The Fairy witch trials of Sicily, were conducted on Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

 between the late 16th and middle of the 17th centuries. They represent a unique phenomenon, as in this area, witch trial

Witch trial

A witch trial is a legal proceeding that is part of a witch-hunt. * Witch trials in Early Modern Europe, 15th–18th centuries** Salzburg witch trials - 1675-1690, Salzburg, Austria** Spa witch trial - 1616, Belgium...

s involved the mythological fairies

Fairy

A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...

 from folklore.

The Fairies of Sicily

In Sicily, there was a belief that the elves

Elf

An elf is a being of Germanic mythology. The elves were originally thought of as a race of divine beings endowed with magical powers, which they use both for the benefit and the injury of mankind...

 or fairies would make contact with humans, mostly women, whom they took to Benevento

Benevento

Benevento is a town and comune of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, 50 km northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill 130 m above sea-level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino and Sabato...

, the Blockula

Blockula

Blockula was a legendary meadow where the Devil held his Earthly court during a witches' Sabbat. This meadow could only be reached by a magical flight. It was described as "a delicate large Meadow, whereof you can see no end".There was said to be a large gate located in the meadow that led to a...

 of Sicily. The fairies were called donas de fuera, which was also a name for the women who associated with them.
The fairies where described as beauties dressed in white, red or black; they could be male or female, and their feet were the paws of cats, horses or of a peculiar "round" shape. They came in groups of five or seven and a male fairy played the lute

Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....

 or the guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

 while dancing. The fairies and the humans were divided into companies in different sizes (different ones for noble

Nobility

Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...

 and non-noble humans), under the lead of an ensign

Ensign

An ensign is a national flag when used at sea, in vexillology, or a distinguishing token, emblem, or badge, such as a symbol of office in heraldry...

.

Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the fairies met the humans belonging to their company in the woods. In March, several companies gathered, and their "Prince" instructed them to be benevolent creatures. A congregation called The Seven Fairies could transform themselves to cats and something called aydon; ayodons where able to kill.

The fairies could easily be offended by humans. In one story, a man who was not associated with the fairies and was unable to see them developed a painful cramp

Cramp

Cramps are unpleasant, often painful sensations caused by muscle contraction or over shortening. Common causes of skeletal muscle cramps include muscle fatigue, low sodium, and low potassium...

 after hitting one of the fairies who was listening to him play music. Another story involves several people who had disturbed the fairies while they nocturnally travelled from house to house, eating and drinking as they routinely embraced the town's infants. On those occasions, the person in question paid one of the people associated with the fairies to be the host of a dinner at their homes, meeting the fairies while the owners of the house slept.

The fairy witch trials

Between 1579 and 1651 there were a number of recorded witch trials in Sicily, however, the exact number may not be known due to loss of documentation. The trial summaries, sent to the Inquisition

Inquisition

The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...

's Suprema in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 by the Sicilian tribunal, reflected a total of 65 people, eight of them male, many of whom were believed to be associates of fairies, who were put on trial for sorcery

Sorcery

Sorcery may refer to:* Magic * Maleficium * Witchcraft* Sorcery , a video game for the PlayStation 3 utilizing the PlayStation Move* Sorcery , 1995* Sorcery , 1974...

.

The Inquisition denounced them as witches, but often did not take these cases seriously as the accused never mentioned the Devil in their confessions. The Inquisition did occasionally associate meetings with the elves as events similar to a Witches' Sabbath, but as the local population generally held a positive view of the phenomena, the Inquisition did not press the matter. The accused said that they had become associated with the fairies because they had "Sweet blood", and that in most cases, went to the meetings in a non-corporeal fashion, leaving their actual bodies behind. This is similar to the concept of astral projection

Astral projection

Astral projection is an interpretation of out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of traveling outside it...

 and was something they had in common with the Benandanti

Benandanti

The Benandanti were an agrarian fertility cult in the Friuli district of Northern Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. Between 1575 and 1675, the Benandanti were tried as heretics or witches under the Roman Inquisition, and their beliefs assimilated to Satanism...

, a related group that also faced scrutiny by the Inquisition.

Compared to surrounding countries, the witch trials in Sicily were relatively mild: in most cases, the accused were either freed, sentenced to exile, or jailed, rather than sentenced to death. Though the accused occasionally testified that some nobles took part in these activities, the accused themselves are generally described as poor, and most often, female.

The accused evidently gave their testimonies to the Inquisition without being torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

d. Fairy folklore was commonplace during this time and, according to reports, the accused were not ashamed of their actions, and some may not have realized their beliefs would be disliked by the Christian church. According to some of the accused, the fairies did not like speaking about the Christian God or the Virgin Mary

Mary (mother of Jesus)

Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...

, but despite this, the accused themselves did not regard this belief to be contrary to the values of Christianity. Ultimately, the Inquisition did not show much interest in the Sicilian fairy trials, instead attempting to make the accused change their freely given testimonies and direct it toward the traditional Witch's Sabbath that involved demons and devils rather than fairies. During the course of the trials they did succeed in some cases, but in general, the long-held belief that fairies were benevolent creatures remained in Sicily long after the Inquisition.

In 1630, the medicine woman Vicencia la Rosa was sentenced to banishment and banned from ever mentioning anything about the elves again. After her sentence, la Rosa continued to tell stories about her personal elf named Martinillo, who took her to "Benevento" where she had sex and learned medicine. She was arrested again and exiled from Sicily for the rest of her life.

The fisherwife of Palermo

The fisherwife of Palermo was an unnamed Italian woman who was put on trial for witchcraft

Witchcraft

Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...

 by the Sicilian Inquisition in Palermo

Palermo

Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...

 in Sicily. She claimed to associate with fairies and her confession was among the first that describes contact between elves and humans on Sicily. Similar testimony was common in the witch trials of Sicily between the late 16th and middle of the 17th centuries.

In 1588, the woman, the wife of a poor fisherman

Fisherman

A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishermen and fish farmers. The term can also be applied to recreational fishermen and may be used to describe both men...

, was brought before the Inquisition in Palermo and was accused of witchcraft after she had claimed to associate with elves. Her case was among the first of many witch trials in Sicily associated with elves and her confession was typical for such elf-related cases.

She told them that when she was a child of eight, she had flown through the air with a group of women on goat

Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...

s to a vast field on the mainland of the Kingdom of Naples

Kingdom of Naples

The Kingdom of Naples, comprising the southern part of the Italian peninsula, was the remainder of the old Kingdom of Sicily after secession of the island of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. Known to contemporaries as the Kingdom of Sicily, it is dubbed Kingdom of...

 called Benevento, where a red-coloured teenage boy and a beautiful woman sat on a throne

Throne

A throne is the official chair or seat upon which a monarch is seated on state or ceremonial occasions. "Throne" in an abstract sense can also refer to the monarchy or the Crown itself, an instance of metonymy, and is also used in many expressions such as "the power behind the...

. According to her confession, they were called the King and the Queen. She said that the leader of the women who took her there, who was called the Ensign

Ensign

An ensign is a national flag when used at sea, in vexillology, or a distinguishing token, emblem, or badge, such as a symbol of office in heraldry...

, told her that if she fell to her knees in front of the King and Queen of the elves and gave them allegiance, they would give her riches, beauty and handsome men, with whom she could have sex, and that she was not to worship God or the holy Virgin. The Ensign also added that she should not mention the Virgin Mary

Mary (mother of Jesus)

Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...

, as it was bad manners to do so in the presence of the Elves. The fisherwife then agreed to worship the King as a god

God (male deity)

A god, as a male deity, contrasts with female deities, or "goddesses". While the term 'goddess' specifically refers to a female deity, the plural 'gods' can be applied to all gods collectively, regardless of gender....

 and the Queen as a goddess

Goddess

A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....

, and she swore her allegiance in a book containing many letters which was held for her by the ensign, and promised her body and soul to the divine couple. After this, tables with food were set forward, and everyone ate, drank and had sex with each other. She also claimed that she had sex with multiple men in a short period of time, after which she reported that she had awoken as if from a dream.
She claimed that she was not aware that this was sinful before the priest told her, after she had told him this, that such things were the work of Satan

Satan

Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...

. She said that she had continued with it anyway, because it had made her so happy. On some occasions, she said, the elves had fetched her before she had gone to sleep for the night to prevent her husband and children from noticing anything. She claimed that she was awake the whole time. She also stated that the King and Queen had given her medicine to cure the sick, so she could earn money and alleviate her poverty.

Protocol of statement

The protocol of the Inquisition states how the fishwife and the other women flew through the air on goats to:

"a land called Benevento which belongs to the Pope and is situated in the kingdom of Naples. There was a field and in its center a platform with two chairs. One one was a red teenage boy and on the other a beautiful woman, whom the called the Queen, and the man was the king. The first time she came there -she was eight- the "ensign" and the other women in her company told her that she must kneel and worship the king and the queen and to all they commanded for they could help her and give her riches, beauty and young men to make love to. And they told her not to worship God or the holy Virgin. The Ensign made her swear on a book with large letters that she would worship the two others. The king as if he was God and the Queen ad if she was the holy virgin, ad gave herself to them with body and soul.....And after she had so worshipped them, the made the tables and ate and drank, and thereafter the men had intercourse with the women and with her many times in a short period of time. All of this seem to her as if a dream, for when she awoke, she did so in her bed, naked as if she had gone to rest. But sometimes they had called upon her before she had gone to bed so that her husband and children would not notice it, and without having gone to sleep before (as far as she could tell), she left and arrived fully clothed. She further claimed that she at that time did not realise that it was sinful before her confessor had opened her eyes and told her that it was Satan and that she was not allowed to do it further. but she still continued it until two months ago. And she left filled with happiness of the joy she received from it....and because the (the king and the queen) gave her means to cure the sick so that she could earn some money, because she had always been poor"

After this freely given statement, the Inquisition interrogated her and gave her leading questions. The attitude of the Inquisition was that fairies did not exist, but were a remnant of Pagan superstition which should be eradicated and not be taken seriously. Therefore, the events she described must have been either a dream, in which case they could accept her story about the fairies, or, if it did happen, it must have been a witch's sabbath, in which case it must have been demons rather than fairies, as the church believed in demons but not in fairies. Therefore, they made her leading questions to make her identify the events as either a dream or reality. If it were the former, she would be released, and if it were the latter, she would be a witch. The fisherwife, however, passed this interrogation of leading questions: the protocols state, that in the end, she came to the conclusion that : "All of this seem to her to have happened as if in a dream", and that it had truly all been just a dream, "as far as she could estimate the matter".

Literature

• Gustav Henningsen: The ladies from Outside: An Archaic pattern of the witche's sabbath. Early modern European witchcraft Oxford, 1990