Historical method: a recorded belief or accusation is not independent proof of the supernatural event described.
A second major strand
Ginzburg’s work includes an extended discussion of processions of the dead, and scholarly overviews emphasize the importance of a funerary strand. Women are particularly associated with some of these accounts, though records should be examined individually rather than generalized beyond their evidence.
Why this challenges a simple definition
If the category includes both agrarian defenders and people reporting encounters with the dead, it may conceal several practices placed under a shared name. That possibility changes what one means by “the Benandanti tradition.”
Comparison without flattening
Related European accounts are useful for testing analogies. Similarity in imagery or function cannot alone establish direct transmission or a single trans-European movement.
Source and revision record
- Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles (2013 edition)Publisher listing · Accessible edition record with table of contents.
- Santarelli and Weber, Benandanti, EreticopediaScholarly reference · Survey of agrarian, funerary and therapeutic strands, with discussion of scholarly disagreement.