The Virgin, the Witch, and the Widow

This chapter identifies the challenges to the seroras' existence. When communities vied to define or limit their responsibilities and curb the seroras' influence, they often framed their complaints in gendered terms, expressing uneasiness with a vocation that tested the limits of power afforded to women. The simplest of these attacks expressed basic fears about allowing women such a degree of autonomy, while the more complex ones mixed fantasy with reality, drawing liberally from what actually went on in the seroría as well as what was only rumored. The chapter then studies three of the most common types of gendered fears surrounding the seroría, one of which is witchcraft. The flexibility and freedom of the seroría raised questions regarding what women were doing in the seroría, as well as the suspicion that they could be using the seroría for nefarious sexual purposes.

Local Religion and Tridentine Reform in the Early Modern Basque Country

This chapter provides a brief synopsis of the presence of Navarrese delegates at the Council of Trent, then moves on to an overview of the Diocese of Pamplona's most important Tridentine era synod meeting and a representative sampling of reform episodes as they played out on the ground. To understand the inconsistencies in enforcement concerning the seroras, reforms concerning the seroras must be left in their original context. Mirroring the diocese's attention to clerical misbehavior, the chapter thus approaches reform of the seroras through the lens of male reform, and especially pastoral residency. The diocese's concentration on professionalizing the lower clergy and directing lay devotion into appropriate channels reveals much about the diocese's unstated policy against interfering with the seroras: that is, the diocese identified reforming the lower clergy as the key to a successful reform program, and everything else was secondary. Other aspects of local religious life that did not mesh with official Tridentine reform ideals were allowed to slide to make way for more urgent reforms. In this context, the diocese judged that licensing the seroras was the easiest way to control the vocation, allowing ecclesiastical authorities to turn their eye to more pressing matters such as wandering abbots, violent hermits, and “repulsive” parish priests.