The Witches of Zugarramurdi: A Story of Accusation and Abuse of Power
One of the best-known episodes in the history of Spanish witchcraft is the Auto of Zugarramurdi, in Navarre. The Spanish Inquisition doesn't really owe its fame to its cruelty or its number of victims, but to a black legend that later spread to Anglo-Saxon countries, where the Inquisition had been much worse but had ended earlier. Suffice it to think of the terrible Witches' Hammer that emerged in Germany, or the hangings of witches in the British Isles. In Zugarramurdi, which caused a scandal, 11 people were condemned to the stake in total: 6 alive and 5 already dead, while about twenty were pardoned. At the same time, in France, Pierre de Lancre sentenced 200 people to death after torture, and a few years later, Matthew Hopkins in England hanged a total of 300 people. The case of Zugarramurdi allows us to see how the Inquisition operated in Spain at the bureaucratic and religious levels, to shed some light on the dark legend, and to visualize figures such as Alonso de Salazar y Frías, who participated in these trials, proving that the persecution of witches in Spain was far from the collective madness it had been in the rest of Europe.
Navarre was an independent state with its own laws, culture, traditions, and even languages. The establishment of the Inquisition took place at the time this territory was annexed to the Crown of Castile, at the beginning of the 16th century. For the Crown of Castile, the imposition of a single legal and religious system throughout its territory was an active part of better state control. However, for the Navarrese population, it represented a change that, although gradual, shattered many of their social and cultural foundations. For example, until that time, many local superstitions and traditions had never been judged through the lens of heresy, and seemingly commonplace acts could be considered heretical and ultimately accused of being an "old wives' custom." Although most trials required witnesses and ended with sentences of temporary imprisonment or fines, this did not prevent an uncomfortable and fearful atmosphere surrounding such accusations.
The story of the witches of Zugarramurdi actually begins with a witch hunt in Labort, a territory in the so-called French Basque Country. There, the civil servant Pierre De Lancre had carried out a persecution and had sentenced 80 people to death at the stake. Many people, frightened, fled to the borders of the Spanish Basque Country and Navarre. This is where the town of Zugarramurdi is located, with a population of just a few hundred.
María de Ximidelgui, whose parents were French, was a resident of Zugarramurdi, but had returned to French territory as a teenager, specifically to Labort. Upon returning in 1608, she claimed to have been initiated into a witches' coven in France, where she had flown on a broomstick, renounced God and the Virgin, and anointed herself with their potions. She claimed to have continued attending some of the covens held in Navarrese caves, and then pointed the finger at a resident of Zugarramurdi, María de Jureteguia, saying she had seen her at one. Although María de Jureteguia denied the accusation, suspicion grew, and more and more people were reported to have participated in these covens, including several men—including the accused woman's husband—other women, and even children. All of this was due to fear and the proliferation of intrigues. Surprisingly, in the end, the first accused said yes, it was true that she was a witch, since she was initiated by her aunt María Chipía de Barrenetxea, who had initiated her, giving rise to witchcraft in her family… Along with her, other people from the town whose houses had been thoroughly searched confessed to being witches and warlocks in the parish… and were forgiven, both by the parish priest of Zugarramurdi and by their neighbors. Everything returned to normal.
But Navarre was no longer an independent territory, and what had happened reached the ears of the Court of Logroño, which was in charge of jurisdiction for the Navarrese territory, with Alonso Becerra and Juan del Valle Alvarado as the leading representatives of the madness to come. In January 1609, the Inquisition sent a commissioner to investigate the incident, but his text was read verbatim by the inquisitors, who, firmly believing in the existence of witchcraft, accused the four women who had previously confessed to being witches and took them to the Logroño prison. Although the jailer insisted that he had spoken with them and that they had simply confessed to being witches both then and now to get out of trouble, the inquisitors did not listen and in February sent a letter to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Madrid, who replied, following protocol, that they should first confirm the accusations and subject them to a more complex interrogation.
Once again, the inquisitors not only ignored the protocol sent from Madrid, but when the relatives of the four women went to Logroño to defend them, they ended up locking them up too. After five long months of confinement, the poor people confessed everything that was asked of them, but the inquisitors were not satisfied and ended up bringing up more names of people from the mountains and the town. An inquisitor was sent who traveled throughout the province and also through parts of the Basque Country: while in the monastery of Urdax they said that the place was infested with witches, the bishop of Pamplona himself, Venegas Figueroa, denied everything, saying that the people of Navarre were "pious and Christian people" and that it was all due to the news brought from France. Unfortunately, attending witch trials had become a form of entertainment. The testimonies of this inquisitor - according to Caro Baroja, named Juan Valle Alvarado - were collected by Juan Mongastón after the terrible Auto-da-fé. It describes the typical accusations of the Sabbath—which, by the way, means "goat meadow" in Basque and is attested for the first time in this inquisitorial trial of 1609—in which the Devil reigned and marked the novices' skin with his fingernail, diabolical dances and spells were performed to cause illness, storms, and crop failures, as well as allowing them to metamorphose into animals to destroy and go unnoticed. They also taught each other powders, potions, and ointments to poison and bewitch, and they committed fornication and sodomy. In other words, nothing innovative was introduced into the imaginary of witchcraft, nor was any reference taken from verifiable reality.
The final accusation came in June 1610, in which 29 people were found guilty. Only Alonso de Salazar y Frías, an inquisitor who had arrived a little later, initially defended the innocence of one of the women, María de Araburu, due to lack of evidence. He then tried to save four of the accused through a "false confession of witchcraft," which the accused refused to give: if they had lied and said yes, that they were witches but repented, Salazar would have been able to get them out of there. But they preferred to die telling the truth: that they knew nothing about witchcraft and that the Inquisition tortured them to manipulate their testimony. Salazar later publicly denounced the guilty pleas of the rest, but too late, as they had already been burned in the Auto-da-fé on November 7 of that same year.
It is estimated that nearly 30,000 people attended the Auto-da-fé, including family members and acquaintances, and those who came as far away as the south of France to witness it as a spectacle. Twenty-one people wore sambenitos and corozas (conical hats) because they had confessed their crime and repented, and were therefore considered "reconciled" with the Church. Five effigies were also taken for five condemned men who had died in prison for refusing to admit they were witches and sorcerers, along with their unearthed bones. They were followed by four more women and two men, also wearing sambenitos, who would be burned alive for refusing to acknowledge their dedication to witchcraft. The reading of the sentences and the sacrifices continued into the next day.
We can glean many details from this historic event:
-The first is that unfortunately, all these accusations always begin with gossip and the pointing of a finger at someone, who, feeling fear, ends up mentioning others, and thus a network of relationships is created that fuels the rumors. María de Ximidelgui and María de Jureteguia play the same historical role as the Salem girls and their servant Tabatha, and thus the pattern is repeated in the vast majority of accusations of this type. We also add that the initial suspicions and condemnations are always directed against and among women.
Secondly, these accusations, at the popular level, had little consequence. It is the Church that, on the one hand, instills fear of "heretical" customs, and then intervenes to ensure that these customs are punished in a grand manner as a model. If it had been up to the residents of Zugarramurdi, everything would have remained an anecdote. Alonso de Salazar y Frías indicated in one of his texts that precisely the mention of witchcraft in sermons and news reports is what causes its spread: it created a new, unnecessary concern among the people that stirred the imagination.
-Of the Spanish Inquisition, we can also say that, despite its extensive bureaucracy and organization, which included lengthy verification times, there was also an institutional vacuum that allowed its members to act freely. The inquisitors of Logroño ignored the guidelines given from Madrid and acted on their own, taking into account only the testimonies that interested them. This is a clear example of abuse of power against the people, even if they firmly believed in their mission and in the Standardized "satanic" acts, their actions cannot be considered just or in good faith.
Finally, we have those who intervened and were ignored: the jailer, who knew the women had answered what they expected, wanting to get out of prison, and so reported it in vain;
The relatives, who tried to defend their wives and were considered accomplices, probably because they were "illiterate" mountain people.
We also have the Bishop of Pamplona, who, aware of what was happening on the French borders, told the commissioner of the Inquisition that so many rumors and stories came from there—and he was right;
And the inquisitor Alonso de Salazar y Frías himself, who was the first within the Logroño tribunal to doubt an accusation, and later became aware of the general catastrophe. Before him, three other religious leaders had already asked Madrid to send a commissioner to investigate Navarre "with less passion," that is, they considered the one sent from the Logroño Court to be biased. For its part, the See in Madrid sent Salazar to investigate the towns of the Basque Country and Navarre with extremely lax instructions: anyone who confessed and repented would be cleared of charges. Nothing like what the Logroño Court was doing. According to testimony, Salazar, to whom we will dedicate a full article, would have thus saved thousands of people, including many children, from the rife accusations.
The Holy Office could do little after the Auto de Logroño, other than apologize through Salazar's words and issue instructions that the sambenitos of the condemned should not be displayed in churches. This practice was done as a reminder, but in this case was avoided so that the families would not be stigmatized, something that could not be achieved with the people. Zugarramurdi today exhibits the caves of the covens, in which there are entrances of light and horizontal stones that may well have served for apparitions and altars, as well as a museum reviewing the history, as part of an event that, in truth, should not be forgotten.
Pietro V. Carracedo Ahumada - pietrocarracedo@gmail.com
Bibliography:
-Amorós, P. Guía de la España Encantada.
-Azurmendi, M. Las brujas de Zugarramurdi. Editorial Almuzara, 2014.
-Henningsen, G. En busca de la verdad sobre la brujería: las memoriales del inquisidor Salazar y otros documentos relevantes sobre el auto de fe de 1610. Universidad pública de Navarra, 2021.
Related articles:
> Modern Age and Pagan Cults: Witchcraft in Western Society
