Ginzburg, Night Battles

Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1992.

Carlo Ginzburg, who is also known for The Cheese and the Worms, published this cultural, micro-history that investigates the exciting world of Italian commoners bonding together to fight the forces of evil and protect the harvest in 1966''. Since then the book has gone through multiple translations and editions. ''The study focuses on a small northern Italian town, Friuli, and radiates out to vaguely include continental Europe in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Ginzburg’s purpose for writing the study is a response to the rise in popular cultural history that was taking place in the 1960. The monograph, which is weaved together to create a thrilling story, probably would not have been considered valid until cultural history had secured its position as legitimate and useful in the academy. His thesis, which is woven into the entire monograph, but only really apparent at the end of the book, is that the Benandanti, once popular and tolerated magic doers, slowly became shunned by the community, and striped of their privileges in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until they became lumped together with general witches, and therefore destined to be prosecuted (tortured and burned at the stake).

The story begins in Friuli, Italy, in 1575. A Catholic inquisitor is questioning a man suspected of performing magic, and therefore evil. Much to the inquisitors surprise, the man explains that on designated Thursdays throughout the year his spirit leaves his body, and joins thousands of other benandanti spirits and they do battle with evil witches with stalks of fennel and sorghum. They however are not the evil ones, they are the champions of the village, they fight with the witches to protect the harvest, and the children of the town. The inquisitor, who had never even heard of a benandanti before, did not know how to proceed. The man had admitted to practicing magic, but remained steadfast to the notion that he was doing the work of God. The man’s case was dropped with only minimal repercussions for his actions of involvement in the occult. Ginzburg progresses the story from there, relying on court records and confessions to explain to the reader that the Church became increasingly intolerant to this behavior as the centuries increased.

Spiritual battles between benandanti and witches, sometimes in familiar forms, such as mice, cats or even goats, with stalks of plants on an open field in the hours of twilight, conjure up a first glance… one of the best acid trips ever, however, there was a much deeper cultural need being acted out within these night battles. The harvest was of dire importance to everyone in the community, and its protection was vital. Ginzburg even cites the Church using its magical arsenal to ensure a plentiful harvest. The benandanti’s approach, however, was residual form fertility cults that dominated Europe before Christian colonization. Ginzburg ties the actions in the Friuli to similar occult occurrences throughout Europe, and explains that they all stem from the same residual pagan fertility cults that dominated Europe. He even mentions werewolves in Germany that were originally understood to be the hounds of God, but later became demonized by the Church into something that should be feared and exterminated. Night Battles end with the chimera being ripped out from the community as peasant’s response to real world problems become demonized by the Church. By the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church had monopolized its power, with some residual rituals being enacted in the peripheries, and established control based on fear throughout Europe.