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The legend of WitchesBENEVENTO’S WITHCES «Sotto l'acqua e sotto u viento, Sotto a noce e Beneviento»Benevento is well-know as “city of witches”(or, more exactly, of the “janare”). The fame is in all probability due to the pagan ceremonies that the Longobards made near the river Sabato: some screaming women jumped around a walnut-tree from where hung snakes, or some warriors on horseback stuck a goat skin hanging from a tree. These ceremonies seemed as demoniac for the catholic people of Benevento that believed to see some sabbath witchcraft. Than the rulers understood that it was more convenient to accept the religion of the people of Benevento. This political estimation made the new masters to be converted in 664. This fact assured a long and permanent prosperity to the city and its governors, and made the throwing down of the holy tree by Saint Barbato. In this place he lets erect a temple dedicated to Saint Mary in voting. However in the following centuries it didn’t calm, on the contrary, gets rich of new elements. Witches, coming from everywhere, flying like the wind, would joined under a walnut-tree, that is the Longobards’ tree inexplicably revived. Here would take place banquets and revels together with the demon, after that the witches would make sorceries against the population. There were many women brought for witchcraft that effected sabbath under the walnut-tree of Benevento. Still today the belief survives as popular superstition. The legend tells that the witches, indistinguishable from the other women during the day, in the night greased their armpits (or their chests) with an oil and took wing saying a magic sentence (that is at the beginning of the page), on horseback of a sorghum broom or, according to other opinions, on the back of a “nigger castrated” turning their back on. At the same time the witches became incorporeal, spirits like the wind: in fact the favourite nights for the flight were stormy nights. Moreover people believe that there was a bridge in particular from where the witches of Benevento used to fling, that so was called bridge of the “janare”, destroyed in the second world war. However witches of different origins take part in sabbath under the walnut-tree. It’s consisted of banquets, dances, revels with spirits and demons in shape of cats or goats and it’s was also called “games of Diana”. After meetings, the witches sowed terror. People believed that they were able to cause abortions, to generate deformity in newborns inflicting those atrocious sufferings, and also that touched like a gust of wind the sleepers and were the cause of the oppression sense that sometimes we feel when we are lie-down. People was afraid also about some more “innocent” spites, for example that they, during the night, interlaced the horse’s manes in the stables or rode them for all the night and people in the morning found them all wet with perspiration. The “janare” thanks to their incorporeal consistence, entered into the house passing under the door. Therefore people used to let a broom or some salt near the door: the witch would count all the yarns of the broom or all the grain of salt before to enter, but in the meantime would arrived the day and she would compelled to go away. |
