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From: The Medieval Review <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 9:02 PM
Subject: TMR 11.06.42 Knutsen, Servants of Satan (Ryan)
Knutsen, Gunnar W. <i>Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons: The
Spanish Inquisition's Trials for Superstition, Valencia and Barcelona,
1478-1700</i>. Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 17. Turnhout,
Belgium: Brepols, 2009. Pp. xiv, 227. 60 Euros. ISBN:
9782503528618.
Reviewed by Michael A. Ryan
University of New Mexico
[log in to unmask]
In his statistically rich study, <i>Servants of Satan and Masters of
Demons: The Spanish Inquisition's Trials for Superstition, Valencia
and Barcelona, 1478-1700</i>, Gunnar W. Knutsen has provided
specialists of late medieval and early modern Iberia, as well as
scholars interested in the history of heresy, demonology, magic, and
the occult, a most valuable study. Knutsen builds off the findings of
Gustav Henningsen who identified, based on the records of the <i>Santo
Officio</i>, or Holy Office, a distinct geographic division between
northern and southern Spain regarding the phenomenon of diabolic
witchcraft. Spain's northern half was rife with trials of individuals
suspected of engaging in devil worship and inflicting damage on
people, animals, and crops in the late medieval and early modern
period. The southern half of the peninsula, in contrast, lacked these
diabolic witchcraft trials, in spite of the presence of "hundreds of
trials against suspected sorcerers and magicians" (xi). Yet Knutsen
reorients his study along a different axis. Instead of approaching
the matter traditionally by questioning the reasons behind the large
number of demonic witchcraft trials of northern Spain, Knutsen instead
questions the absence of those trials in the south. Geographically,
Knutsen focuses on the Mediterranean cities of Barcelona and Valencia
and their respective hinterlands. Although there were linguistic,
geographic, and economic similarities between these two areas, an
important difference lay in the separate regions' maintenance of their
own particular laws and secular courts. Based on his extensive study
of the <i>relaciones de causas</i>, the trial summaries recorded by
the Spanish Inquisition's tribunals and released annually by its
bureaucracy, Knutsen shows how these regional laws and courts were
crucial for understanding the fundamental differences in late medieval
and early modern Iberian conceptions of magic and demonology.
Chronologically, Knutsen begins his study with the foundation of the
Inquisition in 1478 and ends it at 1700, about the time when the
release of the Iberian <i>relaciones de causas</i> shifted from
annually to monthly and the witchcraft trials largely petered out
across most of Europe.
In his introduction, Knutsen discusses the terminology that the
inquisitors themselves used to distinguish the different forms of
superstitious actions, <i>hechicería</i> and <i>brujería</i>, sorcery
and diabolical witchcraft respectively, and he offers a sound review
of the <i>status quaestionis</i> of the scholarship surrounding
Iberian witchcraft trials. For Knutsen, ultimately the geographic
division between the northern and southern halves of Spain is rooted
in the numbers of Christians and Muslims in each area, which had a
profound effect upon those populations' collective conceptions of
magic, diabolism, and superstition. Compounding the matter further in
each area were the presence and influence of foreign witch-hunters and
the level of intervention of the Holy Office in relation to the
strength of local secular courts' claims to juridical oversight over
the trials. Knutsen argues that in Barcelona and Catalonia, where
there was a direct influence from French witch-hunters, as well as
weaker juridical oversight in the secular courts and little
intervention from the Holy Office, a much greater number of witchcraft
trials took place within the larger rural Christian population.
Valencia, in contrast, had only a small number of trials initiated,
and only one successfully prosecuted, due to the confluence of a
considerably weaker French influence, the impact of conceptions of
demonology and witchcraft that came from the much greater Muslim
population in the region, and the early intervention in trials of a
significantly stronger inquisition tribunal (9).
Knutsen divides his book into three parts. Part One provides the
historical background for his analysis over the course of three
chapters. His first chapter regards the development of the
institution of the Inquisition and its gradual shift from an
organization designed to root out the heresy of the thirteenth-century
Albigensians to one that, by the later Middle Ages, began to concern
itself increasingly with magic and superstition. Key to this was the
growing belief, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that
"the existence of an explicit or implicit pact with the devil" was
central to superstitious activities and therefore constituted a heresy
to be investigated directly by the Holy Office (15). Knutsen
discusses the various legal resources at the inquisitors' disposal,
including the famous fourteenth-century manuals by Bernard Gui and
Nicolau Eymerich; the <i>cartas acordadas</i>, letters of instructions
sent by the <i>Suprema</i> to all tribunals; and the
<i>abecedarios</i>, comprehensive, unified, but sometimes inconsistent
guides with exact references to a multitude of legal texts. The large
corpus of legal materials at inquisitors' disposal resulted in their
having considerable latitude in how they handled individual cases.
Knutsen also investigates the mechanics and processes of the trials
themselves, which were rooted in "absolute secrecy" (21). Two
legitimate witnesses were necessary to determine the full culpability
of any purported heretic and torture, with its many problems and
limitations, was supposed to be used only when the totality of the
evidence had been gathered and its legitimacy ascertained. The
"lavish punishment ceremony" of the <i>auto de fé</i> completed the
procedure: it served as a very public spectacle of the disgraceful
results of falling into heresy and its punishments ranged from
transfer to the secular arm for public execution to galley service for
healthy male heretics to the wearing of the <i>sanbenito</i> (30-31).
Afterwards, the case would be filed in the archive of the Inquisition.
Despite the attempt at standardizing these procedures and sources,
local conditions always affected the enforcement of the Inquisition's
power and the exact process could vary significantly. In his brief
second chapter, Knutsen studies the local relationships between
Christians and Muslims. The Muslims who resided along the eastern
coast of the Iberian Peninsula, "first as Mudejars and later as
Moriscos," (40) are significant to understanding the geographic spread
of Iberian witchcraft trials, as Muslims and Christians had
fundamentally different conceptions of what constituted superstitious
behavior. There is not a similar understanding of the Devil and
eternal damnation in Hell in Islam as in Christianity, although there
did exist the belief that a host of demons and lesser spirits could be
summoned by a skilled enough practitioner and compelled to do his or
her bidding. Thus the supposed sabbaths and pacts with the devil
crucial for Christian conceptions of heresy in the diabolical
witchcraft trials made very little sense within the Islamic context.
As a result, in areas where there was a considerable Muslim
population, such as Valencia and its environs, there was a marked
scarcity of cases involving diabolical witchcraft.
Chapter three has a bit of a sprawling quality, as Knutsen treats the
chronology and typology of the superstition trials in Valencia and
Catalonia, as well as conceptions of popular and learned magic, the
role the Inquisition played in simultaneously punishing and
perpetuating sorcery, and the particular characteristics of some of
the trials involving Moriscos (51). Based on his statistical analyses
of the <i>relaciones de causas</i>, Knutsen identifies a pronounced
growth in the overall number of trials for superstition in both
seventeenth-century Catalan and Valencian tribunals, peaking from 1640
to 1680, although the total number of overall trials decreased. That
specific period saw an increased influence of French witch-hunting
upon the Catalan secular courts, more time for the Inquisition to deal
with smaller cases in the two tribunals, and the inclusion of minor
cases that, a century earlier, would have been settled without the
need for a trial based on personal visitations by the inquisitor, his
amanuensis, and an <i>alguacil</i>, or constable (57). Another key
difference in the northern and southern halves turns on the practice
of the invocation of demons, the subject of a greater number of cases
in Valencia. In his endeavor to cover such a great quantity of
information, Knutsen's third chapter does not have the same level of
thematic unity as the other chapters in his book. Still, Knutsen
evocatively concludes that "the Christian areas were infected with
Satan's servants while the mixed Christian-Muslim areas were infested
with masters of demons" (81), whence the title of his book.
Parts Two and Three respectively focus on the urban and surrounding
rural areas of Barcelona and Valencia. Chapter four regards the
"plague of witches" that Catalonia considered to be a problem as early
as 1517, the date of the first reference to witches from documents
from the Holy Office. Most of those accused of diabolic witchcraft in
Catalonia and tried by the Holy Office appear as the stereotypical
witch as sketched in the fifteenth-century <i>Malleus maleficarum</i>:
the crone who, after establishing a compact with the devil and
celebrating that pact with an inversion of Christian ritual in the
form of the witches' sabbath, murders infants and small children and
engages in <i>maleficium</i> to inflict harm upon people, animals, and
property. Many of these <i>relaciones de causas</i> luridly depict
the details believed to be part of the ritual of the witches' sabbath.
For example, in one case from 1575, the report states that the sexual
union between the Devil and the accused witch, Andreua Beltraneta,
central to sealing the pact, provided her no pleasure, as the Devil's
"member was rough like a grater" (95). Knutsen's fifth chapter
regards the sometimes, but not always, contentious relationship
between Catalan secular courts and inquisitorial tribunals over the
matter of diabolic witchcraft. In Barcelona, the Inquisition tended
to not enforce its jurisdiction and intervene against witches and
instead left that to "the much more brutal secular courts," which were
only too ready to extract confessions via torture from women who then
accused other women (102). In order to discover these supposed
witches, the Catalan secular courts tended to rely on witch-hunters,
many of whom were foreign, coming from France. Yet the frontier
between accuser and accused often blurred and the inquisitorial
tribunal in Barcelona frequently tried and punished these French
witch-hunters in turn.
Knutsen uses three case studies in his sixth chapter to investigate
the situation in early modern Valencia and argues that, in stark
contrast to the responses farther north in Catalonia, the Holy Office
demonstrated remarkable restraint in each of these cases, rooted in
the conditions particular to Valencia. The first case involves a
fourteen-year-old servant, Vicenta Mapel, who claimed to have
revelations of Christ, Mary, St. Francis, St. Vincent Ferrer, and the
Devil. Brought before the Holy Office in 1588 and threatened with
torture, Vicenta confessed that the Devil came to her in the form of a
man named Joan, who promised that her visionary claims would gain wide
acceptance if she gave herself to him. Vicenta reported that she had
carnal relations with the Devil as Joan for two years. Unlike the
typical depiction of demonic congress, which was reported to be wholly
unpleasant, involving the infliction of pain and the ejaculation of
cold semen, Vicenta declared that "she felt him ejecting semen, which
was neither cold nor warm...and the devil wiggled to satisfy her"
(122). Despite Vicenta's claim to still maintaining her virginity,
these important details convinced the inquisitors that Vicenta had not
engaged in carnal union with the devil and they did not press her to
confess that she either forged a diabolic pact or attended a witches'
sabbath. The second case study is situated in the town of Traiguera,
near the border with Catalonia. There, from 1669 to 1670, the elderly
Vicenta Queralt had fallen afoul of neighbors who blamed her as the
source of their health troubles and, in addition to raining blows upon
her, denounced her as a <i>hechicera</i> (sorceress) and a
<i>bruja</i> (witch). Although she was brought to trial, her case
fell apart when inquisitors summoned her witnesses and questioned them
critically: nobody had ever seen Vicenta engage in <i>maleficium</i>
directly. The third case study focuses on the failed witch-hunter and
exorcist, Fray Juan Girona. By 1672 Juan had raised suspicions among
the residents of Torre Blanca, southeast of Traiguera, due to his
claims of locating witches and questionable methods for exorcising
demons, which involved physical beatings and the destruction of
personal property, and they brought him to the attention of the Holy
Office. Although he took the initiative and stood before the
inquisitors before they could haul him in, Juan attempted to deflect
the proceedings and solely confessed to having the desire to be
humiliated by strangers and arranging "for more than twenty-five
different women to whip him and be whipped by him while naked" (136).
Juan's strategy did not work but the inquisitors, after having
arrested him in May of 1672, upon further questioning, found no
evidence of diabolism, but instead superstition. Chapter seven
studies how inquisitors' thorough and sensitive knowledge of the
peculiarities of Valencian demonology helped foster this climate of
greater caution in the region, which, in turn, prevented secular
courts from encroaching upon the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. In
his final chapter, Knutsen turns to the cosmology of the Valencians
themselves who, having been influenced by Morisco conceptions of the
demonic, believed that demons could be "forced, trapped, and sold by
humans" (155). In Valencia, those who were able to invoke demonic
forces were ultimately far more frightening than those who entered a
pact with Satan. Appendices in the forms of a glossary of unique
Iberian legal and juridical terms, as well as a comprehensive list of
the <i>relaciones de causas</i> that Knutsen investigated that
includes the names of the defendants and the years of their trials,
round out his book nicely.
Although at times Knutsen's style can be a bit unclear, his
consultation of an array of legal and inquisitorial sources is
nonetheless impressive and he has given scholars an extraordinarily
useful book. Slight errors in copyediting creep into the work (xiii,
4, 40, 98), but these certainly are not enough to detract from its
overall merit. In fact, his excellent translations of the sources--
simultaneously precise and readable--are a highlight of the book.
Furthermore, he offers a sensitive and judicious analysis of the
actions taken between the accusers and the defendants and he does not
mitigate the horror and suffering experienced by those accused of
witchcraft. This particular reviewer hopes that Knutsen's marvelous
study will inspire additional scholars to plumb the rich holdings
housed in other Iberian archives to answer the intriguing questions
that Knutsen posed surrounding late medieval and early modern notions
of superstition, discernment of the demonic, and the application of
power.
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