Note 501 — Chapter IX · WITCHCRAFT.

A narrative, not an official report, of this auto was printed in Logroño in 1611, a copy of which is in the Bibl. nacional, D, 118, p. 271. It was reprinted in Cádiz in 1812 and again in Madrid, in 1820, with notes by Moratin el hijo under the pseudonym of the Bachiller Gines de Posadilla (Menéndez y Pelayo, III, 281). There is another abstract of the auto, compiled from various relations by Pedro of Valencia, in the MSS. of the Bodleian Library, Arch Seld. A, Subt. 10.

Pierre de Lancre of Bordeaux, in his contemporary book on witchcraft, assumes that the outbreak in Navarre was caused by the flight of witches from the Pays de Labour, which he and his colleague had purified with merciless severity. He comments on the difference shown, in the auto of Logroño, between inquisitorial practice in Spain, where the offence was treated as spiritual and those who confessed and professed repentance were admitted to reconciliation, and that of France where it was a crime and those who confessed were burnt by the secular authorities.—Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance des mauvais Angels et Demons, pp. 391, 561-2 (Paris, 1613).