Maria de Zozoya

The correct spelling of this name is MARÍA DE ZOZAYA.

An elderly peasant woman from the Basque village of Zuggaramurdi, María de Zozaya was swept up in one of the largest witch hunts in European history. Between 1609 and 1614, some 2,000 people (the majority children under fourteen) were brought before inquisitors at Logroño on charges of witchcraft, satanism, and other heresies. In November 1610, María de Zozaya and ten or eleven other accused—mostly women—were convicted of witchcraft in a public ceremony (auto-de-fé) that included reading a summation of the charges against each defendant; María’s charges filled forty pages. Half of those convicted, María de Zozaya among them, had already died in prison and were, thus, burned in effigy.