The witches and the inquisitor
The witches and the inquisitor is a historical fiction novel written by Malaga professor, historian and author María Elvira Roca Barea. The work was published by the Espasa publishing house in 2023, and won this year's Primavera Novel Prize. Although it is the writer's first foray into the genre, the book managed to captivate critics and the audience due to the quality of the research.
María Elvira Roca Barea is known for creating exhaustive documentation, which she relies on to create all her projects. Yes ok The witches and the inquisitor It has emerged as an entertaining novel, It is important to note that the text has received some criticism regarding the plausibility of the events it narrates and the inaccuracy of the dates of the events it presents.
Synopsis of The witches and the inquisitor
Close to a religious competition
During the first decade of the 1600s, there were notable ideological clashes, politicians and war between the Catholic religion and the nascent Protestant branch. These disputes arose, basically, to gain followers.
Roca Barea narrates that at the same time that the altercations were taking place, superstitions abounded among the fervent believers of both factions like never before. This is how the fixation against witchcraft took its place again., and with this, the persecutions were fueled and the Holy Inquisition took on a new air.
In the towns, the priestly chiefs began to carry out the famous “trials.” Both criminals who kidnapped children to offer them to the goat and completely innocent villagers were blamed. In that context, The witches and the inquisitor presents, in particular, what happened in the Navarrese village of Zugarramurdi.
The witch hunt began in the modern age
Roca Barea has commented that, because of so many films and historical fiction books that highlight the mystical more than the truth of the facts, There is a tendency to think of witch hunts as a phenomenon of the medieval era.. However, according to the author, it was really during modernism that such events arose.
Barea suggests that These were carried out due to a multiplicity of factors. And that, almost always, they occurred in the border areas that border with the north, in this case French Navarre, in Western Europe.
Likewise, The witches and the inquisitor outlines several interesting questions, all of them corresponding to the perspective of the time. For example: How did people begin to believe that witchcraft had practical effects? Who benefited from believing in it? Who were the main victims of the trials? And finally, what was the internal management of the Spanish inquisition like?
A specific episode turns into a virulent massacre
In this context of confusion, between religious struggles and the superstition of the people, Inquisitor General Bernardo de Sandoval sends Alonso de Salazar y Frías to Logroño, seat of the Holy Office. The objective is to determine what was happening and take drastic action if the situation worsens.
As the man sets out on his way, discover that it is not just about curses, the evil eye or common witchcraft, things that already existed. However, it is not the Satanist and diabolical plot that the most religious people claim it to be in order to gain more followers for both parties.
Rather, it is a little bit of everything.: There are innocent people who do not understand the role they play in a macabre political game, there is a negligent government that agrees to sponsor the actions of the most powerful spheres, and there are, as it could not be otherwise, perverse people and murderers.
Tortures and meaningless confessions
The witches and the inquisitor instituted reflect a historical moment where, to obtain public benefits, some blamed others for unthinkable acts. Torture was used to make them confess and, after hours of mistreatment, more than one ended up declaring any number of atrocities.
One of the most common statements was the use of children, who were offered as sacrifices to different demons. They also said that both men and women danced naked in the moonlight, that they flew and that they invoked beings of darkness to copulate with them and thus generate their offspring.
But beyond the terrible image painted by the political and social power of 1600, it is worth asking why this happened precisely at a time of religious friction, precisely in a village near the French border. It is possible that, as is often the case, this fight had nothing to do with God or the Devil, but with men.
About the author, María Elvira Roca Barea
María Elvira Roca Barea was born in 1966, in El Borge, Malaga, Spain. After finishing high school, the author He studied Classical Philology at the University of his hometown. Since then, she was already devoted to writing, and recalls her higher studies in a text called The aesthetics of discourse in the Letters of Pliny the Younger. Later, he completed his doctoral thesis under the direction of Antonio Alberte González.
In addition, study at the François Rabelais University of Tours, where he learned about French literature, rhetoric and paleography. In 1999 she graduated in Hispanic Philology, and began teaching at a secondary school. She has worked as a researcher for the Higher Scientific Research Council (CSIC). Likewise, she is an essayist and columnist for El Mundo y The country.
Other books by María Elvira Roca Barea
As an independent author
- José Juan Berbel Rodríguez (1996);
- Critical edition and study of art preachatoria ad noticiam artis predicandi (1997);
- The Knight in the Tiger's Skin (2003);
- Military treaty of Frontinus. Humanism and chivalry in the Castilian Four Hundred (2010);
- 6 exemplary stories (2018);
As co-author
- The influence of Cicero and Quintilian on ideas about style in the letters of Pliny the Younger / Albaladejo, Tomás; Roca Barea, María Elvira (1998);
- The study of the preaching arts status quaestionis / Alberte González, Antonio; Roca Barea, María Elvira, Antonio Ruiz Castellanos, Antonia Víñez Sánchez, Juan Sáez Durán, ed (1998).