Even more significant is the case of Sor Rosa de San Joseph Barrios, a Clare of the convent of San Diego, Garachico, Canaries, a woman of 25 who, in July 1773, in sacramental confession to Fray Nicolás Peraza, related how, through desire to gratify her lust, she had given herself to Satan, in a writing which disappeared from her hand, and at his command had renounced God and the Virgin and had treated the consecrated host and a crucifix with the foulest indignities. In reward for this during four years he had served her as an incubus, coming at her call about twice a month. Fray Peraza applied to the tribunal for a commission to absolve her which was granted and, on August 15th, he reported having done so, with fuller details as to her apostasy. The tribunal then decided that he had exceeded his powers; it evidently did not regard the case as hallucination for it required her to be formally reconciled and prescribed a course of life-long spiritual penance, which she gratefully accepted. An incident not readily explicable is that the bishop deprived Fray Peraza of the faculty of hearing confessions.—Birch, Catalogue of MSS. of the Inquisition in the Canary Islands, I, p. 21; II, pp. 922-30.
[491] Archivo de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 927, fol. 462.
[492] Archivo de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 79, fol. 226; Inq. de Logroño, Procesos de fe, Leg. 1, n. 8; Sala 40, Lib. 4, fol. 221.
[493] Archivo de Simancas, Patronato Real, Leg. único, fol. 86, 87; Inq., Lib. 83, fol. 7.
[494] Ibidem, Lib. 83, fol. 1.
[495] MSS. of Library of University of Halle, Yc, 20, T. I.—Bibl. nacional, MSS., D, 111, fol. 127.—See Appendix.
[496] Archivo de Simancas, Inq., Visitas de Barcelona, Leg. 15, fol. 5.
[497] Archivo de Simancas, Inq. de Logroño, Leg. 1, Procesos de fe, n. 8.
[498] Ibidem, Leg. 1, Procesos de fe, n. 8; Lib. 19, fol. 85.
[499] Archivo de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 19, fol. 85.