Triora, Anno Domini 1587
A History of Witchcraft in Western Liguria
(Part Two)
by Ippolito Edmondo Ferrario
To my daughter Agata
Do the dead communicate with us?
The cult of the deceased as it was practised in Triora, much like those found in other villages in western Liguria, seems to confirm the theory espoused above: there is clear evidence of special veneration for the dead with features that reflect pagan practices. In particular, on the night of Halloween, the inhabitants of Triora would make up empty beds with clean sheets, leave lights burning on the threshold of their houses and prepare meals, in the belief that the dead would come back and spend a few hours in what used to be their homes. Doors were left wide open to enable them to move around unhindered. So the dead were believed to come back to earth as real entities at certain times of year; the living were expected not only to remember them with official religious services, but also to ease their pain or placate their anger. Later on, we shall see how this tradition ties in with belief common to much of Europe that derives from the legends of the Wild Hunt and of the Processions of the Dead.
In the early years of the last century, the people of Triora still used to make offerings of wheat and dried chestnuts in front of the Collegiate church on the evening of the first day of November. The purpose of the practice of providing Food for the Dead, by putting food inside the grave, next to the deceased, or outside the tomb, was to persuade the dead to come back among the living to assuage their hunger. Michel Ranft, in his 1728 dissertation De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis, and Philip Rohr, in his 1679 Dissertatio Historico-philosophica de Masticatione Mortorum, wrote that, once they had finished the reserves of food provided in the grave, the dead would start eating their winding sheets ands ultimately their own flesh.
Once again in Triora, as in other villages in the Ligurian hinterland, great bonfires would be lit on the night of St. John’s Day to exorcise the fear of the dead. Ferraironi interpreted this practice as a simple display of popular joy that was already in use in the fifteenth century. Other authors, though, do not hesitate an instant in focusing attention on the Saint, to whom a sanctuary is dedicated in Triora, at San Giovanni dei Prati, on Mount Ceppo, where the ancient procession is held twice a year: once on 24 June, the anniversary of the Saint’s birth, and once on 29 August, the day he was beheaded. Jacopo da Varagine wrote about “illuminations” of the Saint and the scholar Aidano Schmuckher has no trouble defining him as the saint of purifying fire.
This is how Grosso described the night of 24 June, using precise terms that convey connotations of exorcism.
“The peasants would use torches to light the piles of dried twigs and bones, in the illusion that the smoke would chase dragons and evil spirits away from their valleys: according to tradition, the witches would come down from the forests on that night, in search of villages. Blessed palm fronds and olive branches were hung from windows and on doors, together with new brooms, whose purpose was to wear the witches, as they would count the sorghum twigs, one by one, before entering the house.”
(Il Mercantile, 24 June 1965).
Similar rituals observed on the same night, which coincides with the summer solstice, have roots that can be traced back to the Ambarvalia, already mentioned by Virgil, and were dedicated to the goddess Ceres to propitiate good harvests and ward off all evil influences.
Another piece that fits into the puzzle now taking shape is the presence of an imposing menhir dating back to the third millennium BC and used for sacrifices and offerings, situated a short distance away from Triora, at the Rock of San Lorenzo on the Mezzaluna (Crescent) Pass.
All of these pieces combine to convey a perception of the existence of an archaic fear of evil that has been a constant feature of the life and history of Triora. Large numbers of votive images, chapels and holy shrines (known as géixette in the local dialect) can be found in the lanes and alleyways of the village and on the paths outside its ancient walls, still bearing silent witness to a profound religious devotion. To penetrate the mind of the ancients is an arduous task, if not indeed an impossible one Coppo and Panizza have commented as much, rather acutely:
“In any case, we shall never know which effigy the common folk of Triora, of Corte, of Molini of or Andagna had in mind as they went about their everyday work or kept watch of an evening, as they listened to their priests’ sermons or attended their festivities, around the cradle, in the marriage chamber, on their deathbeds, whenever mention was made of those women that we have seen defined as evil by the Inquisitors”
(C. Coppo, G.M. Panizza, La pace impossibile. Indagini ed ipotesi per una ricerca sulle accuse di stregoneria a Triora, 1587-1590, 1990).
Triora, a land of Saints
In the course of a constant war between the forces of good and of evil, fought out between invisible powers within the walls of this Ligurian village, there are numerous vestiges of the saints and blessed ones who left signs of their passage through Triora.
In 1404, the Dominican St. Vincenzo Ferreri founded the Confraternity of Flagellants of St. John the Baptist. In 1418, Triora was visited by St. Bernardino of Siena, a fervent preacher, to whom a little rural church was dedicated; still perfectly preserved today, it is worth a visit to see a particular fresco of the Last Judgement which will be discussed later on. In 1760, St. John Lantrua, who was to die a martyr’s death in China in 1816, was born in Triora to a family that originally came from Briga. In 1901, Monsignor Tommaso Reggio, who was very fond of Triora and was beatified a century later by John Paul II, died in the Ligurian village after a brief stay to witness to erection of the monument to the Saviour on nearby Mount Saccarello. Triora was also the site of the death in 1927, surrounded by an aura of holiness, of Margherita Luigia Brassetti, a tireless organiser of social assistance projects, who has been described by Amabile Ferraironi, the nephew of the Triora historian Father Francesco, in these terms:
“(…) as a beautiful young girl, whose mother was descended from the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, while her father was an officer in the Royal Army, she made her rich inheritance and her own labour available to charitable works.”
(A. Ferraironi, L’Alta Valle Argentina, Third impression, 2000).
Many a hermit has also eked out a solitary existence in this area, caring for picturesque hermitages and cohabiting with the official religion. Their numbers include one Pre Presin of Pantasina, a devotee of Saints Cosma and Damian, the hermit of the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Lampedusa at Castellaro, another who lived at the sanctuary of St. Faustino at Aigovo and, lastly, the one who cared for the Sanctuary of Loreto, who died in the cholera epidemic in 1874 and lies “buried under an olive tree opposite the front of the church”, as Ferraironi reported in his Cultura e Tradizioni in Alta Valle Argentina (1991).
If by this stage the foundations have been laid for justifiably supposing that Triora has a certain predisposition for things transcendent, it is actually the history of the 1587 trial, whose records are preserved in the State Archives in Genoa, that obliges us to analyse the village’s extremely difficult and complex social and economic atmosphere. In the period of its heyday, which we can place at some time between 1200 and 1500, Triora numbered no less than 1,500 households, could supply troops (as indeed it did during the battle of Meloria, in the thirteenth century, to which it sent a substantial contingent of 250 crossbowmen) and was defended by five fortresses.
The theories and research work that follow take into account both the official history of the area and the rich heritage of customs and traditions that are ever the most fertile terrain for anthropology.
The Trial
Was the famine orchestrated?
The story of the trial has always been told starting from the summer of 1587, a year when Triora was afflicted by a terrible famine that had already been doing its worst for two years Ferraironi painted a broader historical picture that expanded to include Italy as a whole:
“A few years later, a great famine also struck the city of Rome. Hunger reaped numerous victims in all the poorer neighbourhoods and great numbers of those who tried to flee to the countryside were later found as corpses”
(F. Ferraironi, Le streghe e l’Inquisizione, 1955).
For years, this famine has been identified as the root cause of the popular malcontent that eventually brimmed over into the witch-hunt. Yet more recent investigations conducted by the scholars Panizza and Coppo have thrown light on a new interpretation of this period of penury, one that would have it attributable more to the economic situation than to natural causes. The documents that have come down to us actually reveal that there was a speculative manoeuvre afoot on the part of the Triora landowners, whose aim was to exert rigid control over the sale of the village’s food reserves. When this led to the obvious malcontent of the people and the difficulty they encountered in coming by food, the next step was to look for a scapegoat, which was duly found when the accusations of witchcraft were launched against women, who thus paid for the sins of the landowners.
New theories from an analysis of the Libri Baptizatorum e Mortuorum
At the same time as the facts listed above, there has also emerged the real, but hitherto concealed, phenomenon of a high rate of infant mortality. Analysing the parish registers entitled Libri Baptizatorum e Mortuorum that are still preserved today, Panizza and Coppo have discovered a series of inconsistencies underlying one of the commonest of accusations laid at the door of the witches: the accusation of infanticide. The statistics speak clearly for the ten years starting in 1586: fifty babies were baptised in Triora in the course of a year and only one or two children died when they reached the age of one year. The two researchers from Alessandria suggest that those children who died in childbirth or when newly born were not even registered. This anomaly is attributed to complicity on the part of the parish priest who, it is suggested, would have been reluctant to register the deaths of children who had often been “baptised” by midwives… in other words by the witches.
The place where the cadavera puerorum qui sine Baptismo moriantur (corpses of children who died without baptism) has been identified as the country church of San Bernardino, located outside the village walls. From 1518 to 1668, the parish priests were all “supplied” by the Gastaldi family, which oversaw the enlargement and numerous projects in favour of the church of San Bernardino, where the children were buried and where it is now possible to see a valuable fresco of the Last Judgement, complete with heretics being cut into pieces, witches thrown into a cauldron and unbaptised children destined for limbo protected by the gigantic wings of a bat The theory goes that this fresco bears witness to the difficulties encountered by the ecclesiastical authorities, in this case the parish priest, in making headway against deeply rooted customs and beliefs that often conflicted with the official religion and its diktats. So there were conflicts, but there was also tacit complicity. This is one of the darker points that are now eating away at the foundations of the first historical accounts of the trial.
Enter the Inquisition
The local Parliament, “whose members were in the main coarse, ignorant people” (S. Oddo, 1994), held an extraordinary meeting in the piazza of the Collegiate church to call for the authorities to intervene to root out the witches, who were considered responsible for the famine. A public fund was set up to cover the trial costs.
“(…) that 500 scudos be spent and, should they not be sufficient, that also lands and properties be put up for sale.”
(S. Oddo, Bagiue. Le streghe di Triora. Fantasia e realtà, 1994).
Stefano Carrega was the Podestà, or governor (an office held by outsiders), who put the official seal on the intervention of the Inquisitors – and lost no time in doing so, asking for them both in Genoa and from the Bishop of Albenga. A few days after he made his request, the Vicar of the Genoa Inquisitor and the Vicar of the Albenga Inquisitor, the priest Girolamo del Pozzo, arrived in Triora. Del Pozzo initiated the proceedings by celebrating Mass in the Collegiate church; during his sermon, the priest made use of all his skills as an orator to inflame the people’s already impassioned souls. Not content to describe the atrocities and evil practised by witches, he also invited the faithful to denounce them.
Several private homes were immediately made over for use as prisons; heavy iron bars not found in the neighbouring houses can still be seen today in the house known as the Meggia, in the area of Rizettu towards the top of the village.
A first group of twenty women was arrested immediately: by applying torture and following up the accusations thus generated, a total of some thirty women was soon behind bars, accused of witchcraft. Thirteen women, four girls and one boy confessed. It was not long before the first prison deaths occurred: Isotta Stella, aged sixty, a member of an old noble family of Triora, and another woman who died in an attempt to flee one of the gaols.
“The poor witch who threw herself off a lofty balcony to put an end to the torture, knowing that she would be crippled by the fall, having been threatened with the pendulum torture: three days later, she died”
(S. Oddo, Bagiue. Le streghe di Triora.Fantasia e realtà, 1994).
The Council of Elders
At this stage in the proceedings, a statement was made by the other political body on the scene in Triora, the Council of Elders: as it was concerned at the situation, the stance it adopted was opposed to the trial. All the scholars who have studied the case have focused their attention on the vested interests of the Council, which was made up of members of the village’s noble and wealthier families
“(…) As long as those accused and tortured were peasant women, they did not lift a finger, but when the accusations started to involve aristocratic ladies, they felt obliged to intervene.”
(S. Oddo Bagiue. Le streghe di Triora. Fantasia e realtà, 1994).
In a letter dated 13 January 1588, the Elders complained that the thirty women in fact included “those ladies of this place who have never given grounds to any person to suspect that they be anything less than persons of honour.”
But their protest was aimed at the method used by the Inquisitors in their proceedings, in other words the practice of relying on informers whose simple statements did not need to be backed up by any concrete proof, “because the said vicars proceed against the majority of them by virtue of accusations laid by others likewise imprisoned, without giving them any chance of defence nor copy of proofs”.
The Parliament met in session.
The figure of a doctor, one Luca Borelli, who years later was to be accused of conspiracy against the Republic, emerges from an examination of the records preserved in the Genoa State Archives.
“(…) as its members were in the main coarse, ignorant people, it was disturbed by certain details and in particular by a doctor of these parts who appeared before the said Parliament and stated that it should not be done, because it would be a challenge to the integrity of their Lordships the Vicars with whom the doctor is very close, such that it was not done”.
(From the letter sent by the Elders of Triora to the Doge and Governors of Genoa, 13 January 1588).
The outlines of the intrigue between opposing forces and of the power play mentioned previously gradually start acquiring clarity in this phase.
From the very beginning, the doctor Luca Borelli rather strangely disagreed with the Elders, who represented Triora’s most important families, including the Borelli family. What might this position adopted by the doctor conceal?
In reply to the Elders, the Parliament was united in its support of the two Inquisitors’ work and the Council’s requests were ignored.
The Triora Parliament supports the trial
The letter sent by the Council to the Republic was dated 13 January 1588. A careful reading of that letter reveals an inconsistency that argues in favour of the theory of the orchestrated famine introduced at the beginning of the history of the trial.
In their letter, Triora’s nobles speak about the hunger that had afflicted the village for the previous two years, stating that “in this place there was such abundance of victuals that we knew not where to send them”. It is therefore fair to wonder why, in the presence of such an abundance of food stores, it only took two poor summers to bring Triora to the brink of starvation. The same letter, signed by Giovanni Battista Giauni, Teodoro Donzella and Silvestro Gandolfo, reveals not only the reasons underlying the complaints (the accusations launched against the ladies), but also an elementary awareness of the rights of the individual, which were violated continuously during the trials. In addition, it also throws light on one of the commonest judicial errors at the root of all witchcraft proceedings: the fact that they relied on confessions forced from the accused by their accusers.
“From the beginning, the Vicar of the Holy Inquisition preached in the public pulpit in this place to the congregation of all the people [about] what such witches could do, and in their grave torments it may be doubted but that they were saying that which they had heard said, about that which the women were suspected of having done.”
(From the letter sent by the Elders of Triora to the Doge and Governors of Genoa, 13 January 1588).
So it was the Council of Elders that launched the first accusation of the use of torture as a means for extorting unfounded confessions. The Elders predicted that the situation could lead to the entire village being incarcerated on the basis of similar presumptions.
“(…) these people are beset thus by the greatest desperation, inasmuch as at this time there are more than two hundred persons named, and if this continue in such a way as has been done thus far, then the greater part of the population and maybe all of it will end up being named”
(From the letter sent by the Elders of Triora to the Doge and Governors of Genoa, 13 January 1588).
The Republic’s answer was not long in coming. Only three days later, the Doge and Governors of Genoa wrote a letter to the Bishop of Albenga, Monsignor Luca Fieschi, asking for precise information about the inquisitors’ operations, so as to verify whether there was any foundation to the complaints voiced to them by the Council of Elders. Justice ran its course and the Bishop asked Del Pozzo for explanations, which the latter did not hesitate to furnish, in a detailed report of his work. On 21 January 1588, he wrote to his superior, answering every accusation and reassuring him of his best intentions about the length of the trials. This letter is an impassioned defence of the Inquisitor.
It contains several passages that provide food for thought.
First of all, Del Pozzo referred to the condition of the imprisoned women, whose custody was entrusted to the other women of the village.
“(…) and they have always been kept separate from those who were then confessed and convinced, always guarded by persons chosen by those responsible, to whom as to every person they were prohibited to speak unless with express licence, under pain of excommunication.”
(From the letter sent by the Vicar of the Bishop of Albenga to the Bishop, 21 January 1588).
In the absence of concrete evidence, Girolamo Del Pozzo argued the presence of evil as the main element supporting the entire accusation, citing the case of the woman who tried to escape from prison.
“(…) tempted by the Devil, she attempted an escape by ruining the dress she was wearing and adapting it for use as a rope, but as it was not suitable, she fell as soon as she was outside the window.”
(From the letter sent by the Vicar of the Bishop of Albenga to the Bishop, 21 January 1588).
By this stage, the only bulwark of defence working in favour of the imprisoned women, which until this time had been the Council of Elders, rather incredibly withdrew its support. An analysis of the records provides space for theorising that Del Pozzo gave verbal reassurance to the members of the Council, guaranteeing that the ladies of Triora would remain untouched.
The attitude adopted by the Podestà, Stefano Carrega, is to the say the least somewhat bizarre: he sent two letters to the Doge and the Governors, defending the work of the two Inquisitors beyond a shadow of a doubt. Carrega reiterated his people’s intention to seek out and exterminate the evil that had wormed its way into the village and acquits the two priests of the accusation of having caused the death of sixty year old Isotta Stella, citing the Devil invoked by the witch during her time in prison. The poor woman had in fact died without receiving the last rites.
“(…) it is and has always been the will of these people that said evil women be totally extirpated and uprooted from these villages and all, with one voice, in the Parliament sitting in session, have shouted with souls afire that they be eradicated and continue so to shout, and not only have they wanted that 500 scudos be spent for this fact, but more so they want their own properties and their lands to be spent rather than see this enterprise fail.”
(From the letter sent by the Podestà of Triora to the Doge and Governors, 20 January 1588).
In the same letter, the Podestà drew a positive balance of the two Inquisitors’ operations: eighteen witches had confessed their guilt, their numbers also including several young girls, one thirteen years old, one only nine and the last eleven.
In the meantime, death had already claimed the lives of the first two innocent women. And once again the Podestà reiterated his complete agreement with the work of the Inquisitors in the words that follow. It is legitimate to wonder why he was quite so enthusiastic in his approval, especially in the light of the uncertainty expressed by the Council of Elders.
“(…) but hearing with my own ears the shouting of the people and Parliament, not only of this place but also of its outlying hamlets, that they wanted at all costs that the evil women be punished and confided much in the valour and integrity of the said holy Inquisitors.”
(From the letter sent by the Podestà of Triora to the Doge and Governors, 20 January 1588).
When it received these statements, the Genoese government was reassured about Del Pozzo’s work in Triora, although not every suspicion was put to rest
“Yet not all doubts had fled: a great many uncertainties were generated by the cases of the two witches who had died because they were spurred on by the Devil, the strident disagreements between the first letter from the Council of Elders and the subsequent ones and the Podestà’s admission that there might be some unfavourable voices in the Parliament”
(S. Oddo Bagiue. Le streghe di Triora. Fantasia e realtà, 1994).
The Inquisitors leave Triora
The month of January 1588 turned out to be one of the most critical periods for the trial. After the exchange information and explanations described above, the records suddenly slow down and almost come to a halt.
At the end of the month, the two Inquisitors departed from Triora, leaving a group of women behind them in prison awaiting sentencing.
Discontent increased among the inhabitants of Triora, culminating in a session of the Parliament, which mandated the notary Gio Batta Basadonne to take up the question of the “witches” with the Genoese government.
On 7 February 1588, Basadonne wrote a letter to the attention of the Doge, in which he made a direct request for a complete revision of the trials that would proceed to the sentencing of those women found guilty, but also to setting free those innocent women who were still being held in prison. It was not before May that anything happened as a result: at the beginning of that month, the Dominican inquisitor Father Alberto Fragarolo arrived in Triora to start making things happen with the trial. During his interrogations, the Dominican did not extort a single confession, except for the one made by a thirteen year old girl who then recanted during the service in the church of Santissimi Pietro e Marziano Martiri on 3 May and was duly set free. Having achieved nothing but this modest result, the priest left Triora without solving the problem of the impasse he had found on arriving there.....
