Between 1575 and 1634, during the Inquisition, Italian inquisitors and other members of the church intervened in the region of Friuli, located in the northeast of Italy. More than 800 people were investigated in order to determine whether or not they were guilty of heretical pravity, i.e., held heretical views. We are privy to some of the actual investigation records of some of these individuals in Carlo Ginzburg’s The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. However, we see more than witchcraft investigation in Ginzburg’s book. We are also treated to the views and thoughts of the inhabitants of Friuli, from the peasant townspeople to the educated elite, on witchcraft, magic, religion, and everyday life.
During this era in Friuli, agrarian pursuits were most common. There arose a group of peasants known as the benandanti, which translated means good walker “By benandante is meant one who does neither good or evil, can detect witchery and dispel it, and knows who the witches are” (Ginzburg 142). In Friuli society, especially among the peasants, it was believed that anyone who was born inside the amniotic membrane, or caul, was in possession of supernatural powers. The peasants believed in magic, witches, and supernatural phenomena. Among the educated elite, a demonology regarding witches and witchcraft has arisen due to the fact that during this era witch-hunting was at its height, and across Europe ecclesiastical and secular officials were obsessed by the fear of demonic witchcraft. They thoroughly believed that lots of people, usually women, met at night in secret to worship the devil and to spread blasphemy and sacrilege. During these “witch sabbaths” great sexual orgies were also thought to occur. However, few individuals during the Middle Ages thought of witches and witchcraft in this way. Because of the reaction and beliefs of officials, a new suspicious...