Modern Italian culture is rife with burning old women in effigy as witches or evil crones. But now it's reached my Presepe and I'm really pissed!
Apparently the washerwoman (or midwife!) attending the Virgin in the Neapolitan tradition, while porting a litany of other symbols, is also associated with the Devil in disguise, trying to keep Mary from giving birth to the Christ.
Now, I'd welcome a kinky demon outright to my manger scene, but the guise of an old woman is pure misogyny. Again.
Tarnport
in reply to Tarnport • • •I may just lean fully into the trope this year.
You want a devil-crone expert in detecting virginity? Check. Not sure she does washing, though.
Thomas
in reply to Tarnport • • •Tarnport
in reply to Thomas • • •Max - Poliverso 🇪🇺🇮🇹
in reply to Tarnport • — (Firenze) •@Tarnport
Have you double check this information? Because I'd never heard about a devil/witch in the presepe.
I'll also double check on my side because both my parents and my grandparents were from Benevento, which is known as "the city of witches" but I discovered that only ten years ago. Just to say that my family wasn't so good at telling me about witches 😁
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Tarnport
in reply to Max - Poliverso 🇪🇺🇮🇹 • • •I am awed by this info. I know quite a bit about Benevento and witches! I actually started a novel about it set in 1642 (unfinished). What a great heritage.
About the Presepe it's pretty solid info for some quarters but the tradition varies obv and more importantly has been sanitized, so it doesn't show up a lot. Here's a link:
associazionesancumano.com/2023…
This isn't definitive, just an example I had open in a tab. Here the devil-woman is at the Annunciation instead and recognized by a hoof!
Lo straordinario simbolismo del Presepe Napoletano - Associazione San Cumano
Luca Zolli (Associazione San Cumano)Max - Poliverso 🇪🇺🇮🇹
in reply to Tarnport • — (Firenze) •@Tarnport
Nice to know.
If you have the chance to visit Benevento you should reserve an hour to visit the museum of the "Janara" (that's the name of Benevento witch).
There are a few young people (I guess anthropologists or something like that) that collected information about all that story and set up a little exhibition.
museionline.info/musei/janua-m…
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Tarnport
in reply to Max - Poliverso 🇪🇺🇮🇹 • • •Max - Poliverso 🇪🇺🇮🇹
in reply to Tarnport • •@Tarnport
I go back there twice a year, there are so many nice things to see.
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Abie
in reply to Tarnport • • •sanctanomina.net/2015/03/11/th…
The new-to-me story of Anastasia and Salome
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Tarnport
in reply to Abie • • •Abie
in reply to Tarnport • • •en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome_(… There is also the scholarly paper on the subject:
jstor.org/stable/26308985
character that appears in the Gospel of James as an associate of the unnamed midwife at the Nativity of Jesus, regularly depicted with the midwife in Eastern Orthodox (Gospel of James)
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Tarnport
in reply to Abie • • •Max - Poliverso 🇪🇺🇮🇹
in reply to Tarnport • •@Tarnport I'm reading and I'm discovering another presepe... I didn't know there were so many demonic presences!
In a month I'll go to Benevento to an old aunt of mine, I want to ask her, she should know... 😁
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