Altri Modi: Etnografia dell' agire simbolico nei processi friulani dell'Inquisizione.(Book Review)

by Gian Paolo Gri (Trieste: Edizioni U. di Trieste, 2001; pp. 214. Eur 15)

Among those who have contributed to recent studies on the Roman Inquisition in Friuli and to the debate on popular belief there, in the early modern period, in witchcraft and in benandanti, is the author of the present volume, whose distinctive approach is anthropological rather than directly historical. For much of the present work the focus seems a little uncertain, precisely because a generous time-span is involved in quoted episodes, not confined to the early modern period but extending to the nineteenth and even the twentieth century, with much of the evidence presented via secondary …