In response to each of the question prompts below, please compose a substantial, polished post of at least ten sentences.
1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Ginzburg’s evidence for the Benandanti?
2. How convincing is Ginzburg’s belief in the ancient/pagan fertility cult roots of the Benandanti mythos?
In addition, you are required to post at least five responses (a minimum of five sentences each) to either posts by your classmates or to questions posed by the professor.
Need a 5 sentance Response to :
1. Ginzburg claims about the Benandanti has some strengths that help support his arguments and some weaknesses that don’t help him out. I belive that the some of the strengths of The Night Battles book are sources and primary information that he uses and how it relates to magic. One of the main issues with his sources and evidence is that they don’t always directly correspond to the benandanti. Ginzburg includes this stories about witch hunts and people being interview or questioned about the benandantis and their practices. He goes into detail about various members of the group and shares what they were doing during battles and meetings. He also talks about the effects they were believed to have on agriculture and how they protected the crops from the bad witches. Some of the issues is Ginzburg and the benandanti is the timeline of the their persecution and how it evolved over the centuries. He goes into detail about the cult in the later 1500s and how they were supposedly curing people and fighting off the bad witches. He jumps around in the eras and centuries that he is talking about and uses sources from completely different times. At times it can be confusing and its hard to see how it relates back to the benandanti. Towards the end of the book he talks about the lack of interest towards the group and how the view towards them was changing. I feel like he could have put that section in earlier or included it into the first chapter. It would have made the story of the benandanti more complete and easier to understand in my opinion.
I belive that Ginzburg made a convincing argument about the ancient fertility cult roots of the Benandanti. He talks about the procession of the dead and also that the group was connected to other groups dedicated to goddesses across Europe. I would say that I could belive these claims by Ginzburg. The group was very protective of the crops and made sure that they were planted correctly to insure that it resulted in a good harvest. In a society and world based on agriculture it is easy to belive that a group like the Benandanti cared about maintaining crops and had various beliefs and rituals in supporting them. They wanted to protect harvests and insure that a community had enough food and money through the crops. From reading the book I don’t see any reason to not belive what the author is saying. It makes sense that the witches of the benandanti were protecting of the most important aspects of life during their time. It would make sense that the group came from older beliefs and that through Christianity became the benandanti that Ginzburg talks about. Older beliefs becoming a part of this group is a easily believable claim from Ginzburg.
Need a 5 sentance response to:
Ginzburg’s evidence of the Benandanti existence is mainly through a collection of trial depositions of alleged Benandanti members as well as few accounts of unusual circumstances. There is indirect evidence by accounts of what may have caused an illness as the potential work of magical practitioners, not necessarily the Benandanti, actively congregating in a group to practice harmful magic. As magic is a broad category, one is not entirely positive of the origins of the Benandanti as they were also viewed similar to witches and therefore it was difficult to distinguish which magical user focused on harming people or crops and which magic users bared no ill will towards others. There is a great deal of concealment of their activities and difficulty ascertaining which magical user is friendly or foe. There is evidence that further substantiates how magic is utilized with enchanted cauls (Ginzburg, The Night Battles, p. 175) and also using cauls as spell casting paper (Ginzburg, The Night Battles, p. 176). With the potential threat that may have been posed by the Benandanti or what others at the time may have potentially viewed as another type of malevolent magic user surfacing, it must have been enough information generated about the Benandanti that emerged to even warrant the investigation by the holy office (Ginzburg, The Night Battles, p. 173). Some folks fled immediately from participating from any dangerous trial, due to the fear of torture and possibly result in being excommunicated. It is worth mentioning that there have been claims of seeing the dead, and potentially traveling amongst them specifically on Thursdays only by members of Benandanti. This activity seemed to be for Benandanti members only which makes verifying the occurrence or the ability to do so difficult. One of the occurrences involved an individual in a comatose state who had multiple witnesses of making an inhumanly loud noises of sorts which frightened everyone nearby (Ginzburg, The Night Battles, p. 177), another account was an individual pretending to spiritually be in a different room but afterwards they recanted their statement (Ginzburg, The Night Battles, p. 178). There was a notable account of Grana who provided what she believed about witches as well as witchcraft, but due to being possibly possessed, then exorcised and then tortured substantially impacts the credibility of any account given (Ginzburg, The Night Battles, p. 191). Lastly, there was an account given by one of the supposed Benandanti members called Giovanni Sion who gave a testimony with new details to an inquisitor regarding being branded by the devil’s fork, it should be noted that the inquisitor reminded Sion that he mentioned being branded by the devil “he branded me on the back of my right leg” (Ginzburg, The Night Battles, p. 104-105). It’s difficult to trust that all the testimony provided is factual, and it seems at times it’s difficult to discern the truth from the overall content. The concept of the Benandanti leave one unclear with more unanswered questions as to the group’s main intentions, but really if there was significant pressure from the inquisition or any other equivalent danger, why not renounce their membership as being part of the Benandanti?
Will require 5 sentance response to 3 more posts, will post the 3 additional tomorrow
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