ROOM OF THE TRIALS

The case of Triora

Triora is present in the memory of whom, out of curiosity or for research reasons, has had the chance to deal with the history of witch-hunts in Italy. It is the place in Italy that is associated for antonomasia with the nocturnal flying creatures. The borough is today a destination for tourists that wish to enjoy salubrious air and excellent food, but also for those interested in gothic stories. For a bizarre case of fate, the sad events that centuries ago involved a group of women in a long and dramatic trial for diabolical witchcraft has assured Triora with a second or perhaps a third life. And yet, in the beauty of the ancient nature, among alleys adorned for a feast that invite one to stray in the humid darkness, there still blows today the warning: “It really happened”. In 1588, in Triora, a number of women were accused of the worst crime that was then conceivable, that is of being followers of the heretical sect of the diabolical witches. It was so that Franchetta Borelli and the other accused who ended up in the hands of the inquisitor first and then of the commissioner Giulio Scribani were found to be adorers of Satan. According to the judges they had given themselves to the Christian Devil, with their soul and their body, in exchange for his evil powers. Their fate was forever marked, even if they were not condemned to the stake.

The archival research has recovered elements that allow us to know one of the most famous trials for sorcery instructed in our country. Events that deeply marked the relationship between the Holy Office and the Republic of Genoa and that in the meantime definitively sanctioned the new direction taken by the Roman Church towards folkloric “superstitions” and their keepers, the agents of traditional magic, the ladies of the herbs, midwives and healers who, in various ways, continued, especially among subaltern classes, to exercise a precise role in the defence and safeguard of the community’s health.

The greater caution used by the Inquisition in moving the accusation of diabolical witchcraft implied a change in the strategies adopted to contrast superstitions, which were no longer contrasted, but absorbed, in most cases, inside orthodoxy. This induced the peculiar condition of demonopathy without witch-hunt that characterized Italy in the age of the great persecutions in Europe of Sixteenth and Seventeenth century. Though maintaining the demonological structure unaltered, the ecclesiastical authorities substituted the flames of stakes with the holy water of exorcism.

Text by Paolo Portone

The witchcraft case of Triora took place in 1587-1589

Procedures were initiated by the vicar of the bishop of Albenga, G. del Pozzo, and by the vicar of the Inquisition. The first inquiries led to the arrest of women from Triora. During the initial interrogations, conducted with the use of torture, Isotta Stella and another prisoner died.

The commissioner named by the Republic of Genoa, Giulio Scribani, arrived on the 8th of June. His inquiries led to numerous arrests and to the confession to typical crimes originating from accusations of witchcraft: evil potions, infanticides, diabolical nocturnal dances. After having extended the trials to the neighbouring boroughs, the investigations were extending also to other communes of Western Liguria. Therefore, the Republic decided to entrust the auditor Serafino Petrozzi with the revision of the trials. He dismantled the inquiries due to lack of evidence and for having dealt with matters belonging to the ecclesiastical court. The accused women, he asserted, should have been tried by an ecclesiastical judge and only later by a lay one.

The commissioner was therefore invited to attain to the procedures and revise the trials for which he had come to a verdict and to provide sufficient proof. Following the indications he received, Scribani remade the trials and on 30 August confirmed the death sentences.

Such decision was validated by the Senate of Genoa on 13 September 1588. Five of the accused women were sent to Genoa.

In the summer of 1588 the inquisitor of Genoa demanded his intervention, claiming the rights of his court on the case. On the 27th of September the Doge of Genoa wrote to the Roman Holy Office asserting that he had accepted the demands of the inquisitor.

The documents were sent to Rome. At this point, on the 2nd of December, the cardinal secretary of the Holy Office G. A. Santoro intervened to stop the judges, accusing them of “inhumanity and cruelty” for the procedures they had adopted. The final verdicts were issued between 1588 and 1589. In general, they ordered that the interrogations should be redone and that the bodies of the crimes should be sought.

In the end, twenty-one verdicts were issued. The body of Isotta Stella was exhumed and given proper ecclesiastical burial. The only man who was inquired, Biagio de Cagne, was sentence to abjure in Triora. The 19 women who were inquired were sentenced to salutary penance (3) and to public abjuration in Triora (7). Instead, those of them who had not confirmed their initial confessions were released (8). Just for one of the accused it was required that the Inquisition of Genoa should instruct a trial and send it to Rome.

From writings by Paolo Fontana

The myth of the Sabbah through witchcraft trials

The analysis of witchcraft trials of the Seventeenth century allows us to make a comparison between different areas in Europe where the stereotype of the Sabbah was diffused. Contrasting with the general homogeneity of the narrations given by the accused – be it the inquiries conducted by Pierre de l’Ancre in Labourd in 1609, or the autodafè in the Basque Country in 1611, the episcopal persecution in Bamberg between 1609 and 1633, the witch-hunts that followed the Catholic recovery of Bavaria (1623-1631), the trials held in Salzburg between 1675 and 1681, or the outbreak of suspects and accusation in Lutheran Sweden (1676) – some peculiar cases catch the eye, deserving a specific reflection.

One of these cases is the witch-hunt conducted by Matthew Hopkins in East Anglia between 1645 and 1647. As known, the confessions of the accused marked not so much the role of the Devil, who was not adored by the presumed witches, but rather that of family demons deriving from popular traditions (Murray 1821; Di Simplicio 2005, p. 310).

The Italian case is very interesting. In regards to the frequency and pervasiveness of the stereotype of the Sabbah in trials, Central and Southern Italy appear very different from Northern Italy (for which we should recall at least the ruthless hunts in Val Camonica and the diocese of Como, 1518-1521, in Val Mesolcina, 1583 and in Triora, 1587-1590).

One should keep in mind that only «ten women among those accused of sorcery, who underwent the judges’ pressing and threatful interrogations, declared they had taken part in the Sabbah» among «several hundreds of people, men and women of all ages, education and social condition […] for a total of 234 files divided between denunciations and trials» that have been studies by Di Simplicio for Siena (2005, p. 301).

In this sense, we should also highlight the observation made by Paolo Portone concerning the resistance made by the clergy against the transformation of indications of popular magic, sorcery and charms in the crime of diabolical witchcraft: a behaviour this of the so-called «southern tolerance» that should be carefully considered as characterizing a social context that rarely expressed – and in an insignificant form – in the narrations of the accused the participation in the Sabbah in trials for magic.

From writings by Gian Maria Panizza, Director of the Archivio di Stato di Alessandria