The benandanti ("Good Walkers"; Friulian: buine camminadôrs [citation needed]) were members of an agrarian visionary tradition in the Friuli district of Northeastern Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries.

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 ...

Jan 10, 2022 · The trials are told in the book “I Benandanti” by Carlo Ginzburg. The Benandanti was an agrarian cult with shamanic characteristics that gradually transformed under the pressure of the inquisitors to assume the features of traditional Italian witchcraft.

Sep 28, 2019 · The benandanti, many of whom believed themselves to be specially chosen by God, emphasized that protecting the crops through these agrarian rituals was done in the service of God.

Jul 13, 2015 · If you look up the benandanti on the web you may find a rock group in Friuli – they named themselves Benandanti, and so on and so forth, but this is a brief role. What I would regard as important is the idea that a single case can lead to further conclusions that witchcraft was not only a label for the persecution of it, but also had a ...

Jun 26, 2017 · The benandanti : Participants in the lingering remnants of an ancient agrarian cult in northern Italy, which came to the attention of the Inquisition in the late 16th century because of the cult’s nocturnal battles with witches and warlocks over the fertility of the crops and livestock.

The benandanti are by definition acting beyond the Church yet claim to be for the Church, they witness the Devil’s Sabbath but do not partake, they know the witches in their region by sight but do not reveal them-they act beyond the paradigm.

One of the strangest cases in the files of the Italian Inquisition is the case of the benandanti (Italian for “good walkers”), a secret society of peasant magicians in the region of Friuli, in the far northeast of Italy.

Ginzburg argues that the benandanti are basically a fertility cult whose goal is to protect the crops and people from disease. The question then becomes: how did questioning by the Inquisitors influence the benandanti’s view of themselves? Topics for discussion. Trials as historical documents: How did these trials come about?

The benandanti ("Good Walkers") were members of an agrarian visionary tradition in the Friuli district of Northeastern Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. The benandanti claimed to travel out of their bodies while asleep to struggle against malevolent witches (malandanti) in …