The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries

By Carlo Ginzburg.

The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries

Description

Based on research in the Inquisitorial archives, the book recounts the story of a peasant fertility cult centred on the benandanti. These men and women regarded themselves as professional anti-witches, who (in dream-like states) apparently fought ritual battles against witches and wizards, to protect their villages and harvests. If they won, the harvest would be good, if they lost, there would be famine. The inquisitors tried to fit them into their pre-existing images of the witches’ sabbat. The result of this cultural clash which lasted over a century, was the slow metamorphosis of t...

ISBN(s)

0801843863, 9780801843860

REVIEWS (0) -

No reviews posted yet.

WRITE A REVIEW

Please login to write a review.