[3]

The region first became important in the fourteenth century. The area had always supported transhumant sheep grazing, but after the fourteenth-century plagues, much land was converted to pasture. Cuenca leapt to the forefront of wool production both for export and the local manufacture of cheap textiles. In 1477 one fifth of all of Spain's 2.7 million sheep pastured in Cuenca.⁽²⁾ Several noble families relocated in Cuenca during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The royal favorite Alvaro de Luna's father, for example, acquired the town of Cañete in the fourteenth century; Alvaro was born there [4] in 1388 or 1390. These new noble families, particularly the Mendoza, Acuña, Enríquez, Carrillo de Albornoz, Luna, Cabrera, and López Pacheco families, became fabulously wealthy because of their conquense sheep or sheep pastures.⁽³⁾ In the fifteenth century, Cuenca's lords moved the bishopric to center stage while they fought for control over the failing Trastamara dynasty. Isabella the Catholic secured her hold on the Castilian throne only after she overcame the powerful marquis of Villena, Juan Pacheco, a manchego who commanded a domain that sprawled across the modern-day provinces of Murcia, Albacete, Cuenca, and Toledo.⁽⁴⁾

Cuenca quickly recovered from the fifteenth-century civil wars, and in the sixteenth century the diocese enjoyed a period of prosperity. Because of the diocese's agricultural wealth, which meant rich tithe revenues, the see of Cuenca became the fourth most valuable in Spain.⁽⁵⁾ The total population of the district grew to perhaps 300,000 inhabitants, while the city of Cuenca reached a peak of 3,461 households in 1561. At that time, the city was an important industrial and mercantile center, and the majority of the city's active population was engaged in textile production or artisanal crafts.⁽⁶⁾ Demographic growth, however, was limited by the fragility of agriculture and prevalence of disease. By 1575 many towns in La Mancha began to show the signs of overpopulation or even to report declines.⁽⁷⁾ Plagues struck the bishopric in the 1590s and early years of the seventeenth century. After years of debate, in 1609 the moriscos were expelled and the diocese lost approximately 1,000 families. The foreign market for Cuenca's wool shrank; consequently, Cuenca's famous flocks dwindled in size, and the local textile industry collapsed. With the textile industry's failure came other setbacks. Nobles moved away to the court, the city lost more than 40 percent of its population in fifty years, and Cuenca's two printing presses folded. The crisis was worse in the some parts of the countryside, where the population was halved. By the close of the Hapsburg era, the city of Cuenca had become a provincial backwater whose economy and society were dominated by the church.⁽⁸⁾

Even in the best of times, however, Cuenca was a hard and unforgiving province. There was wealth in the pine forests and sheep, but the land and climate for the most part did not favor agriculture or easy living. Grain shortages were a chronic side-effect of the bishopric's sheep industry; as a result, the city council of Cuenca constantly worried about how it would keep the town supplied with grain. In 1437, noting the "great lack of grain that there always was and has been in the said [5] city," the council passed ordinances designed to encourage grain production.⁽⁹⁾ In 1571 the city's representatives had to scour the kingdoms as far away as Toro, three hundred kilometers to the northwest, in search of additional grain, which was carted to Cuenca at a phenomenal cost.⁽¹⁰⁾ On one occasion, when the town council heard that the Philip II and his court might visit the city, the magistrates began preparations two months in advance because not enough food for such a large number could be procured on short notice.⁽¹¹⁾ Unlike the case in other towns, because of the city's isolated location, in Cuenca the wealthy went hungry together with the poor. Juan Bautista de Verdesoto, a local representative of the family of the counts of Buendía, described the desperate conditions of the winter of 1571.

Here we have no recourse from the cold, with heavy snows, ice, and storms [cutting off the roads], and firewood very cheap at two reals a load, when it used to cost eleven maravedis [one sixth the price]....[Two months later] I lack strength, not of will, but from lack of food. Here there's not [to be had] one sardine, or bite of fish, or pollock, or one orange, or a pound of raisins, or another of rice - only leeks and turnips....⁽¹²⁾

This Inquisition is located on the most barren spot in Spain, at the base of a mountain pass on a high hill more than three hundred feet on all sides above the flat land, and exposed on two sides to the breezes which whistle through without any [6] protection because the Inquisition's house is so high up....It's only with difficulty that officials can come up on their business, and when they do come, it's such a hard, uphill path that they arrive all sweaty. Once on top, they find the wind so cold and piercing that they fall ill no matter how healthy they are....⁽¹⁴⁾

In the end, these products and their associated cottage industries were of secondary importance to Porreño. What Cuenca produced in real abundance was super-natural resources. Cuenca was blessed with miraculous springs and relics, famous shrines, saintly men and women, and monasteries of learning and treasured tradition. One might lack for food in Cuenca, but the faithful never really went hungry there. Porreño left no doubt in his description of the bishopric that these were the resources that counted the most to him and for which Cuenca should be recognized.

This book will explore Porreño's world: the church to which he owed his livelihood, the diocese that inspired his admiration, and the faithful who gave the bishopric meaning. Porreño described a perfect world of monasteries that always honored their patrons and sacred springs that never ran dry. In reality, Porreño's extravagant praise for the diocese's physical attributes hid a history of prosperity followed by sharp economic decline, and his portrait of conquenses' deep faith [8] masked bitter controversy and hard-fought change. If we are to follow the thread of change completely, Cuenca's story must begin over one hundred and fifty years before Porreño's time, with the legacy of the famous Spanish Pre-Reform.

The story of religious reform in Cuenca reaches far back in time and across provincial and national borders. Despite the local character of many of Cuenca's customs and history, the diocese reflected broader currents of change. Like much of Europe, during the late medieval period Castile was torn apart by warring aristocratic factions. Although Cuenca's economic fortune was improving, the diocese was invaded by Aragonese forces, the city itself was besieged several times, and feudal bands constantly jockeyed for control of the region.

The civil instability took its toll on the diocese. The first to suffer were Cuenca's religious minorities, particularly the Jewish population. In the diocese, the principal Jewish communities were in the cities of Cuenca and Huete, each of which had about fifty to one hundred families. Smaller communities were located in Alcocer, Valdeolivas, El Castillo de Garci Muñoz, and Uclés. In 1391, during the pogroms that swept Spain that summer, the Jewish quarters in the cities of Cuenca and Huete were destroyed and their residents forcibly baptized. The attack on the Jewish quarter in Cuenca was said to have been instigated by city authorities; nor was it the first time that it had been assaulted.⁽¹⁶⁾ Those who escaped baptism fled to the small towns of the bishopric, but the new converts, like many others throughout Castile, intermarried with the urban patriciate and prospered. With prosperity came resentment and suspicion.⁽¹⁷⁾ In neighboring Toledo, in 1449 the Old Christians staged riots in the city. To prevent the conversos, as they were known, from gaining the upper hand in the city's government, they passed the first purity-of-blood statutes in Spain.⁽¹⁸⁾ Cuenca's influential bishop, Lope de Barrientos, and later the famous converso jurist from Huete, Díaz de Montalvo, joined in the defense of the new converts. Barrientos penned an apology, Contra algunos cizañadores de la nación de los convertidos del pueblo de Israel, and Díaz de Montalvo wrote against the statute in his commentaries on the fuero real.⁽¹⁹⁾ Clearly, however, battle lines were drawn over the New Christians' place in society.

Cuenca's clergy were ill-equipped to help ease the Jews' conversion. Shortly after the 1391 pogrom, Bishop Juan Cabeza de Vaca complained [9] in the synodal constitutions that some prebendaries in the cathedral, city, and bishopric did not know most of the catechism and "what is worse, out of negligence and indolence, they don't take care to know it." The result was that when the "new converts and other simple and ignorant people" asked them questions, the priests could not answer them.⁽²⁰⁾ One suspects that the unbeneficed parish clergy could do no better, and remarkably, until mid-fifteenth century the diocese possessed very few mendicant houses, which otherwise could have supplied the region with competent preachers and confessors.⁽²¹⁾

Bishop Lope de Barrientos' death in 1469 precipitated a virtual breakdown of order in the city of Cuenca, where for twenty years he had ruled as securely as any lord. In 1449 Barrientos had defended the city against attack and expelled one of the bandos, the Hurtado de Mendoza clan, including the castle guardian, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. On another occasion, when the city was besieged again, Barrientos had rounded up all of the nobility and made them swear homage to King Henry IV.⁽²²⁾ Shortly before Barrientos' death in May 1469, the powerful marquis of Villena, rival of the Hurtado de Mendozas, made a bid for control of the diocese. He signed a friendship pact with the papal legate, Antonio Jacobo de Veneris, whereby Villena would gain control over certain castles in the diocese and the legate would become bishop.⁽²³⁾ But the cathedral chapter, dominated by the Hurtado de Mendoza faction, saw a chance to assert its independence from all outside authority. It elected as bishop Juan de Hurtado, a member of the faction Barrientos had banished from the city in 1449. (Hurtado suddenly found religion for the occasion.) For a while the chapter successfully resisted the efforts of the pope to provide Villena's candidate, Veneris, who, after his appointment, never visited the city.⁽²⁴⁾

When Veneris died in 1479, the vacancy afforded Queen Isabella, whose grip on the crown of Castile was still not secure, a chance to gain control of the strategic diocese. At the same time, the monarchy could use the appointment as a test case to establish its control over ecclesiastical patronage. The year before, at the National Conference of Seville, the Castilian church had agreed on a three-point program of reform that supported the principle that all high appointments in the church should be made to Spaniards.⁽²⁵⁾ Once again the fractious chapter in Cuenca became the center of intrigues, debating whether to side with the pope's nephew Riario, or the young monarchs, who had just won the War of Succession by defeating the marquis of Villena. King Ferdinand ordered the entire chapter to the court and forced its members [10] to sign an accord supporting the monarchs' candidate, Alfonso de Burgos. With difficulty, the Santa Hermandad and the king's officials, Triguero and Perafán, maintained order in the diocese.⁽²⁶⁾

The new bishop, Alfonso de Burgos, was exactly the type of prelate that Isabella wished for her program of church reform. Of converso origin, Burgos owed his career completely to the crown's favor and could be counted upon to carry out his pastoral responsibilities to the mutual advantage of the diocese and his patrons.⁽²⁷⁾ Upon Burgos' arrival in Cuenca, one of his first episcopal acts was to assert his authority over the diocese that had sided with the papacy over his appointment. Burgos personally inspected part of the large bishopric and then called the first synod to be held there in forty-two years. He explained, "Our office consists of universally providing for the well-being of our subjects' souls, and, more importantly, ordering the style of life and celibacy of the clergy and prebendaries of our diocese."⁽²⁸⁾ Burgos was a talented churchman (he later went on to become bishop of Palencia and founder of the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid) and his dedication is apparent in the synodal constitutions that he wrote for Cuenca. Burgos even took the innovative step of having them printed in Huete in 1484. In the constitutions, Burgos laid out meticulous instructions regarding the improvement of conquenses' spiritual life. He ordered sacristans to read the catechism to village children every evening and issued other directives designed to increase lay piety.⁽²⁹⁾ With similar concern for Cuenca's ill-trained clergy, Burgos ordered them to learn Latin and the diocesan ritual, study for two hours daily, reside in their parishes from at least Lent to Pentecost, to separate from their concubines, and go properly attired and groomed.⁽³⁰⁾ These statutes point to Burgos's good intentions for Cuenca, but the bishop was transferred to Palencia after only three years at the head of the conquense see. Given this short tenure, it is doubtful that Burgos's administration, however enlightened it may have been, could accomplish lasting reforms in the diocese.⁽³¹⁾

Much the same conclusion may be drawn for the episcopate of Burgos's successor, Alonso de Fonseca, bishop from 1485 to 1493, who by some accounts was not much interested in reform.⁽³²⁾ As was customary, Fonseca ordered an episcopal inspection of the parish account books in 1488. His inspector general even ordered the parish priest of the small town of Castejón to adopt the new practice of maintaining a baptismal register, in which the priest would also record the names of the parish's excommunicants.⁽³³⁾ Like Burgos, Fonseca held a diocesan synod in 1493, but that same year he was transferred to Burgo de Osma. [11] The Italian, Raphael Sansoni Riario, who had patiently waited since 1479 for the rich bishopric to fall to him, won his prize before the year was out. In his entire tenure of twenty-five years, Riario would never once visit Cuenca.

The lack of a strong, continued episcopal presence in Cuenca meant that the monarchy's program for reform of the secular church there could be no more than a set of stillborn ideas. Soon the diocese's administration came under censure by Queen Isabella, who accused the provisor of usurping her royal authority whenever he could, giving tonsure to whoever wanted it for a bribe, and doing nothing about clerical concubinage.⁽³⁴⁾ In sharp contrast to Avila, which was similar to Cuenca yet full of religious ferment at this time, the city of Cuenca showed no signs of renewal beyond the reform of the local Franciscans.⁽³⁵⁾ There were no local charismatics, no miracles. When, after twenty-four years, in 1517 the city council finally petitioned the crown to end Riario's absenteeism, the ten reasons they presented had nothing to do with spiritual concerns. Instead, the councilors objected to the prelate's long absence because it had cost the city in lost income and had led to confusion in the courts.⁽³⁶⁾

In comparison to the apparent decadence at the center, the province was full of activity. During the second half of the fifteenth century, local lords founded monasteries throughout the diocese, which had been particularly lacking in religious foundations.⁽³⁷⁾ Most popular were the Franciscans: the marquis of Villena established an observant house in Belmonte, and other houses were founded in Valverde, Villanueva de la Jara, and San Clemente. The marquis of Moya brought the Trinitarians to Tejeda and the Dominicans to Carboneras. The Augustinians came to Salmerón, and Huete received a convent of Franciscan nuns.

In fact, if the diocese had a spiritual center, it was not the city of Cuenca but the town of Belmonte and the surrounding area. Belmonte, seat of the marquisate of Villena, was the site of the diocese's one collegiate church, founded there in 1460, plus the Observant Franciscans, who arrived in 1462, a convent of Dominican nuns brought in by the marquis, Juan Pacheco, and a hospital for the poor and pilgrims (see plate 2).⁽³⁸⁾ In the sixteenth century, Belmonte produced several friars of note, including Fr. Luis de León (1527-91), and nearby Villaescusa de Haro bred bishop after bishop, many of whom left generous legacies in the town.⁽³⁹⁾ The countryside around the two towns, consisting of low hills covered in holm oak, thyme, and lavender, and giving way to the empty plain of La Mancha to the south, seemed to attract miracles, [13] seers, and holy people. Sometime around the turn of the century, in Belmonte, Nuestra Señora de la Gracia saved a woman who fell down a well and called on her for help; immediately the spot became the site of a popular shrine where many miraculous cures took place, including the revival of a dead child.⁽⁴⁰⁾ In 1517 and 1523, Juan de Rabe and Francisca la Brava, from near-by towns, saw several apparitions of the Virgin Mary and experienced trance-like states.⁽⁴¹⁾

Although the diocese suffered from the lack of strong episcopal leadership, in 1489 a powerful, new religious institution arrived in the capital. The first tribunal of the modern Spanish Inquisition was established in Seville in 1480; soon tribunals were set up throughout the kingdoms, Cuenca receiving its court in 1489. Until its definitive establishment in 1522, the itinerant tribunal was responsible for a huge district, which at times included the bishoprics of Cuenca, Sigüenza, Osma, Calahorra, Murcia, and Cartagena, and the Priory of Uclés. In 1522 the boundaries of the court were fixed to include the bishoprics of Cuenca, Sigüenza, and the Priory of Uclés.⁽⁴²⁾ During the period that Cuenca was headed by an absentee bishop, from 1493 to 1523 the Inquisition was virtually the only voice of religious authority in the diocese. Although the court could not administrate, it could establish standards of orthodoxy, and it could punish.

At first, the court's responsibility in Cuenca, as elsewhere, was to uncover converted Jews who secretly practiced the faith of their ancestors.⁽⁴³⁾ Between 1489 and 1509, the surviving records from Cuenca document 376 persons who were tried by the court. Comparatively speaking, the conquense Inquisition's activities were moderate. About one third of those tried were executed, which was a far lower use of capital punishment than in other tribunals.⁽⁴⁴⁾ The court's moderation may be due to the fact that by the end of the fifteenth century, Cuenca's conversos seem to have integrated more successfully into Christian society than in other regions. Many of the trials involved incidents that were reported to have taken place twenty or thirty years before. Only one conventicle was uncovered, this in the city of Cuenca and led by a certain doctor Don Symuel, who was relaxed in 1498. His place was taken by a city councilor, Luis de Madrid, who, unlike his predecessor, could not read Hebrew and was not a rabbi.⁽⁴⁵⁾

For the communities of conversos in the small towns where many settled after the pogroms and forced baptisms, it was difficult to preserve intact Jewish traditions, while the rewards for assimilation were great. Still, it was not all that easy to become a Christian. While everyone [14] knew the different dietary laws and Sabbath customs, few people, Christian or converso, knew the catechism. Moreover, except for the Dominican friar Vincent Ferrer, who was active in the early years of the fifteenth century, the church showed little interest in missions to the conversos. Given these circumstances, it was not surprising that conversos made bad Christians in a formal sense: so did the Christians.

The trial of the "beato de Belmonte," Alonso González de la Pintada, illustrates the tentative process of assimilation that was taking place in Cuenca. Some descendants of conversos became exceptionally devout Christians or preserved their Jewish religion, but others struggled as best they could between two imperfectly learned faiths, both heavily penetrated by local folk traditions.⁽⁴⁶⁾ In 1517, the sixty-seven-year-old González voluntarily presented himself to the inquisitors while they were on a inspection tour (visita) of the district around San Clemente, in La Mancha. Someone had told González that a certain cure he had used all of his life was superstitious. On questioning, it turned out that González had been born in 1450 to converso parents, the first generation to grow up after the 1391 pogrom. A second generation Christian, González had been a lay Franciscan brother for forty years,and worked as the majordomo of the Franciscan monastery in Belmonte. His niece, who also lived in Belmonte, was an "emparedada," a female hermit who lived walled up next to a church.

On the surface González had established impeccable credentials as a Christian, but closer examination revealed a perplexing series of contradictions. When the inquisitors asked González if he read the Bible and knew what it was about, he said he had, but despite his forty years with the Franciscans, González thought the Bible was about the "Old Law" and other things, he did not remember exactly what.⁽⁴⁷⁾ What he did remember clearly was fasting in his parents' house as a child and hearing his Jewish grandmother say over him the first words of the Hebrew profession of faith, "Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God," when he was sick with gout.⁽⁴⁸⁾ This was the most basic Hebrew prayer, which would identify González as Jewish, but on the other hand, his father taught him the Lord's Prayer, which served the same purpose for Christians. His father also taught him the following spell for curing hemorrhoids:

Take the sick person to a certain fig tree and have him kneel facing the east with his hat off. Then you bless him, saying "In nomine patris et filii et spiritu sancti, what do I cut?" The [15] sick one then says, "The piles of so-and-so," and recites devoutly a Pater Noster and an Ave María, while you recite them as well. Together you recite the prayers three times, while you cut off nine figs from the fig tree. Then you take the figs to a place where neither sun nor smoke can get at them. While the figs dry out, the piles are cured.

González was imprisoned for Judaizing, although by the standards of the community the lay brother had passed for a Christian. Most of his relatives, González claimed, had never been noted by Inquisition, and he had even earned the respectful title of beato. But just what kind of religion was the holy man González practicing? González's work as a faith healer in the community posed as many questions for religious authorities as did his inadvertent syncretism. Nor was González the only example of a beato who mixed religion with magic. In prosecuting the crypto-Judaizers, the inquisitors discovered that the diocese harbored many practitioners of the magical arts, some of whom were not so innocent as González. A worrisome case was that of the "beata de Huete," Isabel Alvárez, who was tried in 1499.

Some twenty years before her trial, after borrowing a book about "all kinds of spells and invocations of the devil," Isabel Alvárez decided to experiment with black magic. Alvárez could not identify the book of magic, but there were many of these books circulating among the nobility of Castile in the fifteenth century.⁽⁵⁰⁾ She learned various love charms given in the book, which she tried out on her neighbor's friend and a Dominican friar whom she wanted to seduce.⁽⁵¹⁾ As Isabel put it, she knew that what she was doing was all "the devil's work...and she was confident the devil had the power to do it because...she knew full well that the devil had no more power than what God gave and allowed him, and God had power over everything." The knowledge that she was doing the devil's work, however, did not stop Isabel from [16] collecting some bread that Friar Ambrosio had bitten, rolling it up with fragments of his beard and hair, and daubing it with a horrible philter she had brewed. She then pierced the bread through with needles so he would not have eyes for any other woman.⁽⁵²⁾

In Isabel Alvárez's case, involvement with the supernatural had led her into a dangerous experiment with forbidden knowledge. Especially damning was the fact that Isabel, an educated woman who could correctly define the nature of the devil's power, willfully chose to enter the world of demonic magic that was popular among Castile's upper classes during the fifteenth century. The inquisitors found her guilty of sorcery; mounted backwards on an ass, dunce's cap on her head, Isabel was whipped through the streets of Huete.

Inevitably, as the cases of judaizantes in Cuenca were exhausted, the inquisitors' presence led increasingly to the investigation of other religious crimes.⁽⁵³⁾ In the late 1510s, there was a witch scare in the tribunal, and some thirty individuals were implicated.⁽⁵⁴⁾ The 1519 trial of the Lozana-like character, Juana de Sancta Fimia, involved several priests, including the cathedral chanter, who shared among themselves a shifting circle of lovers and concubines (amigas and amas or mancebas) who jealously resorted to love magic to win the priests' affection.⁽⁵⁵⁾

Juana de Sancta Fimia's activities stretched back over twenty years, during which time she never confessed or took communion because, she said, she was in sin and had children out of wedlock. Various witnesses were called: Juana's long-time lover, several women acquaintances and clients, and several other priests. By their accounts, Juana's activities as a sorceress were confined to practicing love magic, which she used to further her own romantic interests or to help other women, who, like herself, were involved with priests.⁽⁵⁶⁾ Alvar Alonso remembered that once, fifteen years ago, Juana had come to him for a bit of altar cloth to use to bewitch her lover, the priest Pedro de Villar de Olalla, who she thought he was seeing someone else. Pascuala Ximénez recounted how a friend had told her that Sancta Fimia was a sorceress who had cast a spell on Villar de Olalla. Pascuala did not believe her, so together the two women snuck into Juana's house. They found her bed unmade, with the feet of two diagonally opposite bedposts standing in pots of a black ointment. A year or two later, Villar de Olalla broke up with Juana against her wishes and she left the city. Before long, Pedro was confiding to his friend, a prebendary in the cathedral, his great anxiety and the fact that he was dying -- because Juana had cast a spell on him.

Juana was also willing to use her skills to help out her women friends. [17] The same Pascuala was very much in love with her employer, the priest Fuentesclaras, but he had found another woman. Pascuala "tried to find a doctor who would make him love her more than the other [woman], and then remembered Juana." Juana followed an elaborate procedure, first arranging a spell to make Fuentesclaras fall out of love with the rival and then giving Pascuala some powders to mix in the priest's food to make him return to her. Pascuala bought a bit of calf's liver, cooked it "as best she could," sprinkled in a few grains of the powder, and sent the dish to Fuentesclaras, who was with the new woman.⁽⁵⁷⁾ The rival, no fool, was not about to accept the suspicious gift of food and sent it back. At that point, Pascuala remembered, it occurred to her that maybe the powder was bad, and she cut off all communication with Juana.

Unlike the Beata de Huete, who experimented with love magic out of curiosity, Sancta Fimia was a professional who knew she toed a dangerous line. Perhaps to protect herself from denunciations, she was reluctant to help strangers who were not also involved with priests. Widow Molina told the inquisitors how after her son-in-law abandoned her daughter she went to several women to see what could be done to bring him back. Finally, she was referred to Sancta Fimia as someone who knew a lot about these things. But Widow Molina became suspicious of Sancta Fimia and demanded that she prove to her that what she did was a "a good devotion." Sancta Fimia laughed in her face, and to frighten Widow Molina off, told her a story about a woman who sold her soul to the devil for love. With the skill of a lawyer, when Sancta Fimia agreed to help Pascuela, she personally did not collect the materials for the potion that would block Fuentesclaras' love for the rival or utter the damning words, "Devils of the oven, bring him to me on a winch; devils of penitence, bring him to me on a wheel." Instead, Sancta Fimia turned Pascuala into her accomplice. To break the rival's hold on the priest Fuentesclaras, Pascuala had to collect something from Fuentesclaras' person, a bit of earth from the threshold of the rival's house (substituting for the woman's own sex), and the "sal de tres mugeres herradas" (menstrual flow from three prostitutes--a not uncommon ingredient in such potions). At Pascuala's house, Sancta Fimia mixed these ingredients in three clay pots, put in some more of her own, and placed the pots in three corners of the house. Pascuala had to light the pots, snuff them out, and say the spell.

Naturally, the inquisitors thought that a key witness in Juana's case would be her lover, the priest Pedro de Villar de Olalla. When the inquisitors asked Villar de Olalla their usual opening question, namely, [18] whether he knew of anything that had been said or done against the Catholic faith, his answer was not the one they expected to hear. Without a word about Sancta Fimia, Villar de Olalla told them about the night when three women crept into his bedroom and he woke up while they tried to hold his head and kiss him. Villar de Olalla gave the entire story a supernatural twist, turning the story of a thwarted seduction into a mysterious, dangerous brush with succubi, devil's familiars, and the unknown. The incident occurred on the night of a full moon. Asleep, he felt sad, anxious, and as if someone were touching his face. He jumped out of bed and saw three feminine shapes. He chased them out of the room but was hit by a great rush of air and the women disappeared. When he got down to the entrance of the house, he saw a medium-sized, red-haired dog. The dog went out the cat door, and Pedro followed it as it walked calmly down the street until it stopped outside a door and "let out about three terrifying howls which seemed to go up to the skies." After that, Pedro could not sleep like he used to, so on the twelfth night he went to sleep with a candle lit and a sword in his bed. Just as the candle guttered out, the bedroom door slowly opened, and two mysterious women entered the room. He leapt out of bed with his sword, but they managed to flee the room and bolt him inside.

After some close questioning, Villar de Olalla admitted that actually he had recognized one of the women on the second night as the daughter of Juan de Requena. He had not wished to give her name because he wanted to protect her reputation. Why did Villar de Olalla insist on casting his midnight trysts as ghost stories? From the story of his involvement with Sancta Fimia, despite his training as a priest, Villar de Olalla clearly believed in the sorceress's power over him. Love magic was commonly used in Europe to facilitate affairs between socially inappropriate lovers. In the absence of any psychological understanding of human behavior, magic also explained how such attachments, transgressions really, could come about.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Villar de Olalla's affairs apparently did not end with Sancta Fimia, however. Here he seems to have resorted to a creative bit of fabrication to throw the inquisitors off. The account of his first brush with the succubi was too polished: the full moon, the devil's red-haired familiar, a space of twelve nights, the sword in the bed, were all common folkloric devices. Perhaps in the end Villar de Olalla himself no longer knew where his belief in love magic ended and his guilty conscience began.

Folk healers and magicians, superstitious priests, Judaizers and peasant visionaries- the level of religious excitement in Cuenca seemed to [19] mount to a new pitch in the years just prior to 1520. Between 1515 and 1523, in addition to the apparitions already mentioned, there were two other cases of visions in La Mancha, involving women who claimed to have seen Saint Catherine and the Virgin.⁽⁵⁹⁾ The number of cases of sorcery and witchcraft increased as well; Sancta Fimia's case was one of six to be tried in 1519. Even the cathedral chapter participated in the visionary mood. In 1516, the chapter decided to move the resting place of San Julián, a local saint who was beginning to enjoy a modest cult in the city.⁽⁶⁰⁾ When, in 1518, the chapter actually opened the bishop's tomb prior to moving it, they found the body in a perfect state of preservation -- a sure sign of God's favor. The chapter immediately organized a publicity campaign, which involved a huge procession of the saint through the town, public viewings of the body, and forty-day general pardons for those who came to see the saint. The people, for their part, enthusiastically received the new saint, who was credited with causing three hundred miraculous cures in a matter of months.

The most bizarre event to take place in these prodigy-filled years involved an exorcist and a young woman in El Provencio. The town, which was ruthlessly exploited by its lord, Don Alonso de Calatayud,⁽⁶¹⁾ lay in the heart of a district of seignorial towns that had a recent history of rebellion. The town also belonged to the same region in which many of the apparitions of this time took place. The exorcist, Garci Sánchez, was under pressure from Calatayud because Garci kept a mistress and had children by her. One day in 1514 a young woman was brought to the priest for exorcising. Ynés de Moratalla had been bitten by a dog she thought was rabid and, in her own words, was terrified that she was possessed.⁽⁶²⁾ Many witnesses, including the seignior's wife, Doña Leonor de Guzmán, testified how they saw Ynes's gestures change, her face turn colors, and her body swell up. Sánchez successfully expelled the spirit in the church and then took Ynés to his house, where he seduced her. At this point he apparently realized that he could control Ynés's auto-hysteria and use her to increase his fame as an exorcist and put off Calatayud's disapproval of him. Sánchez, who on other occasions had boasted that he could cause someone to be possessed as well as expel demons, staged a spectacular two-day battle between demons and angels for the possession of Ynés's writhing, screaming body. The good angel won, and Sánchez summoned his parish and the nearby towns to come worship and make offerings to Ynés. The entire region was taken in. While Sánchez whispered in Ynés's ear what to say, the lords and ladies of El Provencio and Minaya, the marquise of Villena and all the [20] commons knelt and kissed Ynés's hand, while she blessed them and their goods, and Lord Calatayud collected the offerings that people made to her. At this point, Sánchez became frightened by what he had created and announced to the crowd that he had deceived them all, or rather, as he put it later to the inquisitors, that he had been deceived by the devil in Ynés.

In the aftermath of this scandal, to protect himself, Sánchez immediately went to Cuenca to confess the whole story to diocesan provisor and the inquisitors of that time, all of whom he later claimed paid no attention to him. Sánchez maintained then and to the inquisitors of 1516 that Ynés had truly been possessed and that the devil had deceived him. For her part, Ynés kept quiet until the Inquisition visited the district in 1516. Despite Sánchez's menacing gestures, kicks, and pinches outside of the courtroom, she summoned the courage to confess her complicity and denounce the fraud. According to her testimony (which had the benefit of two years' worth of reflection), on account of her fear of the rabid dog, at first she did believe that she was possessed, but by the time she stood in the church accepting the people's latria, she had regained her senses and was merely following Sánchez's directions. She thought a fitting punishment for her would be to kiss the hands of all those whom she had deceived and beg their forgiveness. Ynés's version of the events incriminated herself but placed the real blame on the priest who had used his office to seduce and manipulate her through her fear of demons, as he had tried to do with other women who came to him for exorcising.⁽⁶³⁾

As the inquisitors discovered in Cuenca, the years between 1492 and 1521 were a time of great religious unrest in Castile. Since the capture of the last Muslim outpost in 1492, Castile had entered a period of messianic expectations, nurtured by both the oppressed and the victorious. In 1500, a rumor that the Messiah would soon lead the conversos to the Promised Land swept through the area around Cordova.⁽⁶⁴⁾ At the royal court and in aristocratic circles, a succession of visionary beatas and female mystics held sway.⁽⁶⁵⁾ The 1510s marked the appearance of a new religious movement, alumbradismo, indigenous to New Castile, which eventually would be condemned as heretical. Alumbrados rejected the external precepts of the church, practiced mental prayer, and sought mystical union with God. Among the professional classes, the critical ideas of Erasmus of Rotterdam began to enjoy increased popularity. [21]The religious ferment soon merged with the political crisis of the Comunero Revolt of 1520-21. Young king Charles's inept government and plundering advisors quickly alienated the cities of Castile, which rose up in revolt in July 1520. In Valladolid preachers openly denounced the foreign king. There were some who found in the uprising the long-awaited coming of the millennium.⁽⁶⁶⁾ Within months, the nationalist revolt of the cities threatened to turn into social revolution.

In Cuenca, the Comunero Revolt undid the peace that had been established in the diocese following the civil war of 1476-80. The city council immediately threw in its lot with the rebel Junta. Like Toledo and Segovia, Cuenca was a textile-producing town that had been hurt by Charles's policies. Moreover, during the previous twenty years, the city had racked up a long list of grievances against the local nobility, the crown, and the Inquisition.⁽⁶⁷⁾ In La Mancha, towns and villages belonging to the marquises of Villena and Moya and other lords, many of the same which showed such religious ferment, attempted to throw off their seigniorial bonds. In some cases, the rebels were aided by nearby towns which had won their freedom in the last civil war.⁽⁶⁸⁾

In both the city and the countryside, the revolt failed to win advantages for the rebel towns. In the city of Cuenca, it was only a matter of weeks before the town councillors realized the folly of their actions. To all intents and purposes, Cuenca was a noble town; the marquis of Cañete controlled the cathedral, and the count of Buendía ruled the sheepwalks. Grain and wool supplied by noble estates fed the city's population and kept its textile workers employed. While it did not withdraw from the Junta, the city began to collaborate with the suppression of the uprising in the province, where, particularly in the marquisate of Moya, the rebels paid dearly for their sedition.⁽⁶⁹⁾

After the rebellion, the religious affairs of Cuenca did not return to the previous status quo. During the revolt, the inquisitors prudently had halted almost all of their activity, and Bishop Ramírez, who had been provided to the see in 1518, did not visit the diocese. The profile of the Inquisition's activity changed rapidly after the rebellion. The judges began to spend their time trying religious crimes that could be construed as challenges to public authority. In 1524, the first year in which the tribunal's work returned to its pre-rebellion volume, only one in ten trials dealt with Judaizing. Instead, the judges had their hands full with punishing people who disobeyed the Inquisition's orders and others who defied the church's authority by desecrating its sacred symbols. [22] The failed political revolt seemed to have been channeled into anti-clericalism and mockery of the church.

The administration of the bishopric changed as well. For the first time in more than thirty years, the bishop came to reside in Cuenca. Shortly before being appointed to the see in 1518, Ramírez had bitterly summed up Cuenca's experience under the Catholic Monarchs with these sarcastic words: "How the bishopric of Cuenca is one of the most honored in these kingdoms! Because it has been forty years or more [Veneris and Riario counted together] in the hands of Italian cardinals who have carried off its rent and promoted Italians to its benefices, that land has been completely lost."⁽⁷⁰⁾

Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, from Villaescusa de Haro in La Mancha, was the first conquense to be provided bishop of the diocese since the fourteenth century. Ramírez brought with him a commitment to good government and healthy doctrine. As a young man, just graduated from the elite Colegio de San Bartolomé, Ramírez had been a favorite of Isabella the Catholic and her daughter Juana. He collaborated with Cisneros on the work of the Pre-Reform, and around 1500 he was a member of Archbishop Talavera's innovative seminary house in Granada.⁽⁷¹⁾ Soon he was zealously undertaking his duties as the second bishop of the new diocese of Malaga.⁽⁷²⁾ In 1518, Ramírez's career was nearly cut short when his hopes for high ecclesiastical preferment were ruined by young Charles I, who favored his Flemish courtiers. Instead of the archbishopric he desired, Ramírez was awarded the see at Cuenca.⁽⁷³⁾ Ramírez may have carried the grudge: two years later, when Castile's cities revolted against Charles, despite his position at the head of Castile's highest law court, the influential bishop failed to support the royalist cause. After the suppression of the revolt, Ramírez went into voluntary exile in Rome.⁽⁷⁴⁾

Charles, however, had inherited his grandparents' concern for reform and would not allow Ramírez to neglect Cuenca for long. In 1522, the newly-elected emperor ordered Ramírez to return from Rome to take up residence in Cuenca. He explicitly hoped that the learned Ramírez would set a good example for the other Spanish prelates, who also had been ordered to return to their churches.⁽⁷⁵⁾ Reluctantly, in 1524 Ramírez obeyed the royal order and apparently decided to make the best of his political banishment to Cuenca.⁽⁷⁶⁾ He rebuilt the episcopal palace in the Renaissance style and occupied himself with the pastoral care of his diocese until his death in 1537. (see plate 3)
[23]

That the bishop should reside in Cuenca and personally exercise his office in itself was a major accomplishment. To his credit, Ramírez took seriously his duties as a man of religion and leader of a neglected diocese. Tradition paints Don Diego as "el bueno," a bishop who by day publicly distributed alms to the poor and by night secretly visited the homes of the sick.⁽⁷⁷⁾ He actively supported the new cult dedicated [24] to San Julián, the second bishop of Cuenca, published constitutions and a new missal, donated vestments and chalices to many churches, collected funds for the ongoing construction of the cathedral, and in 1534 held a second diocesan synod in Pareja.⁽⁷⁸⁾

The paucity of episcopal documents from this period makes it almost impossible to chronicle firsthand Ramírez's activities as bishop. The few papers that remain, however, suggest that Ramírez attempted to challenge the fractious cathedral chapter, which was accustomed to doing what it wanted. In 1527 the city of Cuenca petitioned Charles V to order Ramírez and the corregidor to audit the municipal charity box's account books for the last twenty years. The reason: prebendaries from the cathedral, either under the guise of collecting or borrowing the box's income, over the years had embezzled so much grain that the charity had shrunk in size.⁽⁷⁹⁾ What Ramírez did in this case is not recorded, but six years later he was instituting legal proceedings against the two powerful canons Eustachio Muñoz, who was the diocesan inspector, and Juan del Pozo, founder of the Dominican monastery, on the grounds that the two had conspired to prevent Ramírez from punishing members of the chapter.⁽⁸⁰⁾ Matters finally came to head in 1534, when the bishop imprisoned the two canons and accused the chapter of plotting to murder him. The affair was sent to Rome, where the chapter's legal counsel found that chapter's bad reputation had arrived before the case. Castillo complained to his colleagues in Cuenca that Cardinal Campejo had told him that he was "amazed that I should want to defend a chapter of adulterers and profane mistress-keepers, usurers, simoniacs, murderers and bad Christians...and other things that I'm too ashamed to write."⁽⁸¹⁾

Ramírez's quarrel with his cathedral priests was merely the first of many acrimonious battles between Cuenca's bishops and the chapter (see Chapter 2). Ramírez was more successful as a reforming lawgiver for the entire bishopric; the dioceses of both Malaga and Cuenca received new statutes and constitutions from his hand. Ramírez's Constituciones synodales, published in Cuenca in 1531, is an important document both for what the constitutions reveal about Ramírez's approach to reform and for the overall view they provide of the administrative problems the bishop faced. From the Constituciones, it becomes clear that Ramírez had much in common with the reformers whose voices would soon be heard at Trent. The Constituciones equally confirm, however, that the Pre-Reform had done little to change the character of Cuenca's religious life from the time of Alfonso de Burgos, some fifty years before.

[25]Although diocesan statutes and constitutions had existed in manuscript form since the fourteenth century, and Fr. Alfonso de Burgos had published his limited version in 1484, the diocese lacked an edition of constitutions that covered all aspects of its spiritual and temporal administration. Ramírez prepared a sophisticated document that later stood up well to the revisions made necessary by the adoption of the Tridentine reforms. The next edition of constitutions, published in 1571, reprinted many of Ramírez's articles on tithing and the ecclesiastical courts in their entirety. Others, such as those that touched on the clergy, baptism, marriage, and burial, were left intact, with the Tridentine decrees merely inserted before them.⁽⁸²⁾

In the Constituciones, Ramírez showed great willingness to experiment with new solutions to old problems. One of the most vexing problems a bishop faced was his inability to control local diocesan affairs--with the disastrous results seen above. The medieval church had not been a "parochially-grounded institution" under the close supervision of the bishop.⁽⁸³⁾ Characteristic of the medieval church, in Cuenca no clear division between parishes existed. Moreover, some parishes supported more than one living, which meant that two parish priests (curas) headed the same parish. Ramírez broke with tradition and stipulated that each parish could have only one cura. He also ordered that parish boundaries be laid out in such a way that the cura would be forced "to know the parishioners and visit and console them in their illnesses." In order to strengthen parish organization yet further, he also required laymen to fulfill the most important of their religious obligations, especially Easter communion, with their own parish cura or his assistants.⁽⁸⁴⁾ To avoid the last-minute confusion that always accompanied Easter confessions, the cura was to divide up his now clearly identified parishioners and assign a time to each confessant. Ramírez renewed Burgos' order that, after Easter, the parish priest was to send to Cuenca a list of those who had failed to commune. On a separate list, the priest was to inform the bishop who, among his parishioners, openly cohabited, gambled or blasphemed.⁽⁸⁵⁾ All of these orders were designed to make Cuenca's population spiritually responsible to their parish priest for at least one week out of the year.

Having established the basic means of control, Ramírez went on to standardize the administration of faith. First he laid out new expectations for religious indoctrination. Moving closer to the practice of the archdiocese of Toledo, on Sundays and holidays Ramírez expected the parish priest to recite the catechism and spend at least fifteen minutes [26] explaining the evangelist or epistle of the day.⁽⁸⁶⁾ The constitutions listed the holy days the entire diocese was bound to observe.⁽⁸⁷⁾ Burial customs were rendered uniform from one end of the diocese to the other. The constitutions set ecclesiastical court procedures and costs and defined the legal jurisdiction of Cuenca's highest ecclesiastical judge, the ordinary.⁽⁸⁸⁾ Finally, to ensure that conquenses obeyed his orders, Ramírez laid out specific instructions concerning the diocesan inspection tour that prefigured Trent's pastoral visitation. Ramírez converted the visita from a fiscal audit of the parish accounts to a careful inspection of each parish's affairs. To help the inspector, Ramírez condensed the synodal constitutions into a nine-page edict that could be read at the beginning of the parish inspection. In this way, the important points of Ramírez's constitutions were quickly disseminated throughout the diocese: no one could plead ignorance, and some might even have been moved to obey.⁽⁸⁹⁾
 

The above articles were Ramírez's most important proposals for reform and were designed to change the actual administration of the bishopric. In addition to making such concrete proposals, Ramírez used the constitutions to take the clergy and laity to task for their many shortcomings, faults that were not serious enough to come to the Inquisition's attention but still cast doubt on the orthodoxy of Cuenca's believers. In them, Ramírez, the highly educated cleric and courtier, steeped in the spirituality of the Cisneran and Erasmian reformers, attempted to make sense out of the free-wheeling religious life of his subjects. The constitutions were not just an exercise in Christian humanist piety, however. Although constitutions typically can repeat the same injunctions for hundreds of years, Ramírez's document was filled with original details that reflected his experience with his native diocese. Later, at the diocesan synod of 1566, eye-witnesses would confirm nearly every criticism brought up in the constitutions of 1531.

Having lived through the Pre-Reform and the first years of the Protestant Reformation, Bishop Ramírez had every reason to fear that a corrupt, secularized clergy not only detracted from the dignity and majesty of the church but actually imperilled the church's earthly mission. Ramírez was especially angered by his clergy's disrespect fortheir vows of celibacy. In Catholic thought of the time, no one who gave in to his or her body's carnal needs could lead a truly spiritual life. Worse, all too often, sexual affairs led priests into other crimes, sometimes, as just seen, spectacular ones at that. Thus, religious renewal had to begin with modifying the sexual behavior of both priests and laymen.⁽⁹⁰⁾ Ramírez [27] blamed his predecessors for the priests' failings. Because of prelates' negligence, the clergy was no longer punished for concubinage, and as a result, ignorant people were not even aware that their priests could not marry. Ramírez found most outrageous the fact that some priests, "their devotion so cold and themselves so impervious to shame," celebrated mass with their "family" present and attended their children's weddings.⁽⁹¹⁾

Ramírez sharply criticized the clergy's everyday appearance and behavior. Instead of representing a sacred order, Cuenca's clergy dressed and acted no differently than laymen. They wore short cloaks, creased bonnets, stockings of red, green or yellow, fitted clothes made of or trimmed in silk, gilt fastenings, the tonsure small and the hair long. According to Ramírez, the parish clergy enjoyed drinking and feasting, and debauches in local taverns; they sang, danced, attended bull fights, gambled, bore arms, and had picked up the habit of blaspheming. They rarely confessed, and few resided in their benefices, a fact borne out by the parish inspection records.⁽⁹²⁾

Apparently, Queen Isabella's charge that the diocesan provisor had been ordaining anyone who could afford the bribe had not changed the way individuals were admitted to the priesthood in Cuenca. Ramírez claimed that many priests, particularly those who were clients of the nobility and other powerful personages, were unworthy of their office since they had been ordained without any knowledge of Latin or the liturgy. Other priests had used false information to win ordination; they too were ignorant of Latin or lacked the personal estate or patrimony necessary for entrance into the priesthood. Somehow, "priests" managed to retain their secular status or even hold benefices without ordination. And, when ordinands actually did celebrate their first mass, instead of it being a solemn occasion, custom called for all of the new priest's companions to organize an inevitably rowdy banquet at the local inn.⁽⁹³⁾

Nor did the frauds and chicanery stop after ordination. According to the constitutions, priests regularly took advantage of their ignorant parishioners' concern for the welfare of their relatives' souls in purgatory. Perhaps Ramírez, who had been in Rome in the first years after Luther's break with the church over this very issue, was especially sensitive to the abuse. He wrote that preachers, some of them made unfit by their Jewish blood, and others by their secular status, publicly dared to increase the powers granted by indulgences, and claimed more for the bull than what the paper actually stated or even forged the documents.⁽⁹⁴⁾ There was also great negligence in saying masses for the dead and in [28] executing the other clauses set by testament and paid for by trusting relatives. And Ramírez charged that while such masses were being said the other priests in the church more often than not would play cards and throw dice. As a final indignity, Ramírez found that every Christian's right to be buried in holy ground was being sold, and at the burial the officiating priest habitually claimed some piece of clothing or jewelry from the body of the deceased.⁽⁹⁵⁾

Ramírez had unleashed a scathing, detailed denunciation of Cuenca's parish clergy. Set in the context of what the Inquisition revealed about the most extreme behavior of Cuenca's priests, and the critical approach of the Christian humanists at court, the good bishop's angry characterization of his whoring, gaming, and ignorant clergy was more than justified. However, Ramírez's anger did not stop with the priests; his criticism for the laity was equally harsh. Three problems, by no means unique to the diocese or the age, were typical of traditional Christianity in Cuenca. Most fundamentally, laymen did not fulfill their formal obligations to the church as Christians and neglected to confess and commune at Easter, keep the Sabbath, and pay their tithes. Second, conquenses paid little attention to religious law and treated the church with scant respect. Finally, their understanding of doctrine was so imperfect that they easily fell prey to customs that Ramírez found superstitious.

According to Ramírez, the canon laws dealing with adultery and marriage were the most abused, yet the spiritual benefits bestowed by chastity applied to lay men and women as much as they did to priests. Girls were warned to guard their virginity until marriage, which suggests that few did so.⁽⁹⁶⁾ Fiances cohabited, people married within prohibited degrees of consanguinity, couples separated and lived freely with other partners. Many believed that one could separate legally from his or her spouse simply by going to the town notary and obtaining a so-called letter of separation. Others, who sought to annul their marriages, found witnesses willing to lie for them.⁽⁹⁷⁾

Disregard of its laws also implied a lack of respect for the church itself. Ramírez charged that the sanctity of the diocese's churches and shrines (ermitas) was commonly violated; ermitas were the apparent scene of so many sins that Ramírez prohibited the foundation of any new sanctuaries. With the excuse of attending all-night vigils on certain holy days, many people would spend the night at ermitas, where the vigils disintegrated into feasting, dancing, singing of secular songs, adultery, and fornication.⁽⁹⁸⁾ Corrupt priests would encourage these all-night [29] vigils by agreeing to hold illegal predawn masses, for which they would be paid. The ermitas, although built with pious intentions, rarely were properly endowed, with the result that many soon collapsed in disrepair. Then the decrepit shrines, while still consecrated ground, became the scene for robbery, murder, and adultery. Similar sacrileges took place in parish churches. Their sanctity was violated by criminals who, exploiting their right to asylum in a church, lodged themselves inside, gambled, brought in women, played the cittern, and used the temple as a hideout from which they could attack their enemies with impunity. Many stayed so long that it seemed as if they were there as tenants rather than as refugees claiming the right to asylum.⁽⁹⁹⁾

After discussing the abuse of sacred property, Ramírez went on to examine the nature of his subjects' faith. He regarded the religion of the people as a mixture of misinformation and superstition. Ramírez singled out, for example, a number of erroneous popular beliefs involving the Holy Sacraments. According to church doctrine, the most important element of mass was the Eucharist, but the people regarded the Host with more reverence than the mass itself. So excessive was their devotion to the Eucharist that even during high mass, if a consecrated Host had to be carried from the church, many people would abandon the solemn service and follow the sacrament right out the church to wherever it was going. Others, like the sorceress Sancta Fimia, believed that the altar cloth, the chrism and the other holy oils possessed supernatural powers,and would request them from the priest, who often obliged their wishes. Some people asked for masses known as St. Amador, del Conde, and St. Vincent, celebrated with five, seven or nine candles. These persons superstitiously (Ramírez's word) believed that such masses were effective only when the required number of candles, in the right color (white or green), were employed and placed correctly, either all together or in the shape of a cross. Ramírez ingeniously tried to put this superstition to work by ordering that such masses could not be celebrated, but persons could request masses with three, five, seven, or nine candles, provided that they understood the Christian symbolism of each number and the significance of the mass that accompanied the candles.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Finally, the constitutions noted that many men and women frequented fortunetellers, sorcerers, and witches for advice concerning the present or the future, and for medicinal cures. Without elaborating on these practices, Ramírez established steep penalties for those who practiced divination or asked for help from sorcerers. He reserved the highest fines of all for those who misappropriated the [30] church's holy oils and for the priests who consented to their misuse.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ The instructions for parish inspection were more specific, describing practices that surely would be found in the villages.

The reign of the Catholic Monarchs usually is credited with having brought significant reforms to the Spanish church. At a time when conditions were improving among the religious orders around the country, ecclesiastical observers of the secular church in Cuenca- bishops, inquisitors and the crown itself -- found instead a series of long-standing abuses that cried out for correction. For a few years, between 1514 and 1523, authorities in the diocese seemed unable to cope effectively with a procession of visionaries, charlatans, and rebels. In Cuenca, clearly the reforms promoted by the Catholic Monarchs fell on infertile ground. Despite the efforts of Burgos, Fonseca, and Ramírez, all of whom had royal backing, most of the usual accusations leveled against either the clergy or laity in 1480 still held true in 1540. Bishop Ramírez did bring some administrative changes that showed great commitment to religious reform, but among the clergy,absenteeism, pluralism, and ignorance remained the norm. Among the laity, by ecclesiastical standards, knowledge of Christian doctrine, participation in the church's sacraments and moral conduct remained low.⁽¹⁰²⁾

The era of pre-Tridentine attempts at reform, however, had served to introduce an important change in attitude regarding local religion. A sense of urgency and purpose infused Ramírez's leadership and that of many of his contemporaries who held similar positions in the Spanish church. While the medieval church had been tolerant of the variations of local religion, the uncontrolled religious fervor that gripped much of Castile in the first years of the sixteenth century was simply too much. A new order was emerging in the edicts of bishops and inquisitors. The clergy had to be contained and disciplined. Every last vestige of Jewish and Islamic belief had to be purged from the body religious. Gone was the understanding that peasant syncretic traditions were a natural part of life. From the church's point of view, the people of Cuenca's religious practices were at best misguided efforts to harness some of God's power to a good cause. At worst, some practices and events were plainly dangerous to religious authority. Of course, belief in magic and conflicting standards of sexual behavior were not unique to Cuenca or Spain: they were common among the people throughout pre-Reformation [31] Europe.⁽¹⁰³⁾ Now, however, partly as a result of Christian humanist criticism and partly as a function of increasing centralization, such heterodox traditions could not be tolerated. Soon, increasing awareness of the challenge posed by Protestantism would make change imperative. After Ramírez, with greater or lesser force, the currents of the Counter Reformation would sweep through Cuenca, cutting deeper into the channels that were marked out by the Pre-Reform, and touch close to the life of the diocese.

1. On medieval Cuenca, see J.C. García López, La Alcarria en los dos primeros siglos de su reconquista, 3rd. ed., 2 vols. (Guadalajara, 1973); J.M. Nieto Soria, "La fundación del obispado de Cuenca, 1177-1183;" and idem, "El carácter feudal de las relaciones monarquía-episcopado en el ámbito castellano: el caso del obispado de Cuenca (1180-1280)," in En la España medieval. Estudios en la memoria del profesor Don Salvador Moxó, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Madrid, 1982): 200-202. On the fuero de Cuenca, see A.M. Barrero, "La familia de los fueros de Cuenca."

2. See J. Klein, The Mesta:  A Study in Spanish Economic History (Cambridge, Mass, 1920), 318; and P. Iradiel Murugarren, Evolución de la industria textil castellana en los siglos XIII-XVI, which deals entirely with the conquense textile industry.  A brief introduction to the Castilian crisis of the fourteenth century may be found in J. Valdeón Baruque, "La crisis del siglo XIV en Castilla ? revisión del problema," Revista de la Universidad de Madrid, 20 (1971): 161-84; and F. Udina Martorell, ed., La mutación de la segunda mitad del siglo XIV en España,  Anexos de la Revista Hispania 8 (Madrid, 1977).  More recently, see the collection of essays edited by A. Rucquoi, Realidad e imágenes del poder.  España a fines de la edad media (Valladolid, 1988).

3. L. Suárez, "Alvaro de Luna," Diccionario de historia de España, 2 vols., 2d ed. (Madrid, 1968), 2:816-19.  The Mendozas settled on the border between Cuenca and Guadalajara; their domain, the Infantado del Marquesado, was as large as an average-sized province in Spain today  (see H. Nader, The Mendoza Family in the Spanish Renaissance, 1350 to 1550 [New Brunswick, NJ, 1979]).

4. J. Torres Fontes, "La conquista del Marquesado de Villena en el reinado de los Reyes Católicos," Hispania 13 (1953): 37-151.  The Cabrera family (marquises of Moya) rose to prominence by siding with the crown during the civil wars.  For a laudatory account of the family, see F. Pinel y Monroy, Retrato del bven vassallo...(1677).  The chronicler Mosén Diego de Valera, the jurist Díaz de Montalvo, and the physician Cherino were all from the cities of Cuenca or Huete.

5. C. Hermann, "Les revenues des évêchés espagnoles et les pensions sur mitres sous le patronage royal (1520-1835)," Histoire, Economie et Société 4 (1985): 44.

6. D. Reher, Town and Country in Pre-Industrial Spain, 20 and chap. 2 generally.  Reher estimates that the city's total population in 1561 was 14,644 inhabitants.

7. N. Salomon, La vida rural castellana en tiempos de Felipe II, 40.

8. Reher, Town and Country in Pre-Industrial Spain, chap. 2; M.A. Troitiño Vinuesa, Cuenca.   On the presses, see F. Caballero, La imprenta en Cuenca (Cuenca, 1869).  The loss of population in the diocese is estimated by comparing the 1654 episcopal visitation records with the returns from the 1591 census (see Chapter 6 and the Epilogue).  The trajectory followed by Cuenca is very similar to the history of the other towns in central Castile (Ciudad Real, Toledo, Segovia and Avila).

9. Iradiel Murugarren, Evolución de la industria textil castellana, 61.

10. RAH, Salazar y Castro, A-69, fol. 255v, Juan Pedro de Verdesoto to Don Pedro de Acuña, 15 Feb. 1571:  "Not one grain of wheat can be found for sale in the city or countryside, and if someone should find some secretly, they say it goes for over fourteen or fifteen reales [a fanega]."

11. This occurred when Bishop Fresneda invited Philip II to Cuenca (AMC, leg. 837, fols. 123r-v, letters dated 3 Feb. 1564).

12. RAH, Salazar y Castro, A-69, fols. 253, 257-58.

13. R. Sanchiz Catalán, Noticia del culto tributado a San Julián, lists all the occasions for which the city organized processions with Julián's body.

14. ADC, Inq., L-240, fol. 198r-v.

15. B. Porreño, Mapa del obispado de Cuenca, BNM, ms. 12961.7 (1622).

16. Y. Baer, Historia de los judios en la España cristiana, I: 155, 163, 291, 384.  On the causes of the 1391 pogrom and the relationship between the social tensions of the period and anti-converso sentiment, see P. Wolff, "The 1391 Pogrom in Spainî; and A. MacKay, "Popular Movements and Pogroms in Fifteenth-century Castile."  The diocese had few mudéjares (Muslims living under Christian jurisdiction), who knew little about their ancestral religion and were comparatively well-assimilated: in fact, before 1570, there was no "morisco problem" in Cuenca (M. García-Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, 8-10).

17. D. Pérez Ramírez,  Catálogo, 28-30.  In 1525, the notary Hernando de Huesca was accused of saying, "all the flower of Castile is descended from Jews.  If you don't believe it, look at Cuenca, where all the notaries and city councillors are converts...and the Old Christians were jealous of them because they were worth more, got along better, and had a lot."

18. A.A. Sicroff, Los estatutos de limpieza de sangre.

19. See L.G.A. Getino, ed., Vida y obras de fr. Lope de Barrientos (Salamanca, 1927); and J.B. Avalle-Arce, Temas hispánicos medievales.  Literatura e historia (Madrid, 1974).

20. ACC, ìEstatutos de la Santa Iglesia de Cuenca,î fol. 54 (1399).  Cabeza de Vaca accused his clergy of not knowing the Fourteen Articles of Faith, the Sacraments of the Holy Church, the Ten Commandments, the Seven Cardinal Virtues, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Acts of Mercy.

21. See Appendix 2.

22. M. López, Memorias históricos de Cuenca y su Obispado, I: 95-96; Pinel y Monroy, Retrato del bven vassallo..., 17, 37; and Tarsicio de Azcona, Elección y reforma del episcopado español ...,43.

23. M. T. de la  Peña Marazuela, Inventario del Archivo de los duques de Frías, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1955-67), 2, no. 326, (2 May 1469).

24. Mártir Rizo, Historia de...Cuenca, 97; Tarsicio de Azcona, Elección y reforma del episcopado español..., 81.

25. Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 455; DHEE, I: 557-59.

26. Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 438-39.  The fight over Burgos's provision was one of the major steps in the Catholic Monarchs' campaign for control over the Spanish church.  The Santa Hermandad was a rural police force.

27. DHEE I:295.  Burgos, who was once Isabella's confessor, was nephew of the famous converso bishop of Burgos, Pablo de Santa María.

28. BL, IB 53403, Burgos, CS (1484), fol. 1r.

29. The orders concerning catechizing were the same as ordered by Bishop Juan Cabeza de Vaca in 1398.  The catechism was to be displayed on a wooden board at the front of the church and read aloud so everyone would learn it (ibid., fol. 1v).  Other measures were the establishment of a village school, offers of indulgences, and suggestions as to how a poor family could send its girls to mass (fols. 2r, 4r, and 12r). See also below, Chapter 4.

30. Ibid., fols. 3v, 12r, 3r, 7r, 6v.

31. At Palencia, Burgos's "labor was that of a great ecclesiastical reformer, recalling the figures of Deza and Cisneros"  (DHEE, I:295).

32. J. García Oro, Cisneros y la reforma del clero español..., 134.  Before arriving in Cuenca, Fonseca was bishop of Avila, where he won a reputation for nepotism (J. Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa, 29).

33. ADC, P-848, fols. 1r, 10r-19v.  The practice of maintaining baptismal registers was introduced to Spain as early as 1474 (see V. Pérez Moreda, La crisis de mortalidad en la España interior, 27).

34. ACC, Sec., Cartas de Reyes al Cabildo, 23 Jan. 1501 (Ecija) and 6 Aug. 1508 (Valladolid); Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 469-70, 474.

35. On Avila, see Bilinkoff, The Avila of Sain Teresa, chap. 2.  Local histories record that the Franciscan house became observant in 1500 and that the female conceptionistas founded a house in the city in 1502.  The redemptionist orders, both of which had convents in the town, did not undergo any reforms at this time (García Oro, Cisneros y la reforma del clero español, 162-63).

36. AMC, leg. 865, exp. 21.  Nowhere did the city fathers express concern that the diocese's spiritual administration may have been impaired by the bishop's absence.  Forty years later, their attitude would be considerably different (see Chapter 2).

37. See Appendix 2 for a list of religious foundations .  The many new foundations, of course, are a visible sign of the increased wealth of the region and prominence of its nobility.

38. See the description of Belmonte the J. Zarco Cuevas, ed.,  Relaciones de pueblos del Obispado de Cuenca, 178-85.  A later marquis, Diego López Pacheco, employed the alumbrado Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, the future Protestant, Juan de Valdés, and a "certain Marquina," as pages at his palace in Escalona (Toledo)(M. Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 182, n. 30).  Marquina was Pedro de Marquina, later canon in Cuenca and supporter of the Jesuits (see Chapter 3).

39. Zarco Cuevas, Relaciones de pueblos del obispado de Cuenca, 572-74.

40. Ibid., 183: "In this shrine there are many crutches, some ropes from captives [rescued from Islam], and wax things that are a testimonial to the great devotion that is had with her."

41. See W.A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain, 151-87, for discussions of Rabeís and Francisca la Brava's visions in nearby Quintanar de la Orden.

42. Pérez Ramírez, Catálogo, 15-23.

43. For an account of the founding of the Inquisition, see J. Pérez Villanueva and B. Escandell Bonet, eds., Historia de la Inquisición, 281-97.

44. Pérez Ramírez, Catálogo, 40.  Technically speaking, the religious court could not condemn an individual to death.  If convicted of heresy, a capital offense in Spanish criminal law, the individual was handed over to civil authorities for execution.

45. Ibid., 31-33.

46. Recently there has been a shift away from seeing the conversos as an embattled Jewish minority struggling to preserve its faith (see A. MacKay, "The Hispanic-Converso Predicament"; J. Edwards, "Los conversos de Córdoba en el siglo XVî; and S. Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, chap. 5, "The Converted Jews: From Persecution to Assimilation").

47. ADC, Inq., leg. 62, exp. 899.  Conspicuously absent from González's description of his faith was any mention of Jesus Christ!

48. González remembered the Hebrew words correctly but mixed up their order, saying "S[h]ama adonay ysrrael elo[h]ym," instead of "Shema Israel adonai elohim."

49. P. Ciruelo, Reprouación de las supersticiones y hechizerías (1530), 81-83.  At no point in the proceedings did anyone suggest González's spell was the devil's work.  As late as 1716, a variation of González's cure for hemorrhoids (without prayers) was still being used in Spain (see S. Muñoz Calvo, Inquisición y Ciencia en la España moderna [Madrid, 1977], 134, 269).

50. Among others, the bishop of Cuenca, Lope de Barrientos, wrote several treatises on the occult (see M. Menéndez Pidal, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, I: 609-31).

51. ADC, Inq. leg. 30, exp. 530.  Alvárez explained to Juana Díaz how one was supposed to get a salamander from the river, look for the cross under its wings, and do certain things with it.  Alvárez also promised to give Díaz's daughter a talisman that was guaranteed to make her boyfriend marry her.  The talisman was later found to be the "psalm of malediction" (i.e., Deus laudem meam, Psalm 109).  Ciruelo noted in 1530 that this psalm was often said by people so that God would take vengeance on their enemies (Reprouación de las supersticiones y hechizerías, 129); it was also used in inquisitorial anathemas (M. Jiménez, Introducción a la Inquisición española, 535).

52. The philter included pitch, resin, rat droppings, and clippings of the friar's hair.  This and more of Alvárez's spells may be found in S. Cirac Estopañán, Los procesos de hechicerías en la Inquisición de Castilla la Mancha, 107, 112, 155, 158; or more recently, H. Cordente Martínez, Brujería y hechicería en el obispado de Cuenca (Cuenca, 1990). Neither author does more than extract the spells found in trials.  A first step towards understanding Spanish love magic is M.H. Sánchez Ortega, "Sorcery and Eroticism in Love Magic.î

53. See the chart of the Cuenca tribunal's activity in R. Carrasco, "Morisques anciens et nouveaux morisques..."   Until 1496 over 90 percent of the tribunal's cases involved Judaizers; after 1506, there is a sharp decline, and by 1521-26 fewer than 40 percent of trials were for Judaizing.  After the Comunero Revolt, the tribunal resumed its traditional role until mid-century, when the policies of the Counter Reformation took effect (21 [1985]: 198).

54. Cirac Estopañán, Los procesos de hechicerías en la Inquisición de Castilla la Nueva, 196-99.

55. La Lozana was the prostitute protagonist of Francisco Delicado's early novel, Retrato de la Loçana andaluza (1528).

56. ADC, Inq., leg. 75., exp. 1096.  In Soria and Valencia at this time, the Inquisition's cases of sorcery dealt almost entirely with women, and all involved love magic.  Some of the women were also the mistresses of priests.  As in Cuenca, witchcraft per se does not seem to have been an issue in the trials.  One wonders if central Castile, like Friuli, Italy, was later introduced to the idea by overzealous judges (on Soria, see J. Edwards, "Religious faith and doubt in late medieval Spain,î 17-18; on Valencia, Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia; and on Friuli, C. Ginzburg, The Night Battles).

57. Pascuala's choice of liver does not seem coincidental.  In the Galenic system of humors, it was believed that the liver manufactured blood, from which in turn originated sexual desire and sperm (see D. Jacquart and C. Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans. Matthew Adamson [Cambridge, 1988], 33-43, 82-83).

58. M. O'Neil, "Magical Healing, Love Magic and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-Century Modena," in S. Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe, 88-114; G. Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros.  Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York and Oxford, 1985), 35-36.

59. ADC, Inq., leg. 56, exp. 824 (Belmonte 1515) and leg. 76, exp. 1103 (Alarcón 1519).

60. Julián was the second bishop of Cuenca and had died in the odor of sanctity in 1208 (see S. Nalle, "A Saint for All Seasons").

61. Calatayud's exploitation of El Provencio was so thorough that J.I. Gutiérrez Nieto calls it a textbook case (Las comunidades como movimiento antiseñorial, 204-05).

62. Rabies was not understood as a disease.  In La Mancha, Saint Quiteria generally was supposed to be effective in cases of rabies, as was Nuestra Señora de Monsalud in Córcoles (La Alcarria).

63. ADC, Inq., leg. 59, exps. 869 and 896-B.  Both Ynés andSánchez were penanced.  An older woman, Juana de Agreda, also testified how Sánchez had tried to seduce her after exorcising her demons, but she successfully had resisted him and his threats.

64. J. Edwards, "Elijah and the Inquisition."

65. Perhaps the most famous visionary was Sor Juana de la Cruz, whose sermons have been analyzed by R. E. Surtz, The Guitar of God:  Gender, Power and Authority in the Visionary World of Mother Juana de la Cruz (Philadelphia, 1990).  Another visionary, the beata de Piedrahita, predicted that Ferdinand the Catholic would not die before he had conquered Jerusalem, a prophecy that dovetailed with Cardinal Cisneros' plans to carry the Reconquest to North Africa (J. Bilinkoff, "A Spanish Prophetess and Her Patrons:  The Case of María de Santo Domingo,î Sixteenth Century Journal 23 [1992]:21-34).

66. R. Alba, Acerca de algunas particularidades de las Comunidades de Castilla....

67. S. Haliczer, The Comuneros of Castile, 42-43, 70-71, 80-84, 102, 106-7.

68. Gutiérrez Nieto, Las comunidades como movimiento anti-señorial, 198-209.

69. Ibid., 201, 203.  In the marquisate of Moya, ninety people were condemned to death, and eight hundred suffered confiscation of half of their property.  Women figured among those punished as well.

70. F.G. Olmedo, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, 107.

71. F. Martín Hernández, La formación clerical en los colegios universitarios españoles, 15.  Ramírez also founded a college himself, the Colegio Mayor de Santiago (commonly called "de Cuenca") at Salamanca.

72. BNM, Raros, ms. 13072, "Compulsa de instrumentos...", pt. 2, fol. 168v.  In Malaga, Ramírez built an episcopal palace and a costal watch tower, held a synod in 1515, and wrote a set of synodal constitutions.

73. Olmedo, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa,  116.  Before his death in 1517, Cardinal Cisneros helped Ramírez win his appointment to Cuenca.

74. Ibid., 149.  Ramírez had been president of the Real Chancillería de Valladolid for several years prior to the revolt of 1520 (see J. Pérez, La revolución de las Comunidades de Castilla [1520-1521] [Madrid, 1985], 180, n. 88; 495).

75. Olmedo, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa,  152.  Charles's general command to the bishops of Spain was sent to the city council of Cuenca and was received there in 1523 (AMC, leg. 6, exp. 119).

76. F. G.  Olmedo writes that "after [his exile] he dedicated himself body and soul to his pastoral mission and traded the title 'the good,' which had been given to him in Malaga, for that of 'the saintly bishop,' which was given to him in the diocese of Cuenca" (Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, 159).  Olmedo perhaps is too enthusiastic, but Ramírez's contemporaries in Cuenca did in fact call him "the good."

77. BNM, ms. 13072, "Compulsa de instrumentos...," pt. 2, fol. 169r.

78. On Ramírezís  support of the cult of San Julián, see R. Sánchiz Catalán, Noticia del culto tributado a San Julián; and D. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS (1531), fol. 48v. On church building and vestments, see Olmedo, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, 161; and Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fol. 56r. Ramírez established a charity for the cathedral, which took hold; in contemporary testaments one finds individuals from the city and diocese willing small sums for the construction of Santa María de Cuenca.   On the synod, see BNM, ms. 13071, "Compulsa de instrumentos...," pt. 1, fol. 77v.

79. AMC, leg. 865, exp. 7 (1527).  A corregidor was a royal official and judge in charge of a city.

80. AMC, leg. 1493, no. 38.

81. ACC, Sec., Cartas de Roma, leg. 49, exp. 2 (24 Apr. 1535).  Castillo summed up the accusation in Rome, apparently brought by Ramírez, as follows: "Because the bishop wanted to correct the excesses and crimes of that church and chapter, they have wanted to kill him.  To prove this, they [papal officials] showed a letter from the bishop and another from someone in the cathedral that says 'Although they arrested so-and-so and so-and-so and accuse many of wanting to kill the bishop, I didn't have anything to do with it.'"

82. See B. de Fresneda, CS (1571).

83. J. Bossy, "The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe," 52-53.

84. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fols. 19r-v.

85. Ibid., fol. 58r.  Ramírez's reforms had been suggested earlier for Cordova by its humanist bishop, Alonso Manrique, in the Constituciones sinodales del obispado de Cordoua (Seville, 1521), chap. 3, title. vi.

86. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fol. 2v. See Chapter 4 for more about catechizing.

87. Ibid., fol. 11v.  The Archdiocese of Toledo did the same in 1536 (Constituciones sinodales del Arzobispado de Toledo [Alcalá de Henares, 1536]).

88. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fols. 17r-v; fol. 8v.  The ordinary was given jurisdiction over all the churches in the diocese that were not exempted by special privilege, and even those which were exempt owed him canonical obedience.

89. Ibid., fols. 59v-64r.  B. Díaz de Luco's influential Instructión de perlados, published in 1530, came with an instrucción...para visitadores.  The instructions could be followed by the inspector point by point during his visitations.  The idea was taken up thirty years later by Archbishop Carranza (see J. I. Tellechea Idigoras, "El formulario de visita pastoral de Bartolomé Carranza, arzobispo de Toledo," Anthologica Annua 4 [1956]: 385-432).

90. See also Chapter 2.

91. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fols. 12v, 15r, 37v.

92. Ibid., fols. 12v-14v.  The punishment for singing, dancing, or going to bullfights was set at ten reals (a worker's daily wage in New Castile in 1551 was one real [E. J. Hamilton, El tesoro americano y la revolución de los precios en España,. 415]).  Blaspheming brought a stiffer penalty: ten reals and imprisonment; and worst of all was gaming, fined at one gold florin.

93. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fols. 4v-5v, 38r.

94. Some indulgence sellers would be charged with similar abuses in the Inquisition several years later (see Chapter 4).

95. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fols. 3r, 55r-v, 16v, 39r, 17r.

96. Reher's demographic study of Cuenca would appear to confirm the impact of Counter Reformation morality (Town and Country in Pre-Industrial Spain,  99-102).  Between 1550-1650 and 1650-1700, premarital conceptions fell from 10.2 percent to an all-time low of 5.9 percent;  after 1700, pre-marital conceptions began to rise, reaching a high of 22.9 percent by the end of the eighteenth century.  Unfortunately, Reher has no data for prior to 1550.

97. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fols. 51v-53v.

98. One popular site for all-night vigils was the Ermita de Val, in the district of Huete, which, according to its hermit, was frequented year-round.  In 1531, the ermitaño asked the city of Cuenca to make a gift of firewood to the shrine so that when people from Cuenca came to spend the night, they would be able to cook out and keep warm (AMC, leg. 72, exp. 13).

99. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fols. 41r, 46r, 48r, 49r.

100. For more on superstitious masses, see Chapter 6.

101. Ramírez de Villaescusa, CS, fols. 54r,  40r.  The fine for sorcerers or those who resorted to them was ten ducats.  Anyone caught using the holy oils or altar cloth faced a fine of twenty gold florins, and any priest who handed them over would be punished with three years' incarceration and loss of his benefice.  If he had no benefice, then his possessions would be confiscated.

102. For the proof of these statements, see Chapters 3 and 4.

103. Some studies that treat the practices mentioned in this chapter not as isolated superstitions (as Cirac does) but as coherent religious systems are  K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic; R. Muchembled, "Sorcellerie, culture populaire et christianisme au XVIe siècle principalemente en Flandre et en Artois," Annales: ESC 28 (1973): 264-284; and C. Ginzburg, The Night Battles.