TheBasque witch trials of the seventeenth century represent the last attempt at rooting out supposedwitchcraft fromNavarre by theSpanish Inquisition, after a series of episodes erupted during the sixteenth century following the end of military operations in theconquest of Iberian Navarre, until 1524.
The trial of theBasque witches began in January 1609 atLogroño, near Navarre, borderingBasque territory. It was influenced by similar persecutions conducted byPierre de Lancre in the borderingLabourd,French Basque Country. Although the number of people executed was small in comparison to other persecutions in Europe, it is considered the biggest singleevent of its kind in terms of the number of people investigated: by the end of the phenomena, some 7,000 cases had been examined by the Inquisition.
Logroño, though not aBasque city, was the setting for an Inquisition tribunal responsible for theKingdom of Navarre, and for the provinces ofAlava,Gipuzkoa,Biscay,La Rioja and the North ofBurgos andSoria.[1] As was typical of "witch trials", those accused ofwitchcraft were predominantly women, however this tribunal also targeted children and men, including priests allegedly guilty of healing withnóminas,[1] which areamulets bearing the names ofsaints.[2]
The first phase ended in 1610, with a declaration ofauto-da-fé against thirty-one of the accused, five or six of whom wereburned to death includingMaria de Arburu. Five people were included in the declaration symbolically, as they had died before theauto-da-fé.
Thereafter proceedings were suspended until theinquisitors had a chance to gather further evidence on what they believed to be awidespread witch cult in theBasque region.Alonso de Salazar Frías, the junior inquisitor and lawyer in training, was designated to examine the matter at length. Armed with anEdict of Grace, promising pardon to all those who voluntarily reported themselves and denounced their accomplices, he traveled across the countryside during the year 1611. He visited mainly the vicinity ofZugarramurdi, near what is now theFrench-Spanish border, where a cave and a water stream (Olabidea orInfernuko erreka, "Hell's stream") was said to be the meeting place of the witches.
As was usual in cases of this kind, denunciations flowed in. Frías finally returned to Logroño with "confessions" from nearly 2,000 people, 1,384 of whom were children between the ages of seven and fourteen, implicating a further 5,000 named individuals.[3] Most of 1,802 people[4] retracted their statements before Frías, attributing their confessions totorture. The evidence gathered covered 11,000 pages in all. Only six people out of 1,802 maintained their confessions and claimed to have returned tosabbaths.
Of about 7,000 people accused in the Basque witch trials, only six were ultimately executed:Domingo de Subildegui,María de Echachute,Graciana Xarra,Maria Baztan de Borda,Maria de Arburu andPetri de Joangorena. They were condemned to be executed by the Inquisition because they had repeatedly refused to confess, regret and ask for mercy, despite having been accused for a number of sorcery acts by several different people, and burned at the stake, alongside the effigies of five more who had died in prison prior to execution, in Logrono 1 November 1610.[5]
In the stir of the events, proceedings were started inHondarribia in 1611, some 35 km away from Zugarramurdi and 19 km fromSt-Jean-de-Luz, main hotspots of witchcraft allegations against presumed female witches accused of castingspells on living creatures and meeting inJaizkibel inakelarres, led by a he-goat shapedDevil. Men in thisBidasoa region were recruited in droves forBasque whaling, leaving women on their own (sometimes along with the priests, children, and elders) for long periods. According to evidence given by a witness as attested in the record, "the Devil summoned in theGascon language those fromSan Sebastián andPasaia, and inBasque those fromIrun andHendaye, addressing a few words to them."[6]
Belief in witches was comparatively low in Spain. Although it was never strong, it became weaker under theVisigothic law, established by the Visigoths during their last century of rule in Spain and preserved by the Christian nations during most of the Middle Ages. According to this law, belief in supernatural phenomena of any sort such as witches,fortune tellers, andoracles was a crime and aheresy. The belief in witchcraft had survived, though to a lesser degree in the northmost mountain regions ofGalicia and theBasque Country.[7]
TheSpanish Inquisition persecuted mainlyProtestants,Conversos (baptized descendants of Jews andMoors), and those who illegally smuggled forbidden books into Spain. As far back as 1538, the Council of Inquisition had warned judges not to believe all that they read inMalleus Maleficarum, the infamous witch-finding text.[citation needed] In March 1610,Antonio Venegas de Figueroa, the Bishop ofPamplona, sent a letter to the Inquisition in which he claimed that the witch hunt was based "on lies and self-delusion"[8] and that there had been little knowledge of witchcraft in the region before the trials.
Educated Spaniards were typically skeptical of witchcraft and considered it a northern or Protestant superstition. Salazar, the youngest judge in a panel of three, was also skeptical about the ordeal, stating that he had found no substantive proof of witchcraft on his travels, in spite of the numerous confessions. In addition, he questioned the central basis of the trials. Because of the judges' disagreement on how to proceed, the matter was referred to the Inquisitor-General inMadrid. The senior judges,Alonso Becerra y Holquin andJuan del Valle Alvarado, accused their colleague of being "in league with theDevil." Some of Salazar's objections are remarkable:
The real question is: are we to believe that witchcraft occurred in a given situation simply because of what the witches claim? No: it is clear that the witches are not to be believed, and the judges should not pass a sentence on anyone unless the case can be proven with external and objective evidence sufficient to convince everyone who hears it. And who can accept the following: that a person can frequently fly through the air and travel a hundred leagues in an hour; that a woman can get through a space not big enough for a fly; that a person can make himselfinvisible; that he can be in a river or the open sea and not get wet; or that he can be in bed at thesabbath at the same time;... and that a witch canturn herself into any shape she fancies, be it housefly or raven? Indeed, these claims go beyond all human reason and may even pass the limits permitted by the Devil.
The Inquisitor-General appeared to share the view that confession and accusation on their own were not sufficient evidence of witchcraft. For some time, the central office of the Inquisition had been skeptical of claims of magic and witchcraft and had only sanctioned the earlier burnings with considerable reluctance, resulting only from the reported mood of panic from Logroño. In August 1614, it was ruled that all of the trials pending at Logroño should be dismissed. The determination issued new and more rigorous rules of evidence that brought witch-burning in Spain to an end, long before the practice ended in the Protestant North.[9]
The background and circumstances leading to the trials are not obscure. In the wider context of religious persecution and conflict in Europe, theCatholic Church aimed to suppress old customs or belief systems that they perceived could threaten the authority of the church.Witch trials were one of the ways by which they were able to quell old traditions while reasserting their power.
The so-calledsabbaths andakelarres may have been meetings out of reach of the official religious and civil authorities.[citation needed] Those who attended the meetings would eat, drink, talk, and dance, sometimes all night long, in the forest or caves, at times consuming mind-altering herbs and ointments.[10]
While academic research into the Basque Witch Trials has traditionally focused on the mechanisms of persecution, in recent years scholars such asEmma Wilby have argued that the presumed witches drew on a range of experiences to inform their accounts of the witches’ sabbath, fromfolk magic and collective medicine-making to popular expressions of Catholic religious practice such as liturgical misrule and cursing masses.[11] The emphasis onCatholic liturgy in theZugarramurdi trials is the reason why, along with the trials simultaneously conducted byPierre de Lancre in theFrench Basque country, these persecutions produced the most sophisticated descriptions of theBlack Mass to emerge anywhere in Europe.
It was reported that thewitches ofZugarramurdi met at the meadow of Akelarre (Basque for "meadow of thehe-goat"). In Spanish,aquelarre has become a loan word from the original Basque and refers toblack sabbath.[12]
The village of Zugarramurdi is home toa Witchcraft Museum that commemorates the witch trials of the region and pays tribute to the victims.
Akelarre was a 1984 Spanish film byPedro Olea about the trials.
The Basque witch trials were also featured as a subplot in season 4 of theHBO seriesTrue Blood, when the spirit of powerful witchAntonia Gavilán being fed upon, tortured, and condemned to death byvampire priests in the city ofLogroño in 1610, takes possession of a modern-dayWiccan in order to exact revenge on vampires.[citation needed]