As we can infer from the previous examples, the evidence of maleficium was indicating more than the vampiristic uses of the witch, the pressure, and the touch of the aggressor. The contusions showed a drained and ruined body, which, more than punctured or bitten, was touched by another powerful individual. Despite the belief that the witch could do nothing without the devil, which was diffused throughout both the Protestant and the Catholic world, here the witch was endowed to a certain extent with supernatural force contained in the body. This idea seems to be confirmed by the fact that those who harmed often had reputations as healers, as in the case of Giandomenico Fei, or of Rufina dello Sbardellato, who was called “saint Rufina” by the people of her village, because she knew all the curative herbs and the remedies. These kinds of witches could sometimes cure their own victims, breaking the negative spells. The category of individuals who both waste and heal, merged with the notion of the primary witch, known across Europe since antiquity, which was a person naturally maleficent, able to spread sickness. As has been discussed by Éva Pócs regarding witchcraft in Eastern Europe, this witch had a strong relationship with
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197 the superhuman creatures that influenced or harmed the living community: witches were therefore human individuals with demonic features.426
Witches could have powers which were assigned to the dead or demons. In the Tuscan context examined by Di Simplicio we find, for example, that in the town of Pistoia it was believed that the dead could touch living creatures, leaving a visible sign on their bodies, generally at the rear base of the head, causing illness.427 In a case from the Modenese area, in 1531, the healer Brighento attributed the mysterious lameness of Maddalena Ferrari to an “evil shadow” on which she had trampled by accident. Proceeding from a pain in the knee, the sickness “dried up the woman as a piece of wood”, and a doctor, questioned about it, replied that the woman had been bewitched and possessed no more blood in her body.428 The effects on the corporeal fluids are here ascribed to a shadow, which could belong either to a human being or to a demon, whose negative connotation is enough to cause a supernatural interference with human health. Both the power of the dead or of the witch, as a humanized demon or an extraordinary person, passed through their bodies as a kind of direct contagion, in a fluid system where the skins and the rigid structures did not constitute a protection.
Applying the theories about blood and the body which we have met in the previous chapters, we will try now to explain how the witch damaged the victim. Through touch the witch was working on the bodily fluids and the blood, hindering its movements. Stopping the motion, the humours stagnated or were overheated, disrupting the regular state of the body.
If we look again at Sicily and to the tradition of the healers and the donne di fora, we find among their cures the capacity to dissolve or break the fattura that is the most common form of maleficium, generally also called toccatura di strega (witch’s knot or witch’s touch). The female healer Minica Griega, called to cure a bewitched child, tied him up with a thread and then she cut it, pronouncing some mysterious words. She was applying a kind of sympathetic magic, according to which sickness was understood as an obstacle, something which binding the victim.429 This belief remained almost unchanged in the south of Italy until recent times. Exploring the magical context of modern Lucania, the ethnologist Ernesto de Martino explained
426
Oscar Di Simplicio, Autunno della Stregoneria, pp. 134, 150; Éva Pócs , Between the Living and
the Dead, pp. 59-71
427
Oscar Di Simplicio, Autunno della Stregoneria, p. 319
428
Matteo Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, p. 116
429
198 how a fattura worked on the bewitched body. In Lucan popular magic fascination is also defined as an attaccatura di sangue, a process of coagulation of the victim’s blood.430 Through the spell the blood is stopped inside the veins. If in modern times this explanation is symbolic, in the early modern period it was probably thought a real event, which was confirmed by medical theories. The blood could be clogged by inserting sharp objects, pins, needles, thorns, in small figures of clay. In this case the spell could work both directly, through sympathetic magic, and also as an invocation of the devil, indicating to him who and where to attack. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Sicilian healer, a “man from the outside”, uomo di fora, Vincencio Librino, after visiting a sick woman, affirmed that she had been bewitched. He was able to exhibit a doll transfixed by several nails that, according to him, was the magical object through which the spell worked. He started to take out the nails from the figures providing relief to the patient and gradually healing her.431 On the other hand the witch Piera at Massa in Tuscany in 1587 confessed to have transfixed three nails in a figure of clay to invoke the devil and cast a spell on a designed victim.432 Piercing wax dolls or pieces of cloth with pins or needles was employed also in love magic. In 1519 the Modenese witches Costanza Barbetta and Anastasia “la Frappona” were accused to have taught to several women how to obtain the love of a desired man, sticking pins in to the hem of their clothes, as if it was the lover’s heart itself.433
In the context of high magic, conjuration also could become part of maleficium. For example, in the first half of the sixteenth century in the Modenese area among the accusations towards Chiara Signorini, suspected of the bewitchment of Margherita Pazzani, made the conjuration of the “five devils”. These were the words of the spell: “Five fingers I place on the wall (on the ground)/ five devils I conjure/ nine drops of blood they draw from her/ six they give to me, three they keep for their labors/ and may she never have peace nor rest/ nor sleep nor good health/ and may not be able to lie nor move nor work in the fields/ until she will come speak to me”. As written by Matteo Duni “the goal was to make Margherita’s health problems worsen by symbolically having the devil ‘draw blood’ from her, until she changed her attitude
430
Ernesto De Martino, Sud e Magia. (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2002),p. 15
431
Sofia Messana, Inquisitori, negromanti e streghe nella Sicila Moderna, p. 555
432
Oscar Di Simplicio, Autunno della stregoneria, p. 67
433
199 towards Chiara”.434 Though the physical aggression was pursued by the devils, it seems that they were subordinated to the witch, who was the main character on the scene of the maleficent ritual.
Witches could cause disease also unwillingly as we have already seen in England. We meet again the stereotype of the old woman, who spread evil vapours from her corrupted body, but significantly, here it endured up to recent times. In fact it had originated not only in the specific system of early modern medical beliefs and in the humoral theories, but in a religious context still valuable in contemporary Italy, where the wonderful and the sacred still mixed with the human dimension.