Codex Seraphinianus, the Bizarre Encyclopedia by Luigi Serafini

A trial for heresy of two peasants reveals a pagan-shamanic  peasant cult based on the fertility of the land widespread in Friuli,  northern Italy, around the 16th-17th centuries. The Benandanti was an agrarian cult with shamanic characteristics that  gradually transformed under the …

He became an executioner at the age of 17, in 1796. Bugatti noted 516 names of the executed, but two convicts are subtracted from the account, one because he was shot and the other because he was hanged and quartered by his aide. This episode is also available as a blog post: Giovanni Bugatti, the…

On September 28, 1583, Menocchio, an Italian miller, was denounced to the Holy Office on the charge of having uttered and attempted to spread “heretical and impious” words about Christ. The trial brings to light the complex cosmogony and worldview of a miller who stunned the inquisitors. This epis…

The Sator Square has been the subject of frequent archaeological discoveries, both in stone epigraphs and in graffiti, but the sense and the symbolic meaning still remain obscure, despite the numerous hypotheses formulated. This episode is also available as a blog post: https://weirditaly.com/2021…