Benandanti

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The benandanti were members of a folk, agrarian tradition in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, active mainly in the 16th and 17th centuries. They believed that their spirits could leave their bodies while they slept on certain Thursdays (Ember Days) to protect the community’s crops from evil witches. The benandanti themselves were called “good walkers” (benandanti), while those they fought against were called “bad walkers” (malandanti).

Beliefs and practices
- Birth sign: People who later became benandanti were believed to be born with a caul, a part of the amniotic sac around the head. This birth mark was thought to grant them special, magical powers.
- Spirit journeys: On Ember Days, the benandanti’s spirits would travel in the shape of animals—often mice, cats, rabbits, or butterflies. The men’s journeys typically involved flying into the sky to battle witches who threatened crops; they fought with fennel stalks, while the witches used sorghum stalks.
- Women’s role: The women benandanti usually took part in different activities during these visions. They attended a great feast with spirits, animals, and fairies, where they ate and danced and learned who in the village would die in the coming year. Some accounts describe a leading woman or “abbess” presiding over the feast.
- Healing and protection: When not on nocturnal journeys, benandanti were believed to have healing powers and could protect people from witchcraft.

First contacts with the authorities
- In 1575, a village priest, Don Bartolomeo Sgabarizza, began investigating claims brought by a benandante named Paolo Gasparotto. Although Sgabarizza briefly dropped the case, it was reopened in 1580 by the inquisitor Fra Felice da Montefalco.
- Gasparotto and other locals, including a benandante Battista Moduco, were questioned. Gasparotto initially denied being a benandante but later admitted the claim under pressure. He also described journeys where witches and benandanti traveled together with conflicts on the road.
- Montefalco and the Inquisition pressed the case, and some benandanti were branded heretics. A few were imprisoned or punished, while others were later released or had their sentences lightened. Other people—such as Anna la Rossa, Donna Aquilina, Caterina la Guercia, and various villagers—were examined, sometimes admitting to or being accused of benandanti activity.

Conflict with the Inquisition and later view
- As the investigations continued, the Inquisition increasingly framed nocturnal journeys as diabolical and linked them to the witches’ Sabbath. This shift helped end or marginalize the benandanti practices.
- By the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the term benandante became closely tied to witchcraft in Friulian folklore. The original movement faded, and many later stories described benandanti as witches or as witch-adjacent figures.

Modern interpretation and debate
- The first scholar to study the benandanti in depth was Carlo Ginzburg. In The Night Battles (1966), he argued that the benandanti represented a fertility cult defending harvests and linked their beliefs to a wider European pattern of nocturnal gatherings led by a goddess figure. He suggested connections to pre-Christian and shamanic traditions found in various parts of Europe, even drawing parallels with Baltic and Balkan folklore.
- Ginzburg’s ideas sparked much discussion. Some historians, like Norman Cohn, argued there was little evidence for a surviving ancient fertility cult, while others, such as Mircea Eliade and Gábor Klaniczay, saw the benandanti as part of a broader continuity of old rites and practices.
- Critics, including Ronald Hutton, warned that dreams and visions do not straightforwardly prove ancient religious rituals and cautioned against assuming pagan origins from dream accounts alone. Despite disagreements, scholars note that similar motifs—spirit journeys, battles against evil, and goddess-centered gatherings—appear in many European folk traditions, suggesting a complex mix of influence, diffusion, and local adaptation.

Legacy
- The benandanti story shows how a local, folk belief system could be explored by historians as part of a larger web of European traditions. It also illustrates how the Inquisition’s persecution could distort and suppress religious practices, sometimes transforming them in local memory into a witchcraft trope that persisted for centuries.

In short, the benandanti were a Friulian group who believed in protective nocturnal journeys of the spirit, mainly to defend crops from witches. Their encounters with the Inquisition, and later scholarly debates, have made them an important example of how folk belief can collide with official church policy and later inspire questions about ancient roots and cultural exchange across Europe.