THE NIGHT BATTLES

Raamin Mostaghimi
October 17, 2006
Occ Civ Section 8

Ginzburg's NIGHT BATTLES is essentially the recounting of the Inquisition's discovery of and subsequent persecution of the Benandanti- an anti-witchcraft belief system of sorts which bore uncomfortable resemblance to witchcraft itself in the eyes of the inquisitors. This led to more and more hostility on the part of the inquisitiors, although strangely stopping short of execution itself. Due to their confusion over exactly what the Benandanti were, the Inquisition officials ended up classifying them as witches time and time again, eventually leading to the dying out of the group. The officials used techniques such as suggestive questioning to essentially trap the Benandanti into admitting their witchcraft, although it was not the case at all.
The Benandanti were an extremely interesting group of folks which actually may have legitimately flirted with witchcraft, or at least the pagan belief style. Essentially a fertility ritual (as Ginzburg never once fails to take the opportunity to mention), the group assembled four times a year (or once every five years, depending on who you asked) armed with fennel to fight the witches, who were armed with sorghum. If the Benandanti won, the harvest would be bountiful and there would be food for all. However, if the witches won, the fields would lay fallow that year. They believed that either they went out to fight the witches in body or that their spirits left their bodies as animals and went out. This sort of belief really only furthered the inquisitors' beliefs that the Benandanti were a group of witches and warlocks (because they were actually men AND women). This taken with the fact that the female Benandanti were said to go to drink and dance with 'the Goddess' and converse with animals made for strong arguments on the Inquisitors' side that the Benandanti were witches and warlocks all.
QUESTIONS
Did the grain going bad and causing hallucinations possibly have anything to do with the Benandanti's existence?
What was the medical significance of the ointments the Benandanti annointed themselves with?