María de Zozaya

María de Zozaya y Arramendi (sometimes spelled Zozoya) was prosecuted for being a witch in 1609, during the Basque witch trials that were part of the Spanish Inquisition.^[1]

María de Zozaya y Arramendi
Born	c. 1529 Oyeregui, Navarra, Spain
Died	c. 1609
Nationality	Spanish
Occupation	Spinster
Criminal charges	Witchcraft

María de Zozaya was a spinster from Oyeregui, in the kingdom of Navarra, Spain.^[2] She was a resident of the town Renteria, in the province of Guipuzcoa, and purportedly witch of the same town’s aquelarre.^[2] In 1609, the 79-year-old María de Zozaya was handed over to the Spanish Inquisition for being a witch.^[1] She was tried along with a group of women that she was said to have led.^[3] Her confession included praise for sexual pleasure.^[4] She also declared that an apparition replaced her in her bed when she went to the Sabbath.^[5] It is said that a young priest in the same town went out hunting all day without catching any hares.^[1] He blamed María de Zozaya, who reportedly confessed to the inquisitors that after the priest had passed her house she turned herself into a hare and ran ahead of him and his hounds the whole day long, thus making them exhausted.^[1] She said this happened eight times during 1609.^[1] She died in prison nine months after she was turned in, when she was 80 years old.^[1] After her death, her bones were burned as part of a public auto de fe.^[2]

References

1. Greer, Germaine (1992). The change : women, aging, and the menopause (Reprinted. ed.). New York: Knopf. p. 355. ISBN 0394582691.
2. Henningsen, Gustav, ed. (2004). The Salazar documents Insquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías and others on the Basque witch persecution. Leiden: Brill. p. 136. ISBN 9781429426879.
3. Corben, Herbert C. (1991). The struggle to understand : a history of human wonder & discovery. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. p. 218. ISBN 0879756837.
4. Godly zeal and furious rage : The Witch in Early Modern Europe. London: Routledge. 23 May 2012. ISBN 9780203819029.
5. Alan C. Kors; Edward Peters, eds. (1972). Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-1700; a documentary history. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 409. ISBN 9780812276459.