Witch Oven Near Florence December 19, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This story appeared in 1893. It is a witchcraft report from Italy in a period when Leland assures us that there were still many cunning women and planet rulers making their living in the country. What is unusual is the advice given. In any case, first the preliminaries…
At Ponte a Ema, about three miles from Florence, lives a peasant whose daughter is suffering from a bad form of hysteria. The girl went about the house screaming the whole night, and frightened all with her hallucinations. The priest the place stated that the girl was possessed with a devil. Masses were said, but these were of no avail. It was stated that her case was one to be cured only by a person versed in exorcising evil spirits [interesting that the priest didn’t feel up to this]. He must go to the Via Pitti [outside Palazzo Pitti?], near Florence, where, he was told, lived a famous sorceress. The peasant and his daughter went there. Arrived at the house in the Via Pitti, the peasant knocked; an old woman appeared at the door. Are you the wise woman said he. Receiving reply in the affirmative, and being ushered into a room, in which two wax candles were burning, he laid his case before her, finishing with, ‘My daughter bewitched and can only be cured, am told, by someone skilled witchcraft.’ The wise woman of the Via Pitti said she dealt with such cases. Her usual charge for driving out an ordinary devil was five lire; for exorcising Beelzebub was twenty-five lire. The peasant thereupon counted out twenty-five lire. The house was in darkness. The old woman told her guests to follow her and to kneel down every room they entered. The howling that went on in every room was truly dreadful. The peasant and his daughter were filled with confidence.
Here a few comments are necessary. These kinds of rituals are common enough. There would now typically be given a hopeless solution that the victim might use and that might just possibly work as placebo. Most self-respecting witches would avoid doing anything that could lead to conflict with others at this stage of the spell: after all that would get them noticed by the authorities. The only exception would be if the witch had been asked who had stolen something (a common request in modern and early modern communities). Given this it is somewhat strange that the wise old woman gets all Hansel and Gretel.
‘You two,’ said the old woman, ‘have only to return home and set light to your oven fire. The first person who knocks at your door the cause of your daughter’s sickness. Therefore,’ said she, turning to the ‘as soon as anyone crosses your threshold, seize and place that person, in the presence of jour daughter, the oven.’
There are British parallels to this but they involve discomforting the witch not burning her!
With this advice the pair went home, and the peasant kindled a fire as the woman had directed. The fire was kept up the whole night, but no one knocked. At the break of day a knock was heard. ‘Who is there?’ asked the peasant. ‘For heaven’s sake, give me a piece of bread,’ said the voice without. The peasant opened the door, and saw in front of him a poor old woman, trembling with cold and hunger. Without any further ado caught her in his arms and placed her in the oven. The cries of the poor creature were dreadful to hear. Fortunately some milkmen happened to be passing and they burst open the door, when the woman, more dead than alive, was taken out of the huge oven. The actors in this shocking drama are in the hands of justice.
Yikes. Other witch-inspired burnings in the late nineteenth century? drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
