Triora – The Last Italian Witch Trial, 1587-1589

Famine, Fungus, Corruption and Inquistion in the Italian Alps

Sep 4, 2009

The horrors of medieval prejudice & fanaticism are alive in Triora, a crows' nest of a village clasped to a rocky peak high above the Italian coastline some 40 km away.

The crow is perhaps an ironic image as this sleepy hamlet will forever be linked with witchcraft and the echoes of a disastrous episode that continues to seep from its rich esoteric past.

Witchcraft and Grain Fungus in a Time of Famine

The possible reasons why a group of local women were accused of witchery and detained in appalling conditions vary as much as the retelling of the story itself. Some researchers point to the acute famine that gripped the Italian peninsula at the time. Was it then hunger that incited the swell of supernatural allegation that swept the town? Maybe, but there are some clues to the contrary: translations of local records uphold that there was, in fact, an abundance of food in reserve - so much so that there was confusion as to where to store the excess.

Another theory, still concerning food stocks, is for the possible presence of the grain fungus Ergot. The hallucinogenic drug LSD is synthesized from Ergot and is its most famous derivative. But there seems scant evidence that the local population suffered anything like a mass psychotic event. Perhaps more likely is that belief structures of the day, still embedded in ritual and ancient superstition, were all that was needed to goad the townspeople toward condemning the accused.

Child Abduction and Medieval Corruption

Another strain of the story concerns an initial charge of child sacrifice and the belief that the women in question were, in fact, an organised group of devil worshipping heretics. Again, an examination of local records faults the notion: of the over 50 babies born during the disputed period only two died in infancy. However, subsequent myths duly sprang from this fertile premise with tales of child abduction and purported areas of demonic ritual taking landmark status and firm root in local lore.

One theory gaining recent favour is that familial greed and power was the catalyst and real reason for the trials. It has been speculated that local nobility may have enflamed regional religious fanaticism and fear to their own ends. As mentioned earlier, there is some evidence that local grain stores were in fact sufficient: were local landowners concealing this fact so as to drive up the cost of the food reserves? Did some kind of supernatural excuse have to be found to placate the hungry? Were the Triora witches no more than innocent victims to a medieval example of corporate corruption?

Inquisition and Imprisonment of the Innocent

Finally it was inquisition that would define and permanently stain the proceedings. Mere days following a request by local dignitaries, two high ranking churchmen arrived in Triora. During the ensuing public mass, local residents were incited to denounce and flush out the ‘witches’ amongst them. Private homes were readily converted into temporary prisons with iron window bars, some of which are to this day incredibly still in existence. The cells were put to good use and so began a long period of torture amid scenes of abject human degradation. As events progressed, it also came to be that certain members of well to do families were implicated. It is fortuitous, for them at least, that local elders had a spontaneous change of heart and felt that perhaps certain of the inquisitions methods had become excessive.

Fifteenth Century Politics Versus the Church of Inquisition

Several months of political wrangling followed culminating in an ‘arrangement’ that precluded the inquisition from prosecuting any further women of standing. Subsequently, the trial again moved forward but this time, without the hindrance of aristocratic interference, accusations and imprisonments spiralled. Many hundreds more would be jailed before politics again intervened and ultimately ushered in an end to the entire affair. A divide arose between the church and local authorities concerning whose right it had been to prosecute the accused in the first place. The inquisition contended that the government, then based in Genoa, had meddled in church affairs by instigating proceedings so obviously based on religious heretical crime.

Injustice Served Amid Broken Lives

1589 saw the trial finally grind slowly to a halt with the 'witches' of Triora still imprisoned and awaiting judgement. Ultimately, it would be the womens’ fetid living conditions that would prove their final sentence. Some died in prison, at least one is documented as to have taken her own life and when interest in the case finally evaporated altogether the remainder were released; no doubt stigmatised and irreversibly damaged. Nobody was officially executed as a result of the Triora trials but the bitter taste of injustice still lingers over this, now all but forgotten, moment in Italian history.

The copyright of the article Triora – The Last Italian Witch Trial, 1587-1589 in Italian History is owned by Hari Navarro. Permission to republish Triora – The Last Italian Witch Trial, 1587-1589 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.