Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Navarre, 1608–1614. Lu Ann Homza

In December of 1608, María de Ximildequi, a young domestic servant, returned from the French Pays de Labourd to her home in the village of Zugarramurdi in Spanish Navarre. With her, María brought tales of witches and witch cults, and on the heels of these reports came the most virulent wave of witch hunting in Iberian history. Enduring for years, involving thousands of villagers and multiple inquisitors, religious authorities, and even several judiciaries, this witch hunt finally came to an end after the Inquisitor Alonso Salazar, among others, shared his concerns with the Inquisition’s Suprema, or Supreme Court, which in turn issued new, strict guidelines for matters of witchcraft. In Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Navarre, 1608–1614, the fifth volume in Pennsylvania State University Press’s Iberian Encounter and Exchange series, Lu Ann Homza reexamines the famous witch hunt of early modern Spanish Navarre. Over the course of its introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue, this book skillfully accomplishes its stated objective of “increasing our understanding of inquisitorial practice, community norms, relationships between children and adults, and this particular witch hunt in early seventeenth-century Navarre” (16). Homza achieves this through a focus on the crucial roles played by children, fresh attention to the secular cases brought against witch accusers, and an investigation of the external influences that contributed to the Inquisition’s ultimate termination of this dramatic witch hunt. Among the many careful conclusions Homza draws—which range from the centrality of children to the delinquency of inquisitorial notaries—emerges one of the key qualities of witchcraft: that “witchcraft…never came down to single causes or explanations” (51). These multifaceted influences, contexts, and understandings occupy the pages of this engaging book.

Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates attends to the witch hunt in Spanish Navarre from 1608 to 1614, revisiting previous scholarship while adding nuance to an event that transcended an inquisitorial monopoly. The book’s clear introduction lays out an overview of this expansive witch hunt and the author’s contributions, which seek “to expand our grasp of the distribution, timing, actors, processes, complications, and consequences of this most famous witch hunt” (16). Its first chapter, “Trauma,” describes the various events and confessions yielded during the panic, showing clearly the central role that children played in spreading the rumors of witchcraft, a privileged position as children were immune to charges of slander. Homza’s sustained attention to underaged participants reveals that the “cycle of child allegations continued unabated” and provided fuel for continued witch hunting (35). Although readers familiar with the witch panic will recognize the events and confessions related by earlier scholarship, this section offers a commendably concise narrative, with a fruitful focus on the agency of villagers and the emotional toll brought upon the community. The following chapter examines the contexts of “Spiritual and Social Combat,” illuminating the “theological anxieties” that nurtured witchcraft accusations and confessions, even when they overlapped neatly with “earthly motives” (51). Though Protestant and Tridentine reforms held only a mild influence in early modern Spanish Navarre, reform mentalities did influence the witch hunt, causing villagers to re-examine the religious zeal of themselves and others, introspections that yielded thousands of accusations and confessions. Drawing from close readings of the trial documents, including several secular trials of slander and assault at the hands of accusers, Homza reveals the “spiritual, social, and familiar conflicts...fundamental to the dynamic of this witch hunt” (85). This attention to local intrigues such as revenge, sex, and mental illness compellingly illustrates the complex and individual influences that helped forge the witch hunt. The next chapter, “Legal Decisions, Legal Errors,” explores the choices made not only by inquisitors, but also jurists from Navarre’s royal court, Navarrese religious leaders, and unlettered villagers, demonstrating the importance of examining local sources outside of the Inquisition’s archival repository. Local concerns among villagers and personal drives to confess or accuse drove this panic, complicating the power of the elites who adjudicated it. These elite actors appear in the following chapter, “Collaboration, Obedience, and Resistance,” as the disharmony and shared concerns among various religious and judicial authorities reveal the complex dynamics among many actors. Homza’s inclusion of slander cases litigated in the secular court, something akin to a class action lawsuit, demonstrates that advocacy for accused witches was not concentrated in the hands of the well-known Inquisitor Salazar, but rather shared by villagers who also sought—and received—justice for themselves. “Transgressions and Solutions” concludes the book through its focus on the witch hunt’s final years in 1612 to 1614, presenting the heated letters and arguments generated by Salazar and his inquisitorial colleagues, the skeptical concerns laid out by Salazar, and the new rules for witchcraft investigations mandated by the Inquisition’s Suprema. But to these well-known documents Homza adds fascinating records of the widespread misconduct of the Inquisition’s notaries, which included absenteeism, inadequate depositions, and embellished invoices. These unchecked notarial derelictions contributed to the eventual distrust the Suprema had of this witch hunt, adding to the factors that led to its new, strict guidelines. A short epilogue concludes the book with a focus on Alonzo Salazar and persuasively argues that, although he was no doubt an influential advocate for the accused witches, he was by no means the only one.

In Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates, Homza brings multiple fresh approaches to this well-studied witch hunt. As suggested by its title, this work engages with the materials explored in Gustav Henningsen’s The Witches Advocate (University of Nevada Press, 1980), but it transcends a mere revisionist history. Homza skillfully adds to previous scholarship produced by Henningsen and by Spanish-speaking scholars such as Julio Caro Baroja and Mikel Azurmendi, contributing to an understanding of this witch hunt, and witchcraft scholarship more broadly, in three main ways. First, her intentional use of non-inquisitorial sources clearly demonstrates the benefit of studying various legal jurisdictions in examinations of witchcraft, especially in areas with multiple competing courts and when witch beliefs morphed into witch hunts. This engagement with non-inquisitorial sources yields a second important contribution, which uncovers the centrality of children and other unlettered actors, such as those villagers who brought their accusers to court and won cases against their abusers. This reveals that villagers, too, contributed to this witch hunt’s conclusion. Lastly, Homza draws from the history of emotions to elucidate the real effects of the fears, extra-legal local tortures, and the irreparable damage to the local social fabric caused by this mutation in witch beliefs. Together, these contributions add texture to the variegated layers comprising this early modern witch hunt in Spanish Navarre.

This book offers valuable new insights, and these understudied sources, secular and ecclesiastical, call out for greater detail and defined connective tissues to the witch hunt. The compelling inclusion of other “witches’ advocates” inspires a desire to appreciate more fully the accused witches themselves, the children who perpetuated the accusations and confessions, and the witchcraft understandings of those impacted by this disastrous event. Deeper engagements with the secular legal arguments and the villagers’ testimonies would offer a counterbalance to the detailed viewpoints of the inquisitors and religious leaders. The ecclesiastical cases, too, are mentioned but offer sparse detail about the trials and how they impacted the witch hunt. No doubt, navigating the multiple sources generated by this large witch panic presents its own set of challenges, as Homza notes that “the sources wouldn’t stop coming” (vii). Finally, inclusion of a chart or table would add support to the readers’ navigation of multiple names, places, and jurisdictions.

This innovative book will be of interest to scholars of witchcraft, Spain, early modern Catholicism, and the Spanish Inquisition and will serve well in both undergraduate and graduate courses. Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Navarre, 1608–1614 skillfully draws from inquisitorial and non-inquisitorial sources while highlighting the roles of children and engaging with the history of emotions. As such, it deepens our appreciation of this complicated witch hunt and shows that multiple “witches’ advocates” helped bring this dramatic event to its end.