1756. Carta de Ana María Gayán, criada, para Juan José Aranda, cura.

Letter from Ana María Gayán to Juan José Aranda, a priest.

The author informs Juan José Aranda that some of her fellow citizens have been interrogated about his case, and gives him information about their declarations.

The defendant of this process was Juan José Aranda, the priest of Mazarulleque (Cuenca). In 1757, he was accused of heretical propositions and heretical actions by the Inquisition of Cuenca, because he claimed that the constant molestation to which he subjected Isabel Villar Abarca, his maid, was not a sin. Juan José Aranda had also maintained illicit relationships with other maids, as Ana María Gayán and Manuela Palomino. Actually, it had been the pregnancy of Manuela Palomino that had triggered the whole process, because the priest was suspected to be responsible for that. The inquisitors then ordered the imprisonment of Juan José Aranda and the seizure of his properties. All the letters he had in his house were confiscated and joined to the proceedings as a proof. Eventually, the defendant was forced to abjure de levi, and he was sentenced to two years of confinement in a convent and to three years of banishment, at a minimum distance of eight leagues from Chinchilla (Albacete), Mazarulleque (Cuenca), and Madrid.