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.
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