Witches of Benevento
For a brief period during Roman times, the cult of Isis, Egyptian goddess of the moon, proliferated in Benevento; also, the emperor Domitian had a temple erected in her honor.
Under Duke Romuald I they worshiped a golden viper (perhaps winged, or with two heads), which probably had some connection with the cult of Isis, since the goddess was able to control serpents.
They began to develop a singular rite near the Sabato river, which the Lombards celebrated in honor of Wotan, father of the gods: the hide of a goat was hung on a sacred tree.
The warriors earned the favor of the god by rushing frantically around the tree on horseback and striking the hide with their lances, with the intent of tearing off shreds, which they then ate.
According to the legend, when Benevento was besieged by forces of the Byzantine emperor Constans II in 663, Duke Romuald promised Barbatus to renounce paganism if the city—and the duchy—were saved.
Saint Barbatus cut down the sacred tree and tore out its roots, and on that spot he had a church built, called Santa Maria in Voto.
Romuald continued to worship the golden viper in private, until his wife Teodorada handed it over to St. Barbatus, who melted it down to make a chalice for the Eucharist.
The meetings under the walnut tree, one of the main features of the witch legend, therefore very probably came from these Lombard customs; nevertheless, they are also found in the practices of the cultus of Artemis (the Greek goddess who can in part be assimilated to Isis), carried out in the Anatolian region of Caria.
This explains the demonization of rituals like those of the Lombard women in Benevento, who became "witches" in a wider sense with regard to how they were understood by popular culture.
The legend has it that the witches, indistinguishable from the other women by day, at night anointed their underarms (or their breasts) with an unguent and took off flying, pronouncing a magic phrase (recounted above), riding on brooms of sorghum.
[8] These sabbats consisted of banquets, dances, and orgies with spirits and demons in the form of cats or goats, and they also came to be called the "games of Diana."
Also feared were certain more "innocent" pranks, which, for example, would make the horses be found in their stables in the morning with their manes braided, or sweating from having been ridden all night.
In some small Campanian villages, rumors circulated among the elderly that they kidnapped newborns from their cradles in order to be passed among them, throwing them on the fire, and finishing the game by bringing them back to where they had taken them from.
In popular beliefs the legend of the witches still survives in part today, enhanced by anecdotes and manifested in superstitious attitudes and fear of supernatural events.
A local historian, Abele De Blasio, reported that in the archiepiscopal archive of Benevento were kept the records of about two hundred trials for witchcraft, largely destroyed in 1860 to avoid saving documents that could further inflame the anticlerical tendencies that accompanied the era of Italian unification.
Italian and foreign poets and writers, as well as musicians and others, relate tales of the witches, taking inspiration from the Benevento legend.
