CHAPTER 21 Healing with Demons? Preternatural Philosophy and Superstitious Cures in Spanish Inquisitorial Courts

Bradley J. Mollmann

One of the more curious postulations of scholastic demonology was that demons not only tormented the body and the soul but that they could also be the bearers of good health and physical relief.

Trials for superstitious healing rested upon the idea of the implicit demonic pact, which created a mechanism for describing how women and men—often without their own knowledge—formed a relationship with demons and uti­lized demonic agency in order to acquire their desires. As I explore below, the Inquisition looked to natural philosophy to provide the criteria for determin­ing the existence of such a pact. Theologians posited that if cures surpassed the bounds of nature they implied demonic causality, conferring moral respon­sibility and, in turn, juridical culpability. Inquisition trial records, however, reveal the ambiguities that arose when theory was put into practice. During trials, theological imperatives were adapted and appropriated differently by prosecutors, judges, witnesses, and healers. As an institution with a large (early) modern bureaucracy, the Inquisition produced an incredible amount of documentation.

© KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2017 | DOI 10.1163/9789004338548_022 I draw upon these records with particular attention to two brief case studies, emphasizing the intellectual issues at stake.

These trials mark the culmination of a long intellectual and juridical devel­opment that made them possible. The idea of an implicit demonic pact was first developed by Augustine and the patristic writers, although it was the late-medieval and early modern scholastics who developed the concept and afforded it sufficient depth, sophistication, and structure to be used consis­tently in courts of law.^[1162] Throughout Europe,judges,jurists, and magistrates synthesized scholastic demonology into law codes that were then put into use in both civil and religious tribunals. Although similar accusations were pur­sued in many places it was arguably the inquisitions of Southern Europe that most systematically arrested and tried individuals for implicit demonic pacts. From their earliest iterations in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Catholic inquisitorial courts counted demonic pacts as a form of heresy within their judicial purview, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the modern inquisitions made them one of their principal concerns in the vast networks of courts that spanned the Spanish and Portuguese empires and much of Italy.

For inquisitors, “superstition” was a broad accusation that encompassed a wide range of beliefs and practices in which a person might engage with a demon. I focus specifically on healers in order to limit my study to a manage­able size and also to highlight the unique set of problems that arose when the human body became a “body of evidence” for the discernment of demonic activity.^[1163] Nevertheless, it is important to note that healers never comprised more than a fraction of the individuals tried for superstition.

Healers who were accused of superstition were themselves a diverse group. They drew upon multiple traditions and displayed various levels of profession­alism. Maria Lopez, for instance, arrested in 1637 and again in 1650, utilized a diverse arsenal of practices to combat disease, including herbs, incense, prayers, and rituals. Another healer named Ambrosio Montes, arrested in 1648, used primarily religious means such as blessings and the sign of the cross. Although singled out for a very specific crime—a demonic pact—the healers arrested by the Inquisition represent a wide cross-section of early modern Spain’s plural­istic world of vernacular medical practitioners.^[1164] Inquisition records indicate that these individuals freely, and often creatively, deployed cures that could be described as natural, religious, or magical, although as I argue below, these were unstable designations that were vigorously contested at every turn.

Scholastic theology presented inquisitors with a vocabulary and a schema for imposing order on the chaos of early modern healing.

Anything that happens in the world proceeds from a cause, or causes, and there are three types of causes and there can be no more: an event can be brought about by natural causes, or it can proceed from God, miracu­lously working over and above the normal course of nature, or it can pro­ceed from good or evil angels working through natural causes.^[1165]

Theoretically, a cure could proceed from any of the three ontological catego­ries outlined by Ciruelo, but while miraculous cures were common in the eyes of ordinary Spaniards, theologians were adamant that true miracles, “working over and above the normal course of nature,” were rare events. This partition­ing of the miraculous from the lower orders of nature had crystalized during the thirteenth-century scholastic synthesis of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Christian theology, and it was standard orthodoxy by the sixteenth cen­tury, as indicated by Martin de Castanega’s 1529 anti-superstition work:

The Catholic doctors make it clear that we should never call something a miracle which could be produced naturally (although by means hidden to us); because a miracle is a work that nature does not have the virtue to produce, and we should not designate something a miracle unless the lack of natural explanation makes it necessary.^[1166]

After the Reformation, this intellectual hesitancy to designate a cure as miracu­lous became even more marked.

At the core of the demonologists' intellectual project was an attempt to draw explicit links between demons and the natural world. For Ciruelo, it was a given that demons were active in the world and that they produced effects that he described as “marvelous.” The category of the marvelous (mirabilia) was rooted in scholastic philosophy, and it was traditionally used to describe phenomena that were inexplicable, unusual, and the cause of amazement.^[1168] Ciruelo's examples of marvelous phenomena included animals speaking human languages, unlettered men inexplicably speaking Latin, and weak women who summoned the strength to throw a bull to the ground. Such marvels, he explained, were produced neither by the stars, the elements, nor human artifice. Following the dictates of Aristotle, he said, it was incumbent upon the wise philosopher to look for causes, and if there was no discernible cause to be found in physical nature, there was reason to believe that evil spir­its were to blame. Demonic activity, however, came with limits. As theologians made clear, demons were created beings that could only work through nature and not over and above it as God did with miracles. Their abilities were the result of endless cunning and the lack of restraint that accompanied imma­teriality, but they could make no fundamental changes to nature. Healing demons, for instance, cured by delivering specialized knowledge, manipulat­ing the humors, or as Ciruelo suggested, “secretly bringing medicines that are unknown to men.”^[1169] Metaphysically speaking, such activities were not consid­ered supernatural but instead preternatural—working outside or beyond the ordinary course of nature.

Following Ciruelo, many Spanish thinkers displayed a heightened aware­ness that demons were active in the world, but underlying the consensus was a continual awareness that the misattribution of demonic agency could have adverse intellectual and legal consequences. In his 1540 lecture at the University of Salamanca, Professor Francisco Vitoria warned against “the ignorant and those of little subtlety who condemn any rare act as a marvel attributable to demonic power.”^[1170] As Vitoria and his colleagues knew, the world contained many preternatural processes that were not necessarily the result of underly­ing demonic forces. The prototypical example was magnetism, which Vitoria presented as an unexplainable force that was not a likely indicator of demonic activity. Likewise he pointed to astral forces, which were widely acknowledged to cause real effects although they were poorly understood and seemed hidden from human understanding. Vitoria also admitted that healers might simply employ herbs that had marvelous but entirely natural effects, and he noted, citing the ancient Roman author Pliny, that many powerful herbal remedies were once considered magical before they came to be recognized as legitimate in the eyes of academic medicine.

Another notion that disquieted Vitoria was the resemblance between demonic and divine cures. Despite the theological insistence that miracles were rare, scriptural evidence supported the idea that God occasionally sent servants with divine healing powers. As Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, healing was one of the seven charismatic graces (together with evangelism, prophecy, eloquence, wisdom, contentment, and the discernment of spirits).^[1171] Scholastic thought characterized it as a gratia gratis data non gra­tum faciens—grace that did not affect the salvation of the receiver, but was freely granted in order to edify the believers who witnessed it.11 Theologically, such cures were considered miracles, although they were miracles of a lower degree. According to Thomas Aquinas, miracles could be described as belong­ing to three classes depending on whether they functioned above nature, against nature, or outside nature?² The resurrection of a dead person exem­plified a miraculum supra naturam, levitation, a miraculum contra naturam, and a sudden unexpected healing, a miraculum prater naturam.1³ Since both demonic and miraculous healing, then, could be considered preternatural— outside the ordinary course of nature—discernment between the two was a difficult endeavor.

Amidst so many possibilities, Vitoria appears somewhat exasperated when his discussion turns to interpreting the cures performed by folk healers called saludadores^{[1172] [1173] who claimed the ability to cure rabies through divine grace, writing that “I do not see clearly what to think or say about them.’45 For these healers, nearly all explanatory mechanisms were on the table. He thought that many were simply imposters whose cures had no effect whatsoever, but he also acknowledged that some of them truly possessed healing powers. The origin of these powers, however, was difficult to distinguish. He thought that demonic agency was the most likely explanation, but admitted that demons' benevo­lent counterparts—angels—would work though the same mechanisms. There was also the possibility that God, working through grace, might deliver health. Earlier writers such as Ciruelo had suggested that differences could be drawn along moral grounds—saludadores, in his opinion, were vice-ridden drunks who did not deserve the grace that God would have reserved for simple and good men. Vitoria, in contrast, argued that the moral state of an individual had no bearing on their ability to receive divine grace as shown in the biblical example of Balaam who received the grace of prophecy despite being a wicked man.[1174] According to Vitoria, then, demonic magic and divine grace could not be differentiated by the effects that they produced nor by the moral state of the practitioner. The only criterion he offered was to examine how a healer conducted himself. Magicians acted independently, frequently, and whenever}

they wanted. Divine healing, in contrast, was rare. It depended upon the inter­vention of angels and the will of God.

How did this complex body of thought influence society? Vitoria was a prominent thinker, but he delivered his lecture, “On Magic” in Latin, and it was only published once, seventeen years later. The aforementioned Castanega wrote in the vernacular, but his treatise was if anything even more obscure. Ciruelo’s work was the only one of the three that was widely published in Spanish. The ideas expressed in these works only gained currency and power though the much larger network of clergy, lawyers, magistrates, sufferers, heal­ers, and witnesses. Trial documents from the Inquisition tribunal of Toledo offer an important glimpse into local intellectual dynamics and the ways in which scholastic natural philosophy was appropriated by and imposed upon ordinary Spaniards. These records show that in Central Castile, many did “think with demons,”^[1175] but not everyone thought with them in the same way.

A typical example of a healer whose cures drew speculation about demonic involvement was Maria Lopezd^[1176] Lopez lived in the small village of Escalona in the outskirts of Toledo, and she developed a reputation for treating neighbors for various ailments. Her cures, as she described them, drew upon a range of traditions, utilizing herbs, powders, incense, and poultices along with prayers and rituals. As part of her services as a midwife, she anointed the mother and child with oil during birth, lit incense, and prayed a salve. For ocular issues, she cut three pieces of rue, dedicated them to the holy trinity, soaked them overnight, and used them the next day to wash the eyes of the sufferer. She also described similar remedies for stomach pains, impotence, menstrual aches, and parasites. When asked where she learned these remedies she said that she had heard a doctor speak about herbs more than twenty years ear­lier and that she had heard the rest from a group of gypsy women, also many years prior.1^[1177] Some patients however, were unhappy with the results of Maria’s ministrations, and several came forward to the parish priest to denounce her. One deponent described how a baby had died within a day of visiting Lopez. Another reported murmurs among villagers that she was a sorceress (hechicera) whose cures were primarily oriented towards undoing spells and healing illnesses caused by the “evil eye.”^[1178]

Too often, the Inquisition is described as a monolithic and all-powerful institution, but a closer look at the full legal dossiers shows that the various individuals participating in superstition trials interpreted the issues differ­ently, depending on their status and their role in the events in question. When the Lopez case reached the Toledo Inquisition, the facts began to be shaped by the categories provided by scholastic thought. As was standard in inquisito­rial procedure, the legal arguments were first teased out and articulated by the prosecuting attorney. In superstition trials, these were always the individuals who most zealously applied demonology to account for cures. In his formal accusation of Lopez, the prosecuting attorney, Don Diego de Alaica, catego­rized her as “a sorceress and superstitious heretic with a demonic pact, having committed and perpetrated many grave offenses with both her words and actions.” He listed each remedy as evidence of diabolical involvement.

Inquisitorial procedure, however, allowed space for dissenting opinions. After the reading of Alaica’s accusation, Lopez had the opportunity to respond, item by item, and she argued that each of her cures had been performed in good faith. Then, in the final stage of the trial, the court appointed Lopez a legal advocate named Juan Diaz who helped her frame her defense. This too is incongruent with traditional notions of Spanish inquisitors as wielders of arbitrary power, and instead indicates that Inquisition tribunals, at times, could be venues of dynamic intellectual debate. The quality of the defense, however, was variable and the provision to provide counsel was not always implemented. The trial transcript shows that Juan Diaz was only addressed as licenciado, indicating that he was trained at a university but, unlike the inquisitors, did not hold an advanced degree that merited the title of Doctor. Nonetheless, Diaz assisted the healer in creating a philosophically sound argu­ment that revolved around the naturalness of her cures. Part of the process was to pose a series of questions to several character witnesses, asking them to confirm that Lopez had only cured with “natural medicine.” This language, classifying cures as either natural or demonic, rings through many Inquisition trials for superstitious healing.^[1179]

Another element of the inquisitorial system that should be highlighted is the intellectual input provided by outside consultants. While it is true that the Inquisition placed a high value upon secrecy, not all deliberations hap­pened behind closed doors or involved inquisitorial personnel alone. In fact, inquisitors regularly collaborated with a larger network of theologians. In particularly difficult cases, prosecutors were to seek theological advice from approved advisors known as calificadores, usually theologically trained cathe­dral canons or high-ranking members of religious orders, who contributed opinions about whether they should proceed to the arrest and questioning of the defendant. Once evidence was gathered, calificadores were sometimes called upon again to assist in sorting out difficult theological issues involved in drafting the official accusation. If the trial reached its final determinative phase, inquisitors were to hold a consulta de fe in which opinions were con­tributed by several parties—first the local chancery, then the ordinary (the bishop or his representative), and finally resident inquisitors with the senior one speaking last.^[1180] These norms were put in place in order to extend the Inquisition’s intellectual network and prevent recklessness by a lone inquisi­tor. Taken together, they provide insight into how theological guidelines were put into practice on a day-to-day basis.

An especially well-documented instance of a healer who was subject to multiple rounds of learned scrutiny in the mid-seventeenth century was Ambrosio Montes, a man who managed to contest the boundaries of the natu­ral and the demonic in a particularly creative fashion. Montes was a peripatetic healer who travelled throughout central Spain, often drawing large crowds to witness his benedictions which he used to cure infirmities ranging from chest pains and tooth aches to scrofula. At first glance, he appears to be similar to the feigned saints who were involved in inquisitorial entanglements throughout the Catholic world.^{[1181] [1182] [1183] His story, however, shows how healers present a unique valence of quandary in the early modern demonic/divine dichotomy. Montes did not lead the life of an aspiring saint. He was adamant that his cures were not miraculous and that he himself possessed no inherent sanctity. Instead, he said that he was merely a channel of divine grace. In this sense he possessed many of the traits of a saludador, although he was not identified as such in the trial record.24}

Montes was born into the nobility but his family had lost their fortune and his parents died at a young age so he was sent to the court in Madrid where he worked as a servant in prominent households. His first experience with healing came in the 1630’s when a friend and fellow servant named Pedro de Castro told Montes that he had scrofula and intended to go to France where he could be cured by the “royal touch” of King Louis XIII.2⁵ Before leaving, how­ever, Castro wanted to seek any help that he could receive locally. Following a pan-European popular tradition, he sought the intervention of a man born as his mother’s seventh consecutive son, a particularly rare occurrence that was thought to endow the individual with special gifts including the ability to heal. As Montes related in his testimony, he then went to his mother who confirmed that he was indeed her seventh son, although most of his brothers had died at a young age. Montes returned to his friend and offered his assistance, and the following Sunday he went to mass, took communion, and then successfully healed Castro’s scrofula by touching him and using the same words that the king of France used: “I touch you, and may God heal you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”^{[1184] [1185]}

Montes' first episode in a long series of judicial entanglements came in 1646 when was stopped by the local priest in the town of Ledesma and then ordered to go to nearby Salamanca to be examined by the inquisitorial authorities?⁷ Montes presented testimonies to the inquisitor that vouched for his abilities to heal scrofula, chest pains, and side pains, but the court ordered him to discon­tinue healing. Montes, however, was able to exploit jurisdictional discrepan­cies. When he returned to Madrid, he obtained an audience an episcopal court run by a sympathetic vicar. The vicar, Alonso de Morales Ballester, conducted an inquiry that included meeting with four local theological consultants, both friars and ordinary priests. This Junta pronounced Montes' healing to truly proceed from grace, and the court issued him a licence to heal those with an “urgent necessity” by touching them and invoking the Holy Trinity so long as he did not ask for a payment. Two years later, however, this decision was over­turned when Montes was brought once again before an ecclesiastical court in Alcala de Henares and subjected to an examination by a panel of experts that included professors of canon law and Thomistic theology from the university. This panel suspected Montes of an implicit demonic pact and recommended that the matter be transferred to the Toledo Inquisition where Montes was prosecuted in his first full trial.

Like the aforementioned Maria Lopez, Montes benefitted from an advocate who assisted him in navigating the complex theological landscape regarding healing and superstition. After meeting with his lawyer, Montes described to the court how his ability to heal derived from gratia gratis data. By deploy­ing this term, Montes garnered legitimacy by forcing the court to consider the possibility that he possessed charismatic grace as it was described in scripture and codified by theologians. In a somewhat unorthodox move, he described it as a “natural grace.” As described above, healing through gratia gratis data was usually categorized as a miracle of the third degree, functioning outside the ordinary bounds of nature (prater naturam). The true origin of preter­natural cures was, however, hidden from human knowledge by definition. By characterizing his cures as simultaneously functioning through nature and grace, Montes and his advocate were not exactly playing by the rules set by scholastic theology, but they recognized that the final verdict would rest upon the discernment of preternatural causes, and they were attempting to avert an interpretation that implicated him in a demonic pact.

Next, the defense called seven character witnesses, including two clergy­men, a fellow servant, two other working class acquaintances, and his former masters Don Mathais de Bayasala and his wife.^{[1186] [1187] All seven indicated that they did not think Montes to have either an implicit or explicit demonic pact. Don Mathais said that he believed this was true because he thought of Montes as a simple and straightforward man, and also added that he had seen Montes' written testimonials that he kept. Others mentioned how Montes performed his healing openly and publicly, indicating that he had nothing to hide. Two witnesses, Sra. Bayasala and a servant named Miguel Malo, affirmed that they believed that the healing derived from Montes' “natural grace,” and Dona Bayasala avowed that he “only used formal words” in his healing ceremonies. As handpicked friends of Montes, the objectivity of these witnesses can cer­tainly be disputed, but their statements contribute to a sense that charismatic healing was considered mundane, and even “natural” among many different types of people in early modern Spain.}

Montes' continued engagement with the Inquisition resulted in an atypi­cally robust set of written opinions by calificadores, and a close reading of these statements reveal the consideration of the well-developed literature that had emerged by the mid-seventeenth century. Most opinions were relatively brief, but one calificador submitted an extended report that expounded upon his intellectual position and cited his sources?⁹ As was standard, he framed the issue within Aquinas' order of causes, and he proceeded cautiously, saying that it was a very difficult matter to know whether occult causes were true, false, demonic, or divine, noting the likelihood of error and deceit when dis­cerning them. His analysis began with a nod to Ciruelo's foundational text and proceeded through a consideration of the multiple strands of inquiry that had developed in the century following its publication. He reflected at length upon the nature of divine cures and the experiential evidence of such cures in the lives of saints. He revisited the Pauline scripture on charismatic grace and Vitoria's opinions concerning the workings of this grace within the scholastic system. He also looked to the pastoral responsibilities towards heal­ers described in Martin de Azpilcueta's confessor's manual and the natural- philosophical problems raised by Royal University of Mexico professor Alonso de la Vera Cruz.^[1188] The author who had the most influence on his thought, how­ever, was Martin del Rio.

Martin del Rio was a Flemish-born Spaniard who wrote the 1599-1600 trea­tise Disquisitiones magicae, a thousand-page tome that went through more than twenty editions and is widely recognized as the most influential work of seventeenth-century demonology. The work represents a pinnacle of the genre, drawing upon an impressive array of ancient, medieval, and early mod­ern textual authorities and offering one of the most thorough expositions of the philosophical and legal problems within demonology. It espoused a rigid application of logic without the caveats and doubts displayed by Vitoria. Del Rio demanded a rationalistic alignment of cause and effect and argued for an expansive role of the demonic. He systematically attempted to dismantle alternate forms of preternatural causation (the power of stars, signs, words, the imagination), and dismissed most forms of divine intervention in order to create a void that could only be filled by demons^[1189] In doing so, he frequently returned to superstitious healing as a heuristic model for differentiating the natural from the preternatural and as a didactic tool for explaining the insidi­ous role of demons.

Specifically, the calificador cited the Del Rio section entitled “Can wounds and diseases be treated simply by touch, sight, voice, breath, kiss, or binding with a linen cloth?”3² Del Rio's goal in this section was to present a reading of preternatural cures, offering a step-by-step explanation of how they surpassed natural causation and should instead be considered demonic or (very occa­sionally) born of divine grace. He was entering a debate that depended upon proper knowledge of medical and natural-philosophical processes, and he argued that his opponents were misreading physical properties:

No matter how much they differ in detail, apologists for superstition have this argument in common: spirits33 trickle from the heart through the arteries and burst out through the sight of the person doing the looking, or the mouth of the person talking, or the pores of the person touching. Then, having been emitted by the more powerful will of the person who is seeing, speaking, or touching, they insinuate themselves into the arteries of the person being seen, listening, or being touched, and from there search out his heart and effectively penetrate it.^{[1190] [1191]}

Del Rio was adamant that such an account was fundamentally flawed, rely­ing too heavily upon unseen natural physical processes. He admitted that both words and sight may have real effects by stirring the humors and might cause joy, fear, or sadness, but if dramatic and instantaneous swings in health occur, he argued, they must be attributed to demons.35

Moving from the theoretical to the practical, Del Rio pointed to “various kinds of cures that occur with astonishing frequency.” Among these were the cures carried out by Spanish soldiers in the Low Countries during the Dutch Wars who reportedly healed atrocious wounds merely by breathing on them, kissing them, or binding them up with linen cloth. He noted that such heal­ing was a pan-European phenomenon, “known in Spain as the ‘art of the Saludadores’; in Italy, as ‘the art of the Gentiles' or ‘of Saint Catherine' or ‘of Saint Paul'; in Belgium, as ‘the art of the sons of Good Friday.'” Regarding the healing soldiers, he supported the condemnation that had recently been issued by the bishop of Ypres, Pierre Simons (in office 1584-1605), arguing that it was wrong to expect miraculous cures directly from God and that these bat­tlefield cures were likely indications of a demonic pact. Here, he vehemently refuted the thinking of University of Padua Professor Pietro Pomponazzi who sought to entirely naturalize such effects by arguing that healing virtue might be born into the complexion of certain individuals, giving them nat­ural healing powers similar to those of herbs and minerals. If a human did indeed heal through touch, Del Rio proposed, it could only be a miraculous gift granted through gratia gratis data. Regarding saludadores, he objected to most of their cures, but conceded that they should not be absolutely and indis­criminately condemned due to the scriptural tradition that they may indeed possess charismatic grace. Continuing this line of reasoning, he submitted that Flemish healers born on Good Friday or as their mother's seventh consecutive son might indeed be granted healing grace: “for it is not unlikely that, because of the fearfulness attached to Good Friday, the holiness of its mystery, and the honor of the matrimonial estate, God has granted the cure.” He maintained, however, that such an ability would be miraculous and not natural^[1192]

As we have seen, prosecuting attorneys and calificadores tended to share the opinion of Martin Del Rio and his fellow Counter-Reformation demonologists, arguing that preternatural cures were almost invariably the result of demonic agency, but presiding inquisitors tended to be more reticent. Many inquisi­tors dismissed trials before they reached their conclusions, displaying a typi­cal baroque pessimism regarding their abilities to achieve absolute certainty regarding spiritual matters. This was famously the case in trials for witchcraft, where historians have proved that the Inquisition systematically refused to interpret maleficia as evidence of a demonic conspiracy.^[1193] Nevertheless, the notion of an altogether sceptical Inquisition would be overblown. Records from Toledo indicate that Inquisitorial officials continued to arrest and con­vict superstitious healers throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century. And the judgment reached on Ambrosio Montes was harsh: he was punished with two hundred lashes and eight years of banishment from Toledo.

Montes was not deterred, however, and he almost immediately returned to healing. After his trial he returned to the Valladolid region where he reportedly cured many people of infirmities such as blindness and heart disease. He main­tained that he had gracia gratis data to cure, and he carried written statements as proof. One priest from the village of Mojados was convinced of Montes' abilities, and he testified that he had heard that Montes had received formal permission from the Inquisition's supreme council^[1194] This does not seem to have been true, but it does appear that Montes had success with ecclesiastical courts. When the Inquisition arrested him again and took an inventory of his goods in 1549, he carried licenses from the diocese of Segovia^[1195] Others who he encountered were divided over whether his preternatural should be properly characterized as demonic or divine. One witness, a young man named Andres Blanco, flatly opined that when Montes performed his healing touch it was God that decided whether or not to effect a cure, but he personally had experi­enced an improvement in his eyesight after being treated by Montes.^[1196] Others, though, maintained that Montes' cures were superstition and the cause of “great scandal.” In the end, the Inquisition decided that they only way to deter Montes' potentially demonic healing was to confine him to a monastery where he would be assigned to a “learned friar who would disabuse him of his errors.” Montes died there two years later at the age of sixty eight^[1197]