Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) There is no record of Goya's thoughts during this period. He completed the series during a period recuperating from illness, possibly lead poisoning, when he was in considerable mental and physical pain, and withdrew from public life. "Witches' Sabbath" is believed to be a rather bitter, but silent, protest against the royalists and clergy who had retaken control of Spain after the Peninsular War of 1807–14. Advocates of the Enlightenment had sought to redistribute land to the peasants, to educate women, publish a vernacular Bible and, by replacing superstition with reason, put an end to the Inquisition. Witch hunting, seen
Witches' Sabbath century. The "Canon Episcopi" forwards the Christian doctrine that things of this nature were false delusions and did not occur in reality. "Errores Gazariorum" later evoked the Sabbat, in 1452. Helping to publicize belief in and the threat of the Witches' Sabbath was the extensive preaching of the popular Franciscan reformer, Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444), whose widely circulating sermons contain various references to the sabbath as it was then conceived and hence represent valuable early sources into the history of this phenomenon. Some allusions to meetings of more than one witch and possibly other demons are made in the