1727. Carta de Luis de Rojas y Guzmán, pseudónimo de Salvador Ortiz, fraile, para Francisco Cervera y Gázquez.

Letter from Luis de Rojas y Guzmán, pseudonym of Salvador Ortiz, a friar, to Francisco Cervera y Gázquez.

Salvador Ortiz informs Francisco Cervera y Gázquez that a relative of him will give him the instructions, which must be followed faithfully, to perform a spell that will allow the addressee to find a treasure. He also gives the addressee other information related to this matter.

The defendant of this process was Francisco García Visera, a merchant and a soldier on the galleys. In 1731, he was accused of the crime of witchcraft and superstition by the Inquisition of Cuenca because of various scams he had committed in complicity with a galley slave, the friar Salvador Ortiz. They had proposed the victims of the scams to participate to the finding of a treasure by means of spells. For the realization of these spells they requested certain quantities of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls. The prisoner managed to prove that he did not believe in spells and did not perform magical practices, so eventually he was condemned only for scam. He was forced to abjure de levi in a public auto de fé and sentenced to two hundred lashes and a period of ten years of exile at a distance of ten leagues from Cuenca, Murcia, Cartagena (Murcia), Malaga, Lorca (Murcia), Madrid, Hellín (Albacete), Albacete, Chiva (Valencia) and Almazán (Soria), and to five years of rowing in the galleys. Attached to this letter there were three notes with the indication of the steps to be followed to perform the spell.