Week Six: The Spanish Inquisition and the Basque Witch Hunt

Readings

Lu Ann Homza, “When Witches Litigate: New Sources from early modern Navarre”, Journal of Modern History 91.2 (June 2019): 245-275.

Lu Ann Homza, “An expert lawyer and reluctant demonologist: Alonso de Salazar Frías, Spanish Inquisitor”, in The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil ed. by Jan Machielsen (Routledge, 2020): 299-312.

Gustave Henningsen ed. “The Context” from The Salazar Documents: Inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías and Others on the Basque Witch Persecution (Leiden: Brill, 2004): 3-81.  

All readings are available here (password is posted on Blackboard):

Readings (Password Protected)

Preparation for class

For this class, we will be using the Academic Reading Circles framework outlined here: 

Academic Reading Circles

As we are reading articles, you will use the framework for each article. 

Some hints:

  • All of these are written by the same author and rely on many of the same primary and secondary sources.
  • While they have different arguments, perhaps think about how they are connected together.
  • The third article is a chapter of Homza’s book so perhaps think about how it might be related to a broader sources. 

Chatboard Group Discussion

We’ll start our discussion of this week’s readings on the chatboard. Below is a list of chatboard discussion leaders for this week. If you are signed up, please post 1-2 questions in your group’s channel. These questions can ask about your group’s thoughts regarding the whole book or specific aspects of it, relate to sources or specific arguments, highlight themes… it is up to you! Just make sure they are open ended (not questions that would elicit a yes/no answer) as the idea is to get your group chatting with one another.

Questions should be posted by Monday evening. For the rest of the group members, please respond before class on Thursday.