Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons: The Spanish Inquisition's Trials for Superstition, Valencia and Barcelona, 1478-1700 (review)

In converting his dissertation into this book, Gunnar W. Knutsen has wisely maintained the narrow focus and goals of his original project. The result is a tightly argued and solidly referenced contribution to the fields of inquisition and witchcraft studies that raises a number of important questions deserving of further attention. His primary goal is to explain the significant variation between northern and southern Spain in the inquisition's persecution of witchcraft, a feature made clear in Gustav Henningsen's 1993 map of witchcraft trials on which Knutsen overlays a map of the geographical distribution of Moriscos—Muslims who had been forcibly converted to Christianity—noting their dominance in the witch-trial-free south and virtual absence in the north, where witch persecution was frequent. Decades ago this coincidence had led Hugh Trevor-Roper to posit that since Moriscos remained the dominant scapegoat, inquisitors were too busy to prosecute witches. Knutsen reveals the answer to be far more interesting.

With thousands of surviving trial records, Knutsen sanely restricts his gaze to inquisitorial records for Valencia and Barcelona (Catalonia). Of these eastern maritime neighbors, Valencia fit into the southern pattern of trials for superstition and magic but without the collective sabbat and devil worship of the north, which were prominent features of Barcelona's trials. In 1526, Spain's Inquisitor General had convened a group of theologians who decided that witches really went to the sabbat and worshipped the devil. However, apart from the abortive 1610-14 Basque witch panic, this affirmation of the demonic witch stereotype did not lead to major witch persecution in Spain's other inquisitorial tribunals. What explains this anomaly? Knutsen presents several possible factors, including the inquisitors' insistence on the rules of evidence, their reluctance to use torture to extract confessions, and the care they took to ensure the accused were provided sufficient opportunity to defend themselves. Yet, such procedural caution was "mediated" by the particular contexts in which the inquisitors worked, illustrated by the frustrating battles with local authorities that severely restricted the ability of Barcelona's inquisitors to act definitively. The difference in judicial behavior is clearest in the treatment of witchfinders: in Catalonia's secular courts they were major figures in convicting witches, whereas Valencia's inquisitors tried such agents for superstition.

In Chapter 2, Knutsen overviews Morisco and Old Christian interaction in Valencia. Against Trevor-Roper, Knutsen posits a cultural influence of Moriscos on popular attitudes toward magic and demons. Muslim magic emphasized the control and even sale of lesser demons, hence in Valencia, popular culture rejected the demonologists' insistence that demons were ultimately in control and that all magic worked through a pact with the devil. Valencian denunciators did not accuse neighbors of diabolism, while suspects refused to acknowledge membership in a diabolical sect. Even after the Morisco expulsion of 1609-14, Old Christian "superstitions" continued to resemble Moriscos versions, and Knutsen logically posits an enduring Muslim influence. Knutsen then presents a statistical comparison of the two tribunals, noting that all ten Moriscos tried for superstition by Valencia's inquisitors were indeed charged with invoking demons, a speciality of Muslim magic. Knutsen resolves the north-south differentiation by concluding, "the Christian areas [Catalonia] were infected with Satan's servants while the mixed Christian-Muslim areas were infested with masters of demons" (p. 81).

Knutsen's Part 2 deals with the inquisitorial records of Barcelona, where French influence and professional witchfinders played a major role in encouraging witch persecution and the region's secular jurists faced a veritable "plague of witches." The height of witch-hunting occurred around 1620, and Knutsen draws from the Inquisition's relaciones de causas—summaries of the trials—a list of fifty-two accused witches (forty-six of them women). He discovers that their confessions accorded with the demonological stereotype, including...