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The 1614 Instructions and the Argument Against a Legend

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The 1614 Instructions and the Argument Against a Legend

Salazar's report to the Suprema concluded that there had been neither witches nor bewitched in the region until people began talking and writing about it, and that the talking had made the rest. He argued this from inside the Inquisition, against colleagues who did not accept it, and he largely won. In 1614 the Suprema issued revised instructions: confessions were not to be taken at face value, testimony from children was to be treated with great care, and cases were to be reviewed centrally. After that the Spanish Inquisition is not a significant executor of witches, and Spain and Portugal show low totals for the period when parts of Germany were at their worst.

That is uncomfortable for a widely held picture in which the Inquisition is the engine of the witch hunts. It was not. Most executions in Europe were the work of ordinary secular courts, and the presence of a strong central reviewing authority, whatever else it did, tended to suppress local witch panics rather than feed them.

Across the border the story ran the other way. Pierre de Lancre's campaign in Labourd produced executions and a book in which he explained the Basque country to itself, drawing on its coastal poverty, its language and its women in terms that say a great deal about him and nothing reliable about anyone he tried.

The atlas records both, because the contrast is the finding.

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