Inquisitor’s House

In Icod always resided the Commissariat of Crusade and the Court of the Holy Office of the entire party of Daute, composed of Commissary, Qualifying ministers and the employees of the Mayor Bailiff and Notary or Notary, who attested to their resolutions. The Court of the Holy Office of Icod was instituted around the year 1668, with the appointment of a commissioner for counting the Place of Icod with 700 residents. In October 1686, it is rumored in Icod that a woman named María Canaria was requested by a cleric, arrested by the Inquisition, to use her services to curse a member of the Holy Office.

Through the information of the inhabitants of Garachico, it is verified that María Canaria is a witch, declaring against her María de Armas y Aljonas the following:

that last Thursday afternoon, that three days were counted of this month of October, this witness being in the company of said her mother and her sister visiting Juan de Ossorio and his wife, entered in the house Antonio Soriano, a married man, and said that on Wednesday,

that two days were counted from said month of October, that at midnight she found on the street, where they say Los Cuatro Cantillos, to the happiness Naked María, dancing with some castañetas in the company of two others women, whom two women did not know because they fled and left alone to the said María Canaria, to whom the said Antonio Soriano gave cintaparazos, and that the said María Canaria threatened the said Antonio Soriano, saying that she had to pay him. At the end of the process, if he was convicted, the sentence was executed in the corresponding Auto de Fé, where many of those unfortunates were sentenced to the stake. The death penalty sentence was executed in the vicinity of the Cathedral of Santa Ana in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria where the High Court of the Holy Office of the Canary Islands was located and where the scaffold was erected for this purpose.

Church of San Sebastián of the Former Augustinian Convent of Icod de los Vinos was headquarters of the Inquisition in this town.