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Atlas NoctisA nocturnal atlas of folklore
A — documented

Donni di fora

Sicily · The islands
Sicily; trials documented at Palermo, Monreale, Sciacca, Cammarata, Agrigento, Messina

Donni di fora — supernatural female beings, beautiful, dressed in white, red or black, with anomalies in the feet — cat's paws or hooves.

The donne di fuora, in a group and dressed in white, red and black, appear to a healer in Palermo: one of them has cat's paws.
Variants and dialect names
Donni di fora, donne di fuora, donas de fuera in the Spanish records; magare in other areas; patroneddri di casa, donni di locu
What is told
Supernatural female beings, beautiful, dressed in white, red or black, with anomalies in the feet — cat's paws or hooves. They move in groups of five or seven, with a queen and a lute player. They seek out people with «sweet blood», typically poor women, and transmit to them therapeutic and divinatory abilities.
What it was forthe author’s reading
A therapeutic and legitimising function: the human donne di fuora were healers who operated in competition with and in parallel to the clergy. In a case of 1630 a mother turns at the same time to a Capuchin and to a healer, recognising them as of equal authority.
Where it is attested
Records of the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily, active from 1516 to 1782. Gustav Henningsen, The Ladies from Outside, 1990. Giuseppe Pitrè, between 1870 and 1890, surveyed a sample of 172 Sicilian municipalities to check whether the belief was still alive; the material went into vol. IV of Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano, Palermo 1889. The intact trial record of Diana La Viscusa, Monreale 1639, thirty-one pages.
Caution
The 172 municipalities are the sample surveyed by Pitrè, not the number of municipalities in which the belief turned out to be attested: the difference is substantial and is always confused. The trial figures are not interchangeable either — 65 persons between 1579 and 1651 according to one reconstruction, 193 identifications attributed to Henningsen and 77 to Messana according to Geremia's study of 2024: they depend on the counting criteria and are not to be merged. On the abolition of the tribunal: it was decreed by Ferdinand IV on 16 March 1782, and the viceroy Caracciolo was its executor on 27 March; the burning of the trial papers, however, took place on 27 June 1783, and the accounting documentation and the reports sent to Madrid survived.

The grade says how well the entry is documented, not how interesting it is. How the grades are assigned.

In the same area

BMammadragaSicily — Sicily, the Palermo area and the centre-westBJanasSardinia — The whole of Sardinia, with density in the centre-north: Logudoro, Goceano, BarbagiaBAmmuntadoreSardinia — The whole of SardiniaAMamuthonesSardinia — Mamoiada (province of Nuoro), Barbagia di OllolaiBErchituSardinia — Central Sardinia, Barbagia and the Nuoro area

Related by theme

Entries that share the motif, the phenomenon behind it or the history of their collection — not the geography.

ALe bàzure di TrioraLiguria — Triora, upper Valle Argentina (province of Imperia), Ligurian Alps; the trial involves Genoa, Albenga and the Congregation of the Holy Office in RomeABenandantiFriuli-Venezia Giulia — Central and eastern Friuli: Cividale del Friuli, Iassico and Brazzano near Cormòns, Udine, Aquileia, Monfalcone, LatisanaAGostanza da LibbianoTuscany — San Miniato (province of Pisa), where the trial was held; the accused came from Libbiano, a hamlet of Peccioli, in the ValderaBLe sorchie e la «synagogue»the Aosta Valley — The whole of the Valle d'Aosta, with a lexical line separating the upper and middle valley from the lower valley; the documented trial of 1439 is in the community of Fénis

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