Mystical systems
Benandanti
Direct answer
Benandanti: The benandanti, or good walkers, were villagers of Friuli in north-east Italy who told the Inquisition from 1575 that they went out in spirit at night to fight witches for the harvest.
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At a glance
- Also called
- the night battles, good walkers
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Witch Trials, Maleficium, Cunning Folk, Shamanism
The benandanti, or good walkers, were villagers of Friuli in north-east Italy who told the Inquisition from 1575 that they went out in spirit at night to fight witches for the harvest.
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Who were the benandanti?
Benandanti means those who go well, or good walkers. The men and women who used the name said they had been born with the caul, the birth membrane, and were therefore called out four times a year, on the Thursdays of the Ember Days. Their bodies stayed in bed as if asleep. In spirit they marched to the fields with stalks of fennel and fought witches armed with sorghum. If the benandanti won, the crops would be good.
They saw themselves as defenders of their villages and of the faith, and some also said they could tell who was a witch and heal the bewitched. The inquisitors could not fit them to any known heresy. Over decades of questioning, the accounts drifted towards the witches' sabbath the judges expected to hear.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Magic and protection.
What sets Benandanti apart
Three things mark a benandante in the records: birth with the caul, which some wore round the neck as proof; a summons on fixed nights, the Ember Days that open each season; and a battle fought out of the body with plants as weapons. Membership was not chosen. The call came at about twenty, and they said that speaking of it brought a beating from the others. Their enemies had a matching name, malandanti, those who go badly.
- Region: Friuli, north-east Italy, then under Venice
- Trial years: from 1575 into the mid seventeenth century
- Battle nights: Thursdays of the four Ember Days
- Weapons: fennel stalks for the benandanti, sorghum stalks for the witches
- Modern study: Carlo Ginzburg, I benandanti, 1966; The Night Battles, 1983
Often mistaken for something else: Cunning folk worked awake, for a fee, with charms and herbs; the benandanti said their defence of the village happened in sleep, unpaid, and by fighting.
The story behind Benandanti
The first case opened in 1575 at Cividale, when the town crier Battista Moduco and Paolo Gasparutto described the night battles; both were sentenced in 1581 to short prison terms that were then remitted. Trials continued in Friuli into the seventeenth century. Carlo Ginzburg found the records in the archive of the archbishop of Udine and published them as I benandanti in 1966, translated as The Night Battles in 1983.
Why Benandanti matters
They are the clearest recorded case of people who claimed to protect a community by spirit combat, set down before judges reshaped their story.
How to read Benandanti
Historians cite them when asking what folk beliefs lay under the witch trials, and writers on spirit flight compare their sleeping journeys with later accounts.
Benandanti in practice: an example
Questioned in 1580, Moduco told the inquisitor that he was a benandante and went out four times a year to fight for the faith of Christ.
Where readings of Benandanti go wrong
Everything known of them comes through inquisitors' transcripts, and Ginzburg's wider claim of an old fertility cult is debated.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- benandanti meaning, the night battles, good walkers, benandanti friuli, benandanti witches
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Who were the benandanti?
They were peasants of Friuli, in north-east Italy, who told inquisitors between 1575 and the mid seventeenth century that they left their bodies on certain nights to battle witches and protect the crops.
Were the benandanti witches?
They insisted they were the witches' enemies. The Inquisition at first did not know what to make of them, and over time pressed them towards confessing to the sabbath, so that later benandanti were treated as witches.
What is The Night Battles about?
It is the English title of Carlo Ginzburg's 1966 study of the benandanti trials. It argues that the records show a popular agrarian belief gradually recast by the judges as diabolical witchcraft.
