The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries — Carlo Ginzburg

Author: Carlo Ginzburg
Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Format: Hardcover with dust jacket
Edition: First English edition, 1983
ISBN: 0-7100-9507-4

Condition: Good vintage second-hand hardcover condition with visible shelf wear, rubbing, age marks and handling marks to the dust jacket, including light creasing and wear to the spine ends and corners. Binding appears firm and pages are clean and readable, with light age toning consistent with age. Please see photos for the exact copy available.

The Night Battles is Carlo Ginzburg’s influential study of the benandanti, a group of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Friulian peasants who claimed to leave their bodies at night to battle witches and protect the fertility of the crops.

Drawing on Inquisition records, Ginzburg reconstructs a strange world of visionary combat, agrarian ritual, folk belief, fertility magic, and early modern religious conflict. The book examines how local traditions were gradually interpreted through the language of witchcraft, heresy, and diabolical conspiracy by church authorities.

A major work of witchcraft history and microhistory, this is an important title for readers interested in European folk magic, early modern religion, witch trials, ecstatic traditions, agrarian cults, and the hidden survival of pre-Christian belief.

About the Author:

Carlo Ginzburg is an Italian historian best known for his work in microhistory, witchcraft studies, and popular belief. His books, including The Cheese and the Worms, The Night Battles, and Ecstasies, have had a major influence on the study of folklore, heresy, religion, and early modern European culture.