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       #Post#: 27--------------------------------------------------
       The Night Battles : Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the 16th an
       d 17th Century
       By: Alfred Raeburne Date: October 27, 2014, 11:20 am
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       "Based on research in the Inquisitorial archives of Northern
       Italy, The Night Battles recounts the story of a peasant
       fertility cult centered on the benandanti, literally, "good
       walkers." These men and women described fighting extraordinary
       ritual battles against witches and wizards in order to protect
       their harvests. While their bodies slept, the souls of the
       benandanti were able to fly into the night sky to engage in epic
       spiritual combat for the good of the village. Carlo Ginzburg
       looks at how the Inquisition's officers interpreted these tales
       to support their world view that the peasants were in fact
       practicing sorcery. The result of this cultural clash, which
       lasted for more than a century, was the slow metamorphosis of
       the benandanti into the Inquisition's mortal enemies—witches.
       Relying upon this exceptionally well-documented case study,
       Ginzburg argues that a similar transformation of
       attitudes—perceiving folk beliefs as diabolical witchcraft—took
       place all over Europe and spread to the New World. In his new
       preface, Ginzburg reflects on the interplay of chance and
       discovery, as well as on the relationship between anomalous
       cultural notions and historical generalizations."~Amazon Review
  HTML http://www.amazon.com/The-Night-Battles-Witchcraft-Seventeenth/dp/1421409925/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414426569&sr=8-1&keywords=Night+Battles
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