The Triora witch trial saw thirty women accused of having caused a famine through magical rites, in league with the Evil One, between 1587 and 1589. The unfortunate women of what is still known today as the “witch village” were unjustly imprisoned and subjected to atrocious torture, due to which an alleged witch died and another took her own life. The political authorities of the Republic of Genoa, of which the “Salem of Italy” was part, decided to end the trial without carrying out the death sentences requested by the judges. Today we know that, most likely, the famine was caused by the speculation of landowners, among whom were some of the most ardent accusers of witches.
The Triora witch trials
Triora today is a small village in western Liguria, in the province of Imperia. In the centuries of the modern age it belonged to the Republic of Genoa and enjoyed a fair commercial importance, being on the road to France.
The witchcraft case broke out in the autumn of 1587, as the country had been suffering from a famine for about two years. The idea began to circulate among the inhabitants that the food shortage could be caused by spells performed by witches. Consequently, the local Parliament asked the religious authorities to intervene, this because the Republic of Genoa was subjected, like the rest of the Italian peninsula, to the jurisdiction of the Roman Inquisition. It was an institution dependent on the Pope (not present in other countries, where other inquisitorial structures operated), which prosecuted crimes against religion, however, in cases of alleged witchcraft, the civil authorities also intervened. The sentences, even when they were imposed by ecclesiastical courts, were always carried out by the civil authorities.
Two inquisitors arrived in Triora to investigate the famine, the vicar of the inquisitor of Genoa and the vicar of the inquisitor of Albenga, Girolamo del Pozzo. The two priests, collecting complaints from the inhabitants, had twenty women arrested and subjected them to heavy torture. Thirteen of them confessed to having performed witchcraft rites: today we know that, being extorted under torture, the confessions were worthless, because the accused confessed any guilt in order to put an end to the torments, but at the time they were considered valid. In Triora, moreover, the torture was particularly cruel, to the point that one of the arrested women, the sixty-year-old Isotta Stella, died during interrogations and another threw herself out of the window to put an end to the torments. Thanks to the confessions extracted through torture, the two inquisitors also had other alleged witches arrested.
What happened to “the witches” and the discoveries after the trial
The violence of the torture and the high number of alleged witches meant that the political authorities of Triora, in particular the Council of Elders, asked the inquisitors to proceed with greater caution. The government of the Republic of Genoa, for its part, sent one of its emissaries, Giulio Scribani, to Triora to deal with the issue of witchcraft. Scribani took the place of the two inquisitors and acted with even worse brutality, even personally carrying out the torture against the alleged witches. He also had the accused transferred to the Genoa prison and extended the “hunt” to some locations near Triora, such as Sanremo and Castel Vittorio.
At the end of the interrogations, Scribani asked for four women to be burned at the stake, but the Genoa government refused to execute them unless other evidence was produced. The trial also ended with the request for the death sentence for four alleged witches, but the modus operandi of Scribani had created controversy and made the civil authorities suspicious, who refused to carry out the sentence. In April 1589 the government of the Republic of Genoa requested and obtained that the Inquisition put an end to the judicial proceedings. The fate of the women locked up in prison is not known but, most likely, they were released.
Thus ended one of the most famous witchcraft trials in the Italian peninsula, the implications of which are even more dramatic than what appeared at the time. The famine was in fact due, according to many historians, to speculative maneuvers by landowners, who wanted to raise the prices of agricultural products. And the landowners themselves were among the main accusers of the alleged witches: to assert their economic interests, they had no scruples in exploiting superstition and religious fanaticism and in making innocent people suffer atrocious torture.
The witch hunt in Europe
Between the end of the 15th century and the mid-18th century, the fear of witchcraft spread in Christian Europe: it was feared that people linked to the Devil would perform magical rites to harm communities or individuals. The fear was completely unfounded but, nevertheless, tens of thousands of people were accused of practicing witchcraft and put on trial. Many trials ended with the death sentence of the accused, who were often female, although in many cases men were also found guilty.
Witch hunts took place in both Catholic and Protestant countries, particularly in the last decades of the fifteenth century and the years between 1580 and 1660. Italy was no exception and was the scene of numerous trials against alleged witches: that of Triora was one of the most famous cases.
