.

73. Briggs has shown the crucial roles of communal bonds and friction among witch trials in Lorraine, suggesting even that the pattern of reporting those who struggled with their neighbors “must be functionally related to the social meaning of witchcraft.” Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York: Penguin, 1996), 146.

74. Legal arms throughout early modern Europe wrestled for their rights to adjudicate crimes and punish delinquents. For example, Muscovy’s tsarist state invested heavily in limiting church and local powers to retain jurisdiction over witchcraft for itself: Valerie Kivelson, Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 28–29. And while Poland’s Constitutio from 1543 specifically assigned the ecclesiastical courts with jurisdiction over witchcraft, it shifted (with much protest by ecclesiastics) into the hands of secular courts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Michael Ostling, Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 45–48, 53–58.

75. AGS, Inq., PR 28–65, fol. 196.

76. The royal tribunals of Navarra were exceptional for all the reasons presented so far. It is worth remembering that not all secular courts fought the Inquisition for rights over witchcraft as research by María Tausiet on Aragon and Jonathan Seitz on Venice has shown.

77. AGN, TR_69853 (1575), fol. 118r.

78. AHN, Inq., Lib. 833, fol. 209v.

79. AHN, Inq., Lib. 833, fol. 210r.

80. Idoate refers to the abbot as “zealous,” La Brujería, 90.

81. AHN, Inq., Lib. 833, fol. 210r.

82. AHN, Inq., Lib. 833, fols. 206r–210r for the auto de fé in 1577. See also Idoate, La Brujería, 126–29, and Jesús María Usunáriz Garayoa, “La caza de brujas en la Navarra moderna (siglos XVI–XVII),” in Akelarre: La caza de brujas en el Pirineo (siglos XIII–XIX), ed. Jesús María Usunáriz Garayoa, RIEV Cuadernos 9 (Donostia: Sociedad de Estudios Vascos, 2012), 314–16.

83. Idoate provides an analysis of the differences between the two jurisdictions in these trials of 1575–76 in La Brujería, 118–21.

84. One healer accused of sorcery was tried by the secular court in 1590, and seven people total were tried under Supersticiones by the Logroño tribunal, but none for witchcraft.

85. Idoate offers analyses and source excerpts in La Brujería, 131–43, 354–71.

86. AGN, TR_71319 (1595), fol. 1r.

87. AGN, TR_71319 (1595), fol. 118r–v.

88. AHN, Inq., Lib. 791, fol. 353r.

89. AHN, Inq., Lib. 791, fol. 353r.

90. AGN, TR_71319 (1595), fol. 113r.

91. For the new list of instructions, see Homza, Village Infernos, 175–80; Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition, 1609–1614, Basque Series (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980), 370–77.

92. AHN, Inq., Lib. 334, fol. 245v. For an analysis of these events, see Homza, Village Infernos, 135–41, 146–48.

93. This should not be confused, however, with the end of witchcraft beliefs or a functional understanding of witchcraft that sometimes emerged. Rather, this directive echoed the tenth-century Canon episcopi and reiterated the Inquisition’s earlier stance of relative skepticism from which it had deviated in this witch panic.

94. AHN, Inq., Lib. 334, fol. 251r.

95. AHN, Inq., Lib. 334, fol. 249v.

96. AHN, Inq., Lib. 334, fol. 251v.

97. AHN, Inq., Lib. 334, fol. 252v.

98. AHN, Inq., Lib. 334, fol. 253r.

99. Data from Henningsen’s unpublished Supersticiones, 2016. Recall that the category of Supersticiones encompassed healing, superstitious prayers, and other beliefs.

100. AGN, TR_16058 (1647), fol. 12v.

101. AGN, TR_16058 (1647), fol. 45r.

102. AGN, TR_16058 (1647), fol. 38r.

103. AGN, TR_16058 (1647), fol. 43r.

104. AGN, TR_16058 (1647), fol. 86r.

105. AGN, TR_16058 (1647), fol. 88r.

106. AGN, TR_16058 (1647), fol. 88r. Italics mine.

107. AHN, Inq., Lib. 838, fol. 19v. In contrast to the 222 folios of reports from the royal court, the file from the Inquisition’s records on both sorceresses covers only eight folios total.

108. AHN, Inq., Lib. 838, fol. 20v.

109. AHN, Inq., Lib. 838, fol. 21r.

110. AHN, Inq., Lib. 838, fol. 21r.

111. AHN, Inq., Lib. 838, fol. 21v.

112. AHN, Inq., Lib. 838, fol. 23r.

113. AGN, TR_17176 (1675), fol. 11v.

114. AGN, TR_17176 (1675), fol. 28v.

115. Establishing the corpus delicti, or body of the crime, was no easy task. From Venetian inquisitors to German court advisers, early modern officials struggled with establishing the corpus delicti, as it was difficult to be certain about the true character of the illnesses in certain trials; see Seitz, Witchcraft and Inquisition, 9, and Thomas Robisheaux, The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), chap. 12.

116. AGN, TR_17176 (1675), fol. 31r.

117. Briggs elucidates the connection between seeking charity and witchcraft accusations in Witches and Neighbors, 155–57.

118. AGN, TR_17176 (1675), fol. 31v. Italics mine.

119. AHN, Inq., Lib. 839, fol. 240r–v.

120. AGN, TR_17176 (1675), fol. unnumbered.

121. Henningsen, unpublished database, 2016.