Quoted By:
>In the Iberian Peninsula, the position regarding the Jews evolved, at the same time – 14th century – towards an increasingly negative image. In this regard, let us highlight the fact brought up by Gutierre Díez de Games (1378-1450), in his Chronicle of Don Pero Niño, Count of Buelna, a work better known as El Victorial, where he attacks the treasurer of King Pedro I of Castile, the Jew Semuel Levi, whom he accuses of being a sorcerer and a soothsayer, in addition to having initiated the monarch into these astrological practices: "He had as his advisor a private Jew called Samuel Levi; this Jew taught him to want to know the things that are to come, by spells and art of stars.” At the same time it does not seem accidental that, at least from the beginning of the 15th century, witches' meetings began to be called - like synagogue ones - Sabbats, nightly meetings of witches with the devil in the form of a goat. The first author who appears to have applied the term Sabbat to witches was a theologian at the University of Poitiers, Pedro Mamoris. The term is also used by Father Jean Vincent in his Liber adversus magicas artes, published in 1475. There are several theories about the origin of the term “Sabbath”; one of them points to the high probability of coming from the Hebrew word shabbath (rest), with what is called a holy day in the Jewish religion
>That such demonic Sabbath rituals existed was a fact. Several historians attest to the survival of pagan nature worship cults that had not been eliminated by the Christianization of Europe. Such Sabbath rites evidently did not have an exclusively Jewish origin: they were a mix of underground Paganism, Cathar gnosis, Jewish Kabbalah, etc.
