A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4Lea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- Spain
When the Roman domination in Spain was overthrown by the Wisigoths, the
Barbarians brought with them their ancestral superstitions, to be
superadded to the ancient Ligurian beliefs and the more recent
Christianized paganism. The more current objectionable practices are
indicated by the repressive laws of successive Wisigothic monarchs, and
it illustrates the imperishable nature of superstitions that under their
generalizations can be classed most of the devices that have endured the
incessant warfare of the Church and the legislator for a thousand years.
The Wisigothic ordinances were carried, with little change, into the
Fuero Juzgo, or Romance version of the code, but their moderation was
displeasing to Ramiro I, who, in 943, prescribed burning for magicians
and sorcerers and is said to have inflicted the penalty in numerous
instances.[380] It is not probable that this severity was permanent for,
as a rule, medieval legislation was singularly lenient to these
offences, although, about the middle of the thirteenth century, Jacobo
de las Leyes, in a work addressed to Alfonso X, classes among the worst
offenders those who slay men by enchantment.[381]
Alfonso himself, in the Partidas, treated magic and divination as arts
not involving heresy, to be rewarded or punished as they were used for
good or for evil.[382] In no land were they more widely developed or
more firmly implanted in popular belief, for Spain not only preserved
the older errors of Wisigothic times but had superadded those brought by
the Moors and had acquired others from the large Jewish population. The
fatalism of Islam was a fruitful source of devices for winning
foreknowledge. The astrologer and the diviner, so far from being objects
of persecution, were held in high honor among the Moors, and their arts
were publicly taught as essential to the general welfare. In the great
school of Córdova there were two masters who taught astrology, three of
necromancy, pyromancy and geomancy, and one of the _ars notoria_. Seven
thousand seven hundred Arabic writers are enumerated on the
interpretation of dreams, and as many on goetic magic, while the use of
amulets as preservatives from evil was universal.[383] Spain was the
classic land of magic whither, during the middle ages, resorted for
instruction from all Europe those who sought knowledge of its mysteries,
and the works on the occult arts, which were circulated everywhere, bore
for the most part, whether truly or falsely, the names of Arabic
authors.
[Sidenote: _MEDIEVAL TOLERATION_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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