during the late 16th century, when the massive witch craze was happening in Europe, local clergy in the region of Friuli (modern day northern Italy) and the inquisition interviewed a witness of an alleged witchcraft practises. there was a man who was healing people form curses and was seen walking at night with other witches and their familiars in a neighbouring village. that statement led the inquisition to interview two suspects and the uncovering of a very interesting practise of the local peasants.
the men were called the benandanti. their role and mission were kept a secret, only known to other benandanti, under a threat of getting beaten. they were mostly men who were born with a caul (a sort of membrane form pregnancy) which signified their spirituality. when they reached the age of twenty they were called by the sounds of drums, like soldiers, and they had to answer, they had to go fight with the witches.
what differentiates between benandanti and witches? well, benandanti were servants of christ, unlike witches who were of course servants of the devil. one testimony of a benandante says that a golden angel would appear in front of them at night to lead them to battle against the witches.
so they were christian, catholic peasants and they were fighting forces of evil in the name of god. why? because they were tasked with protecting the villages crops and vine cellars. wasn’t that the job of the holy inquisition though?
it was believed that witches would gather on thursdays at night four times a year. they would eat, drink, dance, piss in the vine barrels and destroy crops (which is interesting because it’s not the tipical witch sabbath description in that time - there was no mention of destroying crucifixes or orgies, although the participants were to the benandanti obvious devil worshippers). the benandanti had to fight them - if they won the harvest would be plentiful but if they lost there would be famine. how did they fight those witches? the benandanti fought with branches of dill and the witches attacked with sorghum stalks. in the inquisitors documentation there is also mention of benandanti riding on hares and cats while witches rode gots.
there also seams to be an element of hallucinations or trance as for the benandanti to participate in a battle his soul had to leave his body.
and like. the inquisition had no fucking clue what to do about benandanti. in their cosmology based solely on biblical theology they didn’t understand the difference between benandanti and witches that was so obvious for the local people. both participated in rituals, used some kind of magic, saw and did things that regular people shouldn’t do and even though benandanti claimed they were servants of christ, their practices weren’t at all biblical. they resembled a sort of agrarian ritual of the pagan era.
and that’s what’s the most fascinating for me in this story (and why i’m writing about it. i love studying sociology and anthropology at uni fr). in benandanti cosmology it all made a complete sense, a logical system of beliefs. their fights in the name of god and crops were compatible - the pagan belief that kept on through christianisation in the folk practise. the necessity of battling with witches, the visions of angels, their souls leaving their body for a great fight - it was all part of their material reality. but to the inquisition (or simply a clergy member) that was incomprehensible. they tried taking that system of beliefs and align it to their theology, which inevitably resulted in the benandanti tradition being persecuted and dying out. we also see that mechanism in the salem trials and the famous Tituba, where her completely logical, normal practises and beliefs in her indigenous cosmology were being understood thorough completely different symbolic world of the puritans - which of course resulted in her being tried as a witch.
but this wouldn’t be possible without a certain change in how those post pagan stories (the women that come at night, night-witches, flying creatures etc) were understood especially by the educated clergy. as Norman Cohn writes in his book “Europe’s inner demons”: “As you can see, until the end of the 14th century, for educated people, and especially for the higher clergy, it was obvious that all these night escapades, whether in hostile or peaceful intentions, were nothing more than events taking place in the imagination. However, this was not the case in the 16th and 17th centuries. And this is what made the great witch hunt possible: witch hunts will reach enormous proportions only there and only if people endowed with authority themselves have accepted the reality of night expeditions. After all, without such expeditions, witches would not organise Sabbaths.” (form the chapter: The night-witch in popular imagination). i find this theory very compelling and fascinating in the context of european witch hunts.
this is just the gist of the topic, i wish i could go more in depth into it. besides the serious and interesting topic of pagan superstition carrying on in folk practices and their relation to the witch hunting, i just love the mental image of the army of men running through fields at night with branches of dill being attacked by witches with soghrum stalks.
i really recommend a texts by Carlo Ginzburg “The night battles” about the “discovery” of the benandanti that i got all of this information form
