Case file · Witch trials
The benandanti of Friuli
In 1575 the Inquisition questioned Paolo Gasparutto of Brazzano in Friuli, who said that he and other 'benandanti' born with a caul left their bodies at night to fight witches with fennel stalks for the harvest.
1575 CE · 45.97, 13.47 · status: official
The account
Trials continued until the 1640s, as inquisitors gradually recast the benandanti as witches. Carlo Ginzburg's 1966 study made them famous.
The sceptical view
Read by historians as a surviving agrarian vision cult, not literal events.