Topic: No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition . . . to Be This Incompetent: Inquisitors and Witch Suspects in Northern Iberia, 1608-1614

Throughout its long history, the Spanish Inquisition insisted it possessed the best possible legal system to investigate the heresy of witchcraft. Events in early-seventeenth century Navarre, however, called those sweeping claims into question, as the startling incompetence of local inquisitors in dealing with accused witches provoked a controversy whose consequences reached from small Basque villages to the highest officials of the Holy Office itself. Beginning with an outbreak of accusations in the remote village of Zugarramurdi, word of a potential network of witches who spirited young children to nocturnal gatherings with the Devil soon reached the ears of inquisitors in Logroño, more than 100 miles away. In November 1610, those inquisitors sentenced 31 men and women for witchcraft, burning eleven in person or in effigy. Despite the stern warning of this auto da fé, witchcraft accusations continued to sweep Navarrese territory, and by the summer of 1611, Logroño’s inquisitors told their superiors in Madrid that they had more than 5,000 suspects, a quantity they never could have handled in terms of jail space, much less formal prosecutions. And yet, three years later, not only was this witch hunt over, but every single legal document about suspected witches produced by the Logroño inquisitors over the previous six years was invalidated by their superiors, who imposed stricter regulations on the investigation and prosecution of suspected witches. 

Scholars have long argued that this witch persecution ended because of inquisitors’ skepticism over the existence of witches. New archival discoveries from Navarre, however, illustrate a far more complex explanation. The Logroño inquisitors, it turns out, were shockingly inept with their own legal processes, their employees, and their grasp of village and familial life. Taking a ground level view of the Basque witch hunt, this talk explores the ignorance, blunders, and oversights that fueled the witch hunt’s rapid explosion as well as its practically unprecedented outcome. In the process, it offers insights into the dynamics behind witch-hunting while also questioning the efficacity of the Spanish Inquisition and its legal machinery.

**Snacks will be provided**

About our Guest Speaker:

Lu Ann Homza is the James Pinckney Harrison Professor in the Department of History at William & Mary. She received her Ph.D. from The University of Chicago. Her research interests focus on religious and legal history of Spain and Italy between 1300-1600. She is the author of The Child Witches of Olague (2024), Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Navarre, 1608-1614 (2022), The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources (2006), and Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance (2000). Her articles have appeared in The Journal of Modern History, The Catholic Historical Review, and Renaissance Quarterly.