These Who Are Good
In 1575 inquisitors in northern Italy discovered the benandanti, a band of self-professed spiritual warriors who claimed to send their spirits forth in their sleep to engage in ritual night battles to defend the season's harvest from witches. In this episode, I bring you the stories of two men prosecuted by the Inquisition for their witch-fighting ways. When records obscure reality, who can find the truth?
Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben, with original music by Purple Planet.
Music
Purple Planet - After the Fall
Purple Planet - An Angel Will Rise
Purple Planet - Nightmare
Purple Planet - Civilisation
Purple Planet - Sense of Loss
Purple Planet - Shadowlands
Sources
Primary
“Defending the Harvest: The Cult of the Benandanti.” In European Magic and Witchcraft: A Reader, edited by Martha Rampton, pp. 319–327. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.
Secondary
Boskovic-Stulli, Maja. “Following the Kresnik and the Benandante.” Lares 69, no. 3 (2003): 607-634.
Cohn, Norman. Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt. New York: Basic Books, 1975.
Ginzburg, Carlo. I Benandanti: Stregoneria e culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1966.
Ginzburg, Carlo. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, translated by John & Anne Tedeschi. New York: Penguin Books, 1983.
Monter, E. William. “Gendering the Extended Family of Ginzburg’s Benandanti.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 1, no. 2 (2006): 222–226.
Moretti, Debora. “Angels Or Demons? Interactions and Borrowings between Folk Traditions, Religion and Demonology in Early Modern Italian Witchcraft Trials.” Religions 10, no. 5 (2019): 326.
Sato, Jun. “European Shamanism in Context: The Case of the ‘Benandanti’.” Cambridge Anthropology 25, no. 3 (2005): 17–37.
Šmitek, Zmago. “Nočni Bojevniki: Kmečke Herezije in Čarovništvo Na Slovenskem in v Furlaniji / Night Warriors: Peasant Heresies and Witchcraft in Slovenia and in Friuli.” Studia Mythologica Slavica 17, (2014): 191–205.
