The night battles : witchcraft & agrarian cults in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries

Bibliographic Information

The night battles : witchcraft & agrarian cults in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries

Carlo Ginzburg ; translated by John & Anne Tedeschi

(Routledge library editions, . Witchcraft ; v. 4)

Routledge, 2011, c1983

Other Title

I benandanti : stregoneria e culti agrari tra cinquecento e seicento

The night battles : witchcraft and agrarian cults in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

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Note

Translated from the Italian

Reprint. Originally published: London : Routledge & K. Paul, 1983

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN for sub ser.: 9780415619271

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Based on research in the Inquisitorial archives, the book recounts the story of a peasant fertility cult centred on the benandanti. These men and women regarded themselves as professional anti-witches, who (in dream-like states) apparently fought ritual battles against witches and wizards, to protect their villages and harvests. If they won, the harvest would be good, if they lost, there would be famine. The inquisitors tried to fit them into their pre-existing images of the witches' sabbat. The result of this cultural clash which lasted over a century, was the slow metamorphosis of the benandanti into their enemies - the witches. Carlo Ginzburg shows clearly how this transformation of the popular notion of witchcraft was manipulated by the Inquisitors, and disseminated all over Europe and even to the New World. The peasants' fragmented and confused testimony reaches us with great immediacy, enabling us to identify a level of popular belief which constitutes a valuable witness for the reconstruction of the peasant way of thinking of this age.

Table of Contents

1. The Night Battles 2. The Processions of the Dead 3. The Benandanti between Inquisitors and Witches 4. The Benandanti at the Sabbat. Appendix. Notes. Index of Names.

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