Envisioning the Afterlife from the “Seaport of Friuli”: Conjectures on a Toponym

By reconsidering some inquisitorial trials studied by Carlo Ginzburg in his The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966), the article addresses the anomalous presence of a biblical toponym (Valley of Jehoshaphat, Joel 3) among the geographical indications used by the Friulian benandanti to localize their visionary experiences. The presence of the toponym is therefore deciphered through a plot of intertwined hypotheses, focusing in particular on the position of Portus Latisanae on the pilgrimage route to the Holy Land, and on narratives surrounding Mary’s Tomb in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.