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The Benandanti: North Italian Shamanic Tradition?

AlchoPwn

Public Service is my Motto.
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When one thinks about shamanism, one doesn't generally think of Italy, let alone Venice and the areas north of it. The Benandanti are now supposedly extinct; killed off by the Inquisition by the late 17th Century, but records remain. Benandanti or "Good Walkers" were a folk tradition of dream visionaries who fought nightly supernatural battles against "Malandanti" (Bad Walkers), largely for the good fortune and the safety and prosperity of their village.

Individuals who could become Benandanti were those who were born with their birth caul covering their heads, and the caul was dried and kept as an amulet of sorts for them to draw strength from. Typically a Benandanti was also armed with fennel branches while the witches are armed with sorghum sheafs. One assumes that this was kept near their bed and accompanied them on their night battles.

There is also the supposition that the battle between the Benandanti and the Malandanti was symptomatic of rivalry and tension between villages in the region i.e. one village's Benandanti would be another village's Malandanti, as they vied to steal the power and fertility of the land from their rivals. Given that feuds were a feature of Italian peasant life, it might be remarked that similar beliefs play out in a great many tribal communities around the world at various times, when out-groups are blamed for ill fortune via sorcery when someone important takes ill or dies.

Interestingly, when the inquisition came into the areas where the Benandanti belief system was in place, they were utterly confused, and apparently failed to grasp that the Benandanti weren't the witches the peasantry wanted dealt with. LINK. This caused a degree of conflict to erupt between the peasantry and the inquisition. For all that, the Benandanti seemed to have somewhat adopted elements of Christianity. One wonders at the antiquity of the entire practice, for it doesn't show up in any official records until the 16th century. Could the Benandanti be a form of surviving Celtic or Etruscan shamanism? Where did it come from? While the wikipedia entry LINK suggests that it was part of a long existing trans-alpine system of folk belief, the fact is that we don't really know, and apparently the whole belief system was destroyed soon after it was revealed by the inquisition, because it constituted heresy. If you are interested in reading about it, here is a LINK to a PDF of"The Night Battles" by Carlo Ginzburg that should provide more detail.
 
I guess we can't say for sure that the Benandanti are "extinct", once we can't say their origins. We can't even be sure the Benandanti are the only "evolution" of this source. I prefer to think that Benandanti (and their, say, peers) became just more discreet.

And I'm not even putting in dispute the veracity of their "battles"... :)
 
I guess we can't say for sure that the Benandanti are "extinct", once we can't say their origins. We can't even be sure the Benandanti are the only "evolution" of this source. I prefer to think that Benandanti (and their, say, peers) became just more discreet. And I'm not even putting in dispute the veracity of their "battles"... :)
You echo my own suspicions. Thanks Chicorea.
 
There are many interest links to other subjects in the discussion of the Benandanti : the Fairies, the Wild Hunt, shamanism and even class struggle. It's a pleasure to find a subject so fertile in ramifications.

Ginzbur insists that, when the Inquisition discovered the Benandanti, they were puzzled with a completely new language, a completely new image of the world and the thin frontier between the more earthly aspects of it (that the Inquisition could grasp) and the mystical aspects (that the Inquisition had a hard time to cathegorize). Inquisitors couldn't agree about the Benandanti being an evil manifestation or an ally in the fight again evil manifestations. Eventually, the first on prevailed.

But, again, this is the North Italian narrative. We can't be sure what happened to similar manifestations in Spain, France, Germany... We know that some parallels could be traced (Ginzburg refused them, and I tend to agree with him...) with the Scottish Witches trials, around 200 years after.
 
Is benandanti the same word used in the Montaillou book?
 
Is benandanti the same word used in the Montaillou book?
A fair question. I haven't read the book, but a cursory search of reviews suggests that the comparison between th peasant fertility cult described in the Montaillou book is similar to the Benandanti but not the same. The Montaillou Book discusses people in the 1400s while the Benandanti trials took place in the 1600s. I would be surprised if there wasn't some cross-pollination given the small distances involved. People migrate, or go on pilgrimage etc. Information travels.
 
There are many interest links to other subjects in the discussion of the Benandanti : the Fairies, the Wild Hunt, shamanism and even class struggle. It's a pleasure to find a subject so fertile in ramifications.

@AlcoPwn on the serendipitous side, I read your links and thought the same as @chicorea posts here; with the inclusion of der erlkonig!

People migrate, or go on pilgrimage etc. Information travels.

This ^ In my own field the classic green man in christian contexts gets started in the UK once people start to come back from Compostela.

Edit to add - in the Montaillou case there is an itinerant class of initiates who travel through their areas.
 
@AlcoPwn on the serendipitous side, I read your links and thought the same as @chicorea posts here; with the inclusion of der erlkonig!
This is only the second time I have bumped into der Erlkonig. My knowledge of Germanic folklore isn't all it could be, and I appreciate being informed.
This ^ In my own field the classic green man in christian contexts gets started in the UK once people start to come back from Compostela.
Fascinating. I had no idea about the Compostela connection and had always regarded the Green Man as an intensely interesting and incongruous figure in English churches. Is there a link to somewhere you have written about this Frideswide? I would very much enjoy learning more.
 
No, because I publish under my own name! I can recommend the Company of the Green Man though - it hosts all sorts of opinions rather than being "popular", "academic", "new age" or whatever...

https://thecompanyofthegreenman.com/

there's a free electronic newsletter and a shared photo archive. It includes literature and personal responses too which is ideal for my, I'm currently interested in the modern response to the image when compared to what we might interpret as the historical one.
 
No, because I publish under my own name! I can recommend the Company of the Green Man though - it hosts all sorts of opinions rather than being "popular", "academic", "new age" or whatever... https://thecompanyofthegreenman.com/ there's a free electronic newsletter and a shared photo archive. It includes literature and personal responses too which is ideal for my, I'm currently interested in the modern response to the image when compared to what we might interpret as the historical one.
That is more than fair, as I do exactly the same thing and am protective of my online anonymity as well. 'Nuff sed.
 
Is benandanti the same word used in the Montaillou book?

@Frideswide , I can't answer for sure, I have never read Le Roy Ladurie (yet...), but it's very probable that they tap on the very same vein. For everything that I could re-read about Ginzburg and the Benandanti, I have the feeling that he tends to reject the cross-polinisation of the local cultures, be them in the north of Italy or the South of France, let alone Switzerland or Germany.

But, as well as I'm a Ginzburg reader, I read Marija Gimbutas, for exemple, and she points (or at least this is how I interpreted from what I read) to a basic imagery of mythological figures (in her case, the Mother Goddess), a core that can be translated and reconstructed from region to region, from "culture" to "culture". So, yes, I believe that it's possible that we find variations and declinations of the Benandanti as the members of the Wild Hunt, for exemple.

This can become a rich discussion, once there was a stream of authors circling this subjects, from Ladurie and Ginzburg to Lecouteux and Gimbutas and, on more Fortean tone, from Markale to Nigel Jackson.
 
Very nice to see Gimbutas referenced. I'm not in total agreement with her theories but I recognise her scholarship and ability to change paradigms - including mine :)
 
Talking about similitudes, I would like to introduce you the Bokkenrijders...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckriders

The Bokkenrijders are originated from Netherlands and Belgium, people that were supposed to fly (ride, rijders) on the back of goats (bokken, bouc, goat), by night. It was a local legend, with its origins not very well explored, when around the XVIIIth century bands of brigands rescued the name and started to ride the countryside, attacking and robbing wealthy properties. They earned, at the same time, an aura of local Ronin Hoods and Godless Beings. Thanks to this inflammable mix of both, they were persecuted, torured (to get delirious confessions of Devilish influence and demonic rituals) and executed.

It would be interesting to dig a little more about the origins of this mythology. The original Bokkenrijders seem to lay on the same timeframe of the Benandanti, for exemple. And, again, it can point to some similarities with the Wild Hunt, that can be a link to the Benandanti and other night riders.
 
I know this is a typo, but a Ronin was a term for an unattached mercenary in Feudal Japan, and many of them were indeed hoodlums.

An unintentional typo, indeed. And yes, a Ronin Wood would be a very interesting mash-up to develop on a story... :D

It's true that Lone Wolf And Cub already cover this kind of character, a high rate samurai that takes the way of the meifumado, as outlaw samurai. I used to have all the issues of the magazine, in portuguese... :)
 
An unintentional typo, indeed. And yes, a Ronin Wood would be a very interesting mash-up to develop on a story... :D It's true that Lone Wolf And Cub already cover this kind of character, a high rate samurai that takes the way of the meifumado, as outlaw samurai. I used to have all the issues of the magazine, in portuguese... :)
Ahh, Lone Wolf and Cub, I loved the manga (translated), and thoroughly enjoyed the movies. That's some fine Chambara. I should get them out and watch them again. I think I'll miss the last one tho. I certainly didn't expect a Benandanti topic to wind up discussing Samurai movies. NVM. I'm a huge fan.
 
An unintentional typo, indeed. And yes, a Ronin Wood would be a very interesting mash-up to develop on a story... :D
In The Once and Future King by T.H. White, the character of Robin Hood says his real name is Robin Wood. He wouldn't have claimed to be a Ronin, however, even though he was a-roamin'.
 
One of my friends is doing a paper on Robin Hood, and has actually found him in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle apparently. Sir Robin Hode operated during the time of King John, and was involved in protest against John's actions regarding the Church in England. John ceded every church in the British Isles to the Pope in return for the Pope's political support, as John's grip on power was slipping after he backed the Germans at the Battle of Bouvines and lost. The result of this was that churches and chapels across England, that had often been kept in families for generations and passes to second sons who entered the clergy were suddenly being gifted to Italian priests. Friar Tuck was a disgruntled clergyman who had been dispossessed of his parish, and together with Sir Robin they set about waylaying and doing ill to the foreign interlopers.
 
Friar Tuck was a disgruntled clergyman who had been dispossessed of his parish, and together with Sir Robin they set about waylaying and doing ill to the foreign interlopers.

This is an interesting interpretation to Friar Tuck!

In general, Benandanti, Bokkerrijders and Robin Hood (I promise to leave the meifumado alone...) seem to fall on a similar cathegory of rebellious disfranchised (one of the attributes that made the case of the Benandanti even more complex to the Catholic Church was the fact that they fought evil withour and beyond any help from the orthodoxy).

I like to believe that there is a undercurrent of cultural (should I say mystical?) stream, very primitive, that provides the resistance to evil, independant of the power provided by formal religion and organised State. Even if they are supposedly insulated and non-coordiante, as Ginzburg seem to insist, they would suggest a wider perspective, a silhouetted presence of a self-protecting element of a pre-christian Europe.

I'm available for furhter lapidation for such a naive belief. :D
 
One of my friends is doing a paper on Robin Hood, and has actually found him in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle apparently. Sir Robin Hode operated during the time of King John...

King John ruled from 1199-1216.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was not updated after 1154, twelve years before John was born.

l have a (modern) copy, and although l haven’t read it from cover to cover, l don’t recall that it mentions Robin Hood.

maximus otter
 
King John ruled from 1199-1216. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was not updated after 1154, twelve years before John was born. l have a (modern) copy, and although l haven’t read it from cover to cover, l don’t recall that it mentions Robin Hood. maximus otter
My source covered this point with me. He said that the present scholarship suggests there was no Robin Hood in the ASC, but when he actually went and read a copy of the document, much to his surprise it was there. That's the thing about manuscripts, they are not all alike, and reading one isn't necessarily the same as reading another. We are used to printed materials, and these were copied, and often featured "insertions". Certainly the history of John and the Pope's interaction is correct and verifiable from other documents. Of course he might have been fibbing... But then Herodotus might have been fibbing too.
 
I like to believe that there is a undercurrent of cultural (should I say mystical?) stream, very primitive, that provides the resistance to evil, independant of the power provided by formal religion and organised State. Even if they are supposedly insulated and non-coordiante, as Ginzburg seem to insist, they would suggest a wider perspective, a silhouetted presence of a self-protecting element of a pre-christian Europe.

This make me think of the concept of Deep (or is it Old?) Magic in Narnia.
 
My source covered this point with me. He said that the present scholarship suggests there was no Robin Hood in the ASC, but when he actually went and read a copy of the document, much to his surprise it was there. That's the thing about manuscripts, they are not all alike, and reading one isn't necessarily the same as reading another. We are used to printed materials, and these were copied, and often featured "insertions". Of course he might have been fibbing...

a) The ASC has been studied for centuries. I think somebody would have noticed a mention of Robin Hood.

b) There are nine complete or part-manuscripts of the ASC, but my comment above still holds true.

c) I have just "Ctrl + F"-ed the Gutenberg Press rendition of the ASC:

Robin = 0
Hode = 0
Hood = 9, all in the context of bishops receiving hoods, or words like neighbourhood and maidenhood.

maximus otter
 
Can you give us more info on the actual document your source read?
I wish I could. He was a bright young PhD student studying medieval history at Cambridge. I couldn't say I even reliably remember his name now, damn it. We had a pleasant afternoon at a pub in 2016 and I haven't seen him since.
 
I wish I could. He was a bright young PhD student studying medieval history at Cambridge. I couldn't say I even reliably remember his name now, damn it. We had a pleasant afternoon at a pub in 2016 and I haven't seen him since.

Maybe he was having you on. Nevertheless, thanks for sharing your esoteric finds. I come to this board to have my knowledge broadened and this thread has done that :yay:
 
Maybe he was having you on. Nevertheless, thanks for sharing your esoteric finds. I come to this board to have my knowledge broadened and this thread has done that :yay:
Considering it was his PhD subject, I don't think he was fibbing. but yeah, I can't substantiate it as it certainly wasn't my own PhD subject.
 
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