The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries is a historical study of the benandanti folk custom of 16th- and 17th-century Friuli, Northeastern Italy. It was written by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, then of the University of Bologna, and first published by the company Giulio Einaudi in 1966 under the Italian title of . It was later translated into English by John and Anne Tedeschi and published by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1983, with a new foreword written by the historian Eric Hobsbawm.
In The Night Battles, Ginzburg examines the trial accounts of those benandanti who were interrogated and tried by the Roman Inquisition, using such accounts to elicit evidence for the beliefs and practices of the benandanti. These revolved around their nocturnal visionary journeys, during which they believed that their spirits traveled out of their bodies and into the countryside, where they would do battle with malevolent witches who threatened the local crops. Ginzburg goes on to examine how the Inquisition came to believe the benandanti to be witches themselves, and ultimately persecute them out of existence.
Considering the benandanti to be "a fertility cult", Ginzburg draws parallels with similar visionary traditions found throughout the Alps and also from the Baltic, such as that of the Livonian werewolf, and also to the widespread folklore surrounding the Wild Hunt. He furthermore argues that these Late Medieval and Early Modern accounts represent surviving remnants of a pan-European, pre-Christian shamanistic belief concerning the fertility of the crops.
Academic reviews of The Night Battles were mixed. Many reviewers argued that there was insufficient evidence to indicate that the benandanti represented a pre-Christian survival. Despite such criticism, Ginzburg would later return to the theories about a shamanistic substratum for his 1989 book Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath, and it would also be adopted by historians like Éva Pócs, Gábor Klaniczay, Claude Lecouteux and Emma Wilby.
Background
In the Archiepiscopal Archives of Udine, Ginzburg came across the 16th- and 17th-century trial records which documented the interrogation of several benandanti and other folk magicians. Writing in 1992, historian John Martin of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas would characterize this lucky find as the sort of "discovery most historians only dream of."
Prior to Ginzburg's work, no scholars had investigated the benandanti phenomenon, and those studies which had been made of Friulian folklore – by the likes of G. Marcotti, E. Fabris Bellavitis, V. Ostermann, A. Lazzarini and G. Vidossi – had all used the term "benandante" as synonymous with "witch". Ginzburg himself would note that this was not because of "neglect nor... faulty analysis," but because in the recent oral history of the region, the two terms had become essentially synonymous.Ginzburg 1983. p. xxi.
English translation The translation of The Night Battles into English was undertaken by John and Anne Tedeschi, a couple who had previously produced the English translation for Ginzburg's 1976 book The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. In their Translator's Note to the English edition, they proclaimed that they were "very pleased" to have been given the opportunity to translate the book, opining that Ginzburg's two works "represent only a small part of the best of the new social, cultural and religious history being written today by a host of distinguished Italian scholars."
The Tedeschis went on to note that in translating The Night Battles, they had decided to adopt the Italian terms benandante and benandanti (singular and plural respectively) rather than trying to translate such terms into English. As they noted, a "literal translation" of these words would have been "those who go well" or "good-doers", terms which they felt did not capture the original resonance of benandanti. They also noted that in their translation they had used the term "witch" in the broader sense to refer to both males and females, but that when the Italian text specifically mentioned strega and stregone they rendered them as "witch" and "warlock".Tedeschi and Tedeschi 1983. pp. xi–xii.
The English translation included a foreword by the prominent English historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012), in which he argued that the "real interest in [Ginzburg's] extremely interesting book" lay not in its discussion of shamanistic visionary traditions, but in its study of how the Roman Catholic Church intervened in "traditional peasant practices" and warped them to fit their own ideas about witchcraft. He went on to note that The Night Battles should "fascinate and stimulate all historians of the popular mind."Hobsbawm 1983. pp. ix–x.
Synopsis The Night Battles is divided into four chapters, preceded by a preface written by Ginzburg, in which he discusses the various scholarly approaches that have been taken to studying Early Modern witchcraft, including the rationalist interpretation that emerged in the 18th century and the Witch-cult hypothesis presented by Margaret Murray. He proceeds to offer an introduction to the benandanti, and then thanks those who have helped him in producing his study.Ginzburg 1983. pp. xvii–xxii.
Part I: The Night Battles
The first part of The Night Battles deals primarily with the accounts of two benandanti who were interrogated and sentenced for heresy by the Roman Inquisition between 1575 and 1582. These two figures, Paulo Gaspurotto of the village of Iassaco and Battista Moduco of the town of Cividale, first came under investigation from the priest Don Bartolomeo Sgabarizza in 1575. Although Sgabarizza later abandoned his investigations, in 1580 the case was re-opened by the Inquisitor Fra Felice da Montefalco, who interrogated both Gaspurotto and Moduco until they admitted that they had been deceived by the Devil into going on their nocturnal spirit journeys. In 1581 they were sentenced to six months imprisonment for heresy, a punishment that was later remitted.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 1–14.
Ginzburg then looks at Gaspurotto and Moduco's claims in greater detail, noting that the benandanti constituted "a true and proper sect" who were united by having been born with a caul.Ginzburg 1983. p. 15. He proceeds to examine the trances that the benandanti went into in order to go on their nocturnal spirit journeys, debating whether these visions could have been induced by the use of special psychoactive ointments or by epilepsy, ultimately arguing that neither offer a plausible explanation in light of the historical evidence at hand.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 16–20.
Ginzburg looks at the agricultural elements to the benandanti's battles with their satanic opponents, arguing that their clashes represent an "agricultural rite" that symbolized the forces of famine fighting the forces of plenty. He suspected that this was a survival from an "older fertility rite" that had originated in pre-Christian Europe but which had subsequently been Christianized.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 22–26. He then goes on to examine the Early Modern accounts of aspects of popular belief across Europe that were similar to those of the benandanti. In particular he highlights the alleged cult of the goddess Diana that was recorded in late 15th century Modena and the case of the Livonian werewolf which occurred in 1692. Ginzburg ultimately argued that these scattered visionary traditions represented surviving elements of a pan-central European agrarian cult that had predated Christianization.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 27–32.
Part II: The Processions of the Dead In the second part of The Night Battles, Ginzburg turns his attention toward those Early Modern Alpine traditions dealing with nocturnal processions of the dead. He initially discusses the interrogation of Anna la Rossa, a self-confessed spirit medium who was brought before the Roman Inquisition in Friuli in 1582, before detailing two similar cases that took place later that year, that of Donna Aquilina and Caterina la Guercia. The latter of these women claimed that her deceased husband had been a benandante, and that he had gone on a "procession with the dead", but none of them described themselves as being benandante.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 33–39.
Ginzburg then looks at the Canon Episcopi, a 9th-century document that denounced those women who believed that they went on nocturnal processions with the goddess Diana; the Canon'''s author had claimed that they were deceived by the Devil, but Ginzburg argues that it reflects a genuine folk belief of the period. He connects this account with the many other European myths surrounding the Wild Hunt or Furious Horde, noting that in those in central Europe, the name of Diana was supplanted by that of Holda or Perchta.
Ginzburg then highlights the 11th-century account produced by French Bishop William of Auvergne, in which he had described a folk belief surrounding a female divinity named Abundia or Satia, who in William's opinion was a disguised devil. According to William's account, this creature travelled through houses and cellars at night, accompanied by her followers, where they would eat or drink whatever they found; Ginzburg noted parallels with the benandanti belief that witches would drink all of the water in a house.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 40–41.
Ginzburg highlights more evidence of the Wild Hunt folk motif in the Late Medieval accounts of the Dominican friar Johannes Nider. Nader related that certain women believed that they were transported to the conventicles of the goddess Herodias on the Ember Days, something which the monk attributed to the trickery of the Devil. Proceeding with his argument, Ginzburg describes an account by the chaplain Matthias von Kemnat, who recorded the persecution of a sect at Heidelberg circa 1475.
According to Kemnat, this sect contained women who believed that they "travelled" during the Ember Days and cast non-fatal spells on men.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 42–43. Ginzburg then turns his attention to a work of the early 16th century, Die Emeis, written by the Swiss preacher Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg. In this account, Geiler refers to those people who went on nocturnal visits to see Fraw Fenus (Venus), including those women who fell into a swoon on the Ember Days, and who described a visit to Heaven after they had awoken.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 44–45.
In further search of references to processions of the dead in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Ginzburg then highlights a 1489 trial of the weaver Giuliano Verdana held in Mantua and the 1525 trial of a woman named Wyprat Musin in Bürserberg, in both of which the defendant claimed to have seen a procession of dead spirits led by a female figure.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 49–51. This is then followed by a discussion of the case of German herdsman Chonrad Stoecklin, who recounted visionary experiences in 1587 before being condemned as a witch.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 52–53.
Following on from this, Ginzburg discussed the existence of clerici vagantes who were recorded as travelling around the Swabian countryside in 1544, performing folk magic and claiming that they could conjure the Furious Horde.Ginzburg 1983. p. 55. Ginzburg then discusses the case of Diel Breull, a German sorcerer who was tried in Hesse in 1630; Breull had claimed that on a visionary journey he encountered Fraw Holt, who revealed that he was a member of her nocturnal band.Ginzburg 1983. pp. 56–57.