(by Massimo Montinari) The witch hunt officially opened in 1327, with the Bull "Super illius specula" of Pope John XXII - which gave universal validity to the fight against witchcraft through the inquisition - but became more acute in 1484, with Pope Innocent VIII , who had Malleus maleficarum drawn up, the most authoritative manual against witches for use by inquisitors. That witchcraft, or part of it, corresponded to Diana's religion seems confirmed by one of the first historical witch trials in Italy, the one against Sibillia Zanni, sentenced to the stake on May 26, 1390, followed two months later by Pierina de 'Bugatis, who confessed to having participated in the "Diana game". The same described a procession of witches, sorcerers and infernal spirits, better known as "sabba", in which orgiastic rites were celebrated. The sentence was carried out in Milan, in the Broletto Nuovo. Both women spoke of nocturnal gatherings (Sabbath) on Thursdays, directed by a "Lady of the Game", known as the Lady of the East (Diana or Herodias), a priestess who showed goat's feet, the torso and the face of a woman who he saw the future and began to magic art. The "Lady of the Game" would also have had the power to bring the animals back to life. In practice it would have been a "Diana-shaman". In the "Sabbath" the meetings turned into banquets and sometimes there was collective sex.
But Milan saw the first victim of the witch hunt on September 16, 1385 in front of a large crowd with a "sorcerer", Gaspare Grassi da Valenza, who was accused of being a "necromancer public, enchantment of demons, man of heretic pravity and relapso in the abjured heresy ".
The Sabbath would have been a meeting of witches in the presence of the devil during which magical practices, diabolical orgies and blasphemous rites were performed. Today with the term sabbath, the modern religions of neo-witchcraft and neo-paganism indicate a day when their believers gather to celebrate traditional rites in honor of the ancient gods.
The name derives from the Hebrew term Shabbat and denotes the prejudices widespread in Europe since the early Middle Ages towards the Mosaic religion (religion of Moses), which was often accused of consuming occult and violent rites. The Sabbath was also called "synagogue" and "vauderie".
The Sabbath would take place mainly on Saturday and, more precisely, during the night between Saturday and Sunday, but not all researchers agree on the days so much that today we can distinguish between "ordinary" (weekly) and "ecumenical" sabbaths "(Quarterly or quarterly). The number of participants is also discussed, which would vary from a dozen witches participating to a few thousand.
Martin Delrio, wrote:… “Witches arrive at the pre-established place by flying on horseback of an animal, over a stick, a bench, a pot or a broom; sometimes, as he even wrote by means of a gallows. Before the flight, the witches are used to anointing themselves with baby fat or other magic ointments that allow them to hover in the air and, on occasion, to become monstrous creatures or animals ". The Flemish theologian also believed that there were four different ways to go to the tregenda, namely the pure and simple imagination, the journey on foot, the demonic flight and a fourth way unknown to the witches themselves.
... "Once at the meeting place, the witches find the devil waiting for them, whom they greet with the infamous osculum (shameful kiss) and sometimes even with a kiss on the left foot or on the genitals, offering them black candles and children's navels. The Sabbath is usually held in a crossroads, in a cemetery, under a gallows, but more frequently in very remote places such as the top of a mountain (the Tonale, the Blocksberg) or a clearing (the Benevento Walnut); sometimes the witches even gathered in a precipice. The devil is present sitting on an ebony throne and almost always has monstrous features, half man half goat, equipped with horns, sometimes even with claws like those of birds ".
… “Before starting the feast, Satan welcomes the new followers and makes them practice apostasy. The rite involves denying the Christian religion and carrying out nefarious acts such as parodying mass, blasphemies or trampling on crosses, hosts or other sacred objects. To mock the Eucharist the witches are given pieces of leather and nauseating drinks that would like to imitate communion under the two species. The apostasy ceremony in some cases involves an oath of loyalty to the devil made by placing his hand on a mysterious book full of 'occult scriptures'. Then follows the rite of adoration: the witches kneel in front of Satan keeping their hands stretched behind their backs with the palms facing downwards. Another Sabbath ritual consists in the affixing of a mark by satan himself on the body of his followers, a sort of new baptism in the diabolical faith. During the witchcraft trials, this brand was patiently searched by the inquisitors and, in general, was identified by them in a part insensitive to the punctures made with pins on the bodies of the accused….
... Then the devil starts the orgy and the guests mate with each other, without distinction of sex and kinship. Again according to the main sources, during these relationships there is no sexual pleasure, the satanic coitus would be particularly bloody and devastating and the seed of the devil as cold as ice ".
But there are other descriptions of the satanic orgy, very different from those described in the first version; that reported by the French inquisitor Pierre de Lancre in the treatise Tableau de INCONSTANCE DES MAUVAIS ANGES ET DEMONS (1612) could be the most valid and corresponding to reality. De Lancre was a witch hunter in Labourd, in the French Pyrenees, and in his book he presented two young witches, Jeanne Dibasson and Marie de la Ralde, who described the Sabbath as a place of extraordinary carnal pleasures.
The book reports: .. “After the orgy, the banquet begins, characterized by the presence of the meat of unbaptized children, hanged meat or succulent food, which however does not always have a flavor; the ingested foods, among other things, are magically regenerated at the end of the meal. The banquet is followed by dance and singing accompanied by strident music and obsessive rhythm. The dance proceeds by describing a circle and the participants dance back to back, so that they cannot look at each other. At the end of the Sabbath (which occurs at midnight, or in any case at the crowing of the cock) the devil distributes magic potions and powders and confers supernatural powers on the participants, so as to allow them to perform evil when they return to their homes ".
Another version is that of Jean Bodin (Angers, 1529 - Laon, 1596 French philosopher and jurist) according to which in the Sabbath, after a last blasphemous kiss given to the devil holding a burning candle, he would catch fire and his ashes would be collected by witches to use them in their evil spells.
But in the following centuries, by virtue of the more or less prevailing role of the Catholic Church and of the various liberal movements, several treaties with different orientations were published, as in 1749 Girolamo Tartarotti published the Treaty of the Night Congress of the Lammie, relegating the participation of the poorer and more suggestible social classes. In 1862 the historian Jules Michelet published The Witch, a book that had a fair diffusion and that allowed, even if indirectly, the neo-pagan rediscovery of witchcraft in the twentieth century.
In Michelet's sabbaths the people found that sense of brotherhood that the day's anxieties and labors made people forget; those who took part ate, danced, cursed the clergymen and nobles, repudiating God and paying homage to the devil, present at the ceremony in the form of a wooden statue to which a young woman was consecrated.
In the early twentieth century, the Egyptologist and anthropologist Margaret Murray expounded her own hypothesis in her book The Witches in Western Europe, according to which witchcraft was the ancient pagan religion of the European continent professed alongside Christianity at least until the seventeenth century. But Margaret Murray's thesis, not being supported by an acceptable historiographic research method, has been rejected in recent decades by most scholars after a closer examination of its sources. This thesis, however, was supported by the historian Carlo Ginzburg (Turin, April 15, 1939 Italian historian, essayist and academic). According to Ginzburg, the witches who were tried certainly did not practice the rites of an ancient religion; however, in their depositions it would be possible to find, in addition to the nucleus of magical-diabolical ideas suggested to them by the inquisitors, a residue of mythological knowledge dating back to distant epochs in which the Sabbath would be configured as a shamanic ritual.
The roots of witchcraft are found in pagan religions. This link was highlighted by Carlo Ginzburg in his investigation of the "benandanti" of Friuli XVI century which he described as healers accused of witchcraft. Local popular beliefs attributed to benandanti, born "with a shirt", that is still wrapped in the amniotic sac (considered auspicious sign) the power to fight witches. The amniotic "shirt" was believed to have the power to protect from wounds, and the ability to exit the body like spirits to face witches and other diabolical creatures that threatened the fertility of the fields.
The benandanti fought armed with fennel branches against witches and sorcerers armed, instead, with sorghum reeds. If the benandanti won, the harvest would have been propitious, otherwise it would have been miserable.
Beliefs in the benandanti were divided into an "agrarian" strand (ecstatic battles for the fertility of the fields, generally reserved for benevolent men), in a "funeral" strand (benandanti who carried out night processions and spoke with the dead; in this activities involved mostly benandanti women) and a "therapeutic" strand (benandanti who treated diseases and wounds, practicing positive and beneficial magic in opposition to the destructive diabolical magic of witches). They were members of covenants who protected villages and fields from witches. But they were nevertheless persecuted by the Inquisition, for their rites that recalled the practices of shamans: they went into a trance and told to leave their bodies to become animals and participate in a battle against witches and sorcerers, understood as forces of evil. Many of their references were Christians: an example of religious syncretism, that is, a mixture of pagan practices and Christianity.