Alonso de Salazar Frías
Alonso de Salazar Frías (c. 1564–1636) was born in Burgos, where his father was a lawyer and belonged to an influential family of civil servants and prosperous merchants.
His career owed a great deal to his close relationship with Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, Bishop of Jaén, and subsequently Archbishop of Toledo.
[3] The accused in these trials came almost exclusively from Zugarramurdi and Urdax, two Basque villages within the region of Spanish Navarre, on the northern side of the Pyrenees, near the French border.
[4] The investigation began when Maria de Ximildegui, of Zugarramurdi, claimed that she had attended witches' Sabbaths (nocturnal gatherings), and named other members of the village as present.
Several of the questions aimed to establish whether the experiences of the supposed witches were dreams or reality, indicating the sceptical attitude of the Council.
[8] A subsequent visitation by inquisitor Valle Alvarado concluded that about 300 adults were incriminated in witchcraft, of whom thirty-one of the most guilty were taken to Logroño for trial in June 1610.
The inquisitors, by now including Salazar, were unanimous that those nineteen who confessed their crime should be punished but saved from the stake, except for one who was condemned to burn for being a proselytizer for the witch sect.
Whereas the other inquisitors considered it a foregone conclusion that they should be sent to the stake, Salazar was not convinced of their guilt and voted for their interrogation under torture in order to provide more proof.
The public auto de fe at Logroño in 1610, attended by perhaps as many as 30,000 people, whipped up further anxiety about witchcraft in 1610–11 and produced a flock of accusations and confessions.
Supposed ointments and powders proved to be fake materials, which the accused admitted contained harmless substances that they had cooked up in order to satisfy their persecutors and to substantiate confessions.
[23] In a report to the Inquisitor General, Salazar wrote: I have not found one single proof nor even the slightest indication from which to infer that one act of witchcraft has actually taken place…the testimony of accomplices alone without further support from external facts substantiated by persons who are not witches is insufficient to warrant even one arrest.
In his view, they were not to be believed, since they alleged impossible things such as flying through the air, attendance at the witches’ gathering at the same time that they were in bed, and self-transformation into different shapes.
[28] After Salazar executed these instructions in Logroño, he was able to report to the Supreme Council in 1617 that a state of peace now existed in Navarre; the imposition of silence on the witch question had combated the craze.
He advanced rational explanations for the witch panic in Navarre, including rumours of persecutions in France, preachers’ sermons, the spectacular auto de fe at Logroño, witnessed by 30,000 people, and a dream epidemic.
[30] The Instructions of 1614 were not entirely original, since in many respects they restated guidelines formulated by inquisitors who met in Granada in 1526 in order to determine how to react to witchcraft discovered in Navarre that year.
Largely owing to the centralized method of government of the Inquisition and the authority of its Supreme Council, it was possible to implement a minority decision and suspend witch burning several decades before most of the rest of Europe changed policy.
In fact, witch trials in Spain increased in number during the seventeenth century, even if the punishments were light compared to those administered in central and northern Europe.
[36] Historian Gustav Henningsen has argued Salazar's reports demonstrates that intelligent people of the past were able to analyze witchcraft with no less penetration than modern commentators.
