Night Battles Review

Ginzburg, Carlo. ''The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries''. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Night Battles is a historically comparative methodological piece by Carlo Ginzburg that focuses on the Benandanti, a pre-Christian fertility cult, in Fruili, Italy. Ginzburg uses the records of the Inquisitorial courts of Fruili, beginning with the cases of Paolo Gasparutto and Battista Moduco to demonstrate the decimation of a belief system through meticulous, entrapping and torturous methods of interrogation by Inquisition judges. Ultimately Ginzburg wished to reflect the misunderstanding of culture between the tried and Inquisition judges.[1]  Carlo Ginzburg’s attention was brought to the Benandanti due to a reemergence of the associations with the Benandanti in 1960’s popular culture.

The story of the Benandanti is first presented in the court cases of Gasparutto and Moduco, where a description of the Benandanti and their “rituals” are detailed. Seen as a chosen few, and usually passed down hereditarily, who bear the talisman known as the caul, which upon age of maturity allows for the wearer to enter into battles over crops in the name of God. The Caul was an emblem of one’s involvement in the rituals as a Benandanti. Once passed down by a parent whom was involved in the battles, the new owner would need to keep it in their possession or would no longer be called on to fight in the Night Battles.

During the “Ember” season of the year on a Thursday these battles would take place pitting the Benandanti against witches and warlocks. The Benandanti went on as defenders and warriors of God, while the witches and warlocks were Satanist.[2] In order to engage in these battles the wearer was initially called upon by an angel or other heavenly celestial being to join, which would require the wearer to exit the physical body and enter into a spiritual realm. While in the spiritual realm the physical body would enter a comatose like state. As described by the trial cases, these chosen few would go off to a select location and battle each other, Benandanti armed with sorghum stalks or wood pieces and the witches and warlocks armed with bundles of fennel or viburnum.[3]  Upon a Benandanti victory, crops will flourish for the year, while opposition’s victory would bring about crop failure.

While other details and explanations were presented, the inquisition judges chose to consistently question the figure that initiates the of-age ritual and the participants’ faith. Eventually through the misunderstanding of culture and language between the elite class and farming class (or populous), the Benandanti and others similar were categorized with witches and warlocks.

Ginzburg’s use of Inquisitorial court cases ranging for over one hundred years beginning in 1576 and methodologically comparative approach, highlights the diminishing and categorization of a culture.[4]  This book was also the first produced to include major research on the Benandanti. It offers itself as a study on witchcraft and popular culture to following historians and scholars in the field. It also offers a look into the lives of the farming class during the medieval period.

This book is highly recommended as it exemplifies an efficient approach to historical comparative analysis, utilizing Inquisitorial trial cases as evidence. As intended, Night Battles, appeals to those with no interest in the field of witchcraft or folklore by offering a methodical presentation, without a large amount of jargon use.

[1] Ginzburg, Carlo. ''The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries''. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.  P. xi

[2] Ginzburg, P. 25

[3] Ginzburg, P. 6

[4] P. 136