Historical method: a recorded belief or accusation is not independent proof of the supernatural event described.
Why the analogy arose
Accounts of spirit travel, nocturnal struggle and communal benefit resemble patterns identified by comparative historians in other cultural settings. Ginzburg placed such parallels within a larger inquiry into European popular belief.
The evidentiary burden
Similarity does not prove contact or a common ancestor. A direct historical relationship would need transmission mechanisms, chronology, geographical links and features that cannot be explained by broad narrative resemblance.
The critique
Nardon’s reassessment, as summarized in a scholarly reference, resists overextending such comparisons. The strongest archive presentation keeps the analogy available as a research question without using it as an uncontested label for the historical Benandanti.
Source and revision record
- Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles (updated edition, 2026)Publisher listing · Publisher bibliographic and interpretive overview; updated edition dated September 8, 2026.
- Santarelli and Weber, Benandanti, EreticopediaScholarly reference · Survey of agrarian, funerary and therapeutic strands, with discussion of scholarly disagreement.