Historical method: a recorded belief or accusation is not independent proof of the supernatural event described.
Narrated experience
The reported activities were understood in a framework where the body remained asleep while the spirit traveled. The claim is historically significant because it contrasts with the standard inquisitorial categories through which officials tried to interpret it.
Competing readings
A historian can study the imagery as a collective belief, an account of dream experience, an ecstatic tradition, a narrative shaped in interrogation or some mixture. Surviving records may not permit discrimination among all possible explanations.
What is not asserted
The archive does not claim to verify literal travel outside the body. It explains how historical people described it and how others recorded, evaluated or reclassified those descriptions.
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.
- Imagining the Witches’ Sabbath (Cambridge University Press)Scholarly book · Modern scholarly treatment of the interpretive construction of the sabbath.