Benandanti
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Benandanti ("Good Walkers") were an agrarian fertility cult in the Friuli district of Northern Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Contents |
[edit] Members
The Benandanti, which included both male and female members, were a small group of anti-witches that ensured the protection of the crops and villagers. Unlike most other occult organizations, the Benandanti were born, not made: only children born with "the caul," or the amniotic sac partially covering their face were destined to join the ranks of the Benandanti.
[edit] Functions
On Thursdays during the Ember days, periods of fasting for the Catholic Church, the Benandanti claimed their spirits would leave their bodies at night in the form of small animals. The spirits of the men would go to the fields to fight evil witches (malandanti). The Benandanti men fought with fennel stalks, while the dark witches were armed with sorghum stalks. If the men prevailed, the harvest would be plentiful.
The female Benandanti performed other sacred tasks. When they left their bodies they traveled to meet a Goddess, who was known by a variety of names, such as Abundia, Irodiana, or simply "the Abbess". There they danced, ate and drank with a procession of spirits, animals and faeries, and learned who amongst the villagers would die in the next year.
On the way home from their feasting or fighting, the Benandanti would often go into cellars to drink and then urinate in the casks. Supposedly if they did not do this, the wine would be spilt.
[edit] Related traditions
The themes associated with the Benandanti (leaving the body in spirit, possibly in the form of an animal; fighting for the fertility of the land; banqueting with a Queen or Goddess; drinking from and soiling wine casks in cellars) are found repeated in other testimonies: from the armiers of the Pyrenees, from the followers of Signora Oriente in 14th century Milan and the followers of Richella and 'the wise Sibillia' in 15th century Northern Italy, and much further afield, from Livonian werewolves, Dalmatian kresniki, Hungarian táltos, Romanian căluşari and Caucasian burkudzauta.
Many of the tasks the Benandanti performed were typical of shamans around the world, including healing people of the village, keeping the paths of the dead from this world to the next secure, and protection of their villages from evil spirits. The selection of members by a personal characteristic (the caul) rather than by application, initiation, or study, is similar to the way in which individuals become shamans or priests because they have a "calling," an internal quality that self-selects them.
In 1692 in Jurgenburg, Livonia, an area near the Baltic Sea, an old man named Theiss was tried for being a werewolf; his defense was that his spirit (and that of others) transformed into werewolves in order to fight demons and prevent them from stealing grain from the village.[1]
[edit] Treatment by the church
Between 1575 and 1675 the Benandanti were tried as heretics under the inquisition. The inquisitors were perplexed by their stories, and struggled to reconcile them with the Sabbath (witchcraft) stereotype. Accused Benandanti tried to draw sharp distinctions between their actions and the actions of the malevolent witches, claiming that they fought "for the faith of Christ," and that only the Benandanti could save the people from the evils that the witches inflicted upon the villagers and their crops. Drawing this distinction was difficult, however, since so many of their actions were similar to those of the evil witches they purported to oppose. According to one inquisition account, "On the one hand, they declared that they were opposed to witches and warlocks, and their evil designs and that they healed the victims of injurious deeds of witches, on the other, like their presumed adversaries, they attended mysterious nocturnal reunions (about which they could not utter a word under pain of being beaten) riding hares, cats, and other animals."
To avoid persecution the Benandanti even began to accuse other villagers of witchcraft. This proved futile and only served to destroy their reputation in the village.
In the late 16th century, however, the inquisitors were less concerned with witchcraft, and more concerned with heresy. The actions of the Benandanti were, according to the church, idolatrous, and therefore heretical. Slowly but surely they were grouped with those targeted by the inquisition; their opposition to witches notwithstanding, the Benandanti were made to "realize" after serious persuasive work that they themselves were indeed witches. By the 17th century they had almost completely died out. None of the trials ended in execution, however.
[edit] Benandanti in popular culture
Although the vast majority of the information to date about the Benandanti has come from two books written by Italian folklorist and historian Carlo Ginzburg (see "References" below), the concept has evidently struck a chord with many people today.
- The Benandanti are a major force in Elizabeth Hand's urban fantasy Waking the Moon."
- "The Amazing Benandanti" was the name of a sideshow escape artist ([1]
- A concept very similar to the Benandanti, and based upon them, appears in Guy Gavriel Kay's historic fantasy Tigana. ([2]
[edit] References
- Carlo Ginzburg. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by Anne and John Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
- Carlo Ginzburg. Ecstasies: Deciphering the witches' sabbath. Transl. Raymond Rosenthal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
