Triora — the witch trial of 1587–1589

OVERVIEW

Triora is a fortified medieval village in the province of Imperia, about 25 km north-west of Imperia on the French border, then a podesteria of the Republic of Genoa guarding the trade between Piedmont, the coast and France. Its trial of 1587–1589 is one of the most celebrated witch trials in Italy, marked by a clash between the secular power of Genoa and the Holy Office in Rome.

HISTORY

Triora had suffered about two years of terrible famine, probably partly the work of landowners' speculation, when in October 1587 its parliament asked for action against supposed witches. The vicar of the Inquisitor of Genoa and the vicar of Albenga, the priest Girolamo del Pozzo, came; del Pozzo asked parishioners from the pulpit to denounce witches. Twenty women were arrested, and denunciations extracted under torture made them thirty; thirteen women, four girls and a boy confessed. Private houses became prisons, most famously the Megia house, now the Ca' de baggiure (witches' house). Isotta Stella, a noblewoman of about sixty, died of torture; another woman fell from a window, which the inquisitors blamed on the Devil. In June 1588 Genoa sent the commissioner Giulio Scribani, who moved the prisoners to Genoa, spread the hunt to Castel Vittorio and Sanremo, and on 30 August confirmed death sentences by burning — among the condemned Pierina of Badalucco and Gentile of Castel Vittorio. The Inquisitor of Genoa intervened in October 1588, the Doge asked Rome twice to end it, and the case closed on 23 April 1589.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Of the 35 women branded witches, 19 and one man were imprisoned in Genoa; five died there and nine did not survive torture at Triora and Badalucco. The Holy Office annulled the death sentences: three were given penances, seven made to abjure publicly at Triora, eight released; the one male accused, the boy Biagio Verrando, was made to abjure. What became of the women held in Genoa is not known; some historians believe they were freed. A record of the witch-hunt, filed as such.

VISITING

The Regional Ethnographic and Witchcraft Museum in Palazzo Stella shows peasant life and a section on the trials with reconstructed instruments of torture. The village holds the 'Strigora' witchcraft festival on the first Sunday after Ferragosto, and a Halloween event.