How long does it take to read Benandanti?
Carlo Ginzburg, John Tedeschi, Anne C. Tedeschi
Benandanti by Carlo Ginzburg, John Tedeschi, Anne C. Tedeschi takes about 3 hours 58 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 58 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1966. 216 pages, about 59,400 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 36 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 58 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 29 minutes |
The page count is the median across 25 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Based on research in the Inquisitorial archives, the book recounts the story of a peasant fertility cult centered on the benandanti. These men and women regarded themselves as professional anti-witches, who (in dream-like states) apparently fought ritual battles against witches and wizards, to protect their villages and harvests. If they won, the harvest would be good, if they lost, there would be famine. The inquisitors tried to fit them into their pre-existing images of the witches' sabbat. The result of this cultural clash which lasted over a century, was the slow metamorphosis of the benandanti into their enemies - the witches. The author shows clearly how this transformation of the popular notion of witchcraft was manipulated by the Inquisitors, and disseminated all over Europe and even to the New World. The peasants' fragmented and confused testimony reaches us with immediacy, enabling the reader to identify a level of popular belief which constitutes a valuable witness for the reconstruction of the peasant way of thinking of this age.
Subjects: Religious life and customs, Witchcraft, Hexenglaube, Fruchtbarkeitskult, Hekserij, Riten
