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Atlas NoctisA nocturnal atlas of folklore
B — partly documented

Janara

Campania · The Mezzogiorno
Benevento and the valleys of the Sabato and the Calore; Sannio and Irpinia

Janara — the witch of Benevento: by day a woman indistinguishable from the others, by night she anoints herself, flies and climbs onto the chest of the sleeper.

The janara comes out as a spirit of wind from under the door of a house in the Sannio, while in the distance figures gather beneath the walnut tree of Benevento.
Variants and dialect names
Janara; Maciara and Masciara in eastern Irpinia, more oriented towards the evil eye than towards night flight
What is told
A woman indistinguishable from the others by day. At night she anoints herself and flies, pronouncing «Unguento unguento, portami al noce di Benevento». She becomes incorporeal, a «spirit like the wind»; she enters the house passing under the door. She is caught by seizing her by the hair.
What it was forthe author’s reading
An available explanation for perinatal mortality, miscarriages, malformations, sleep paralysis and knots in horses' manes. On the level of social control: surveillance over women who moved about at night, over widows, over midwives and over healers.
Where it is attested
Pietro Piperno, protomedico of Benevento, Della superstitiosa noce di Benevento, 1635-1639: a key contemporary source, which sets out to refute the legend but attaches a map of it. Sermons of Bernardino da Siena, 15th century. Ernesto de Martino, Sud e magia, 1959.
Caution
The report of the roughly two hundred trial records kept in the archiepiscopal archive and destroyed in 1860 is repeated everywhere but, the documents being lost, it is not verifiable. The connection with the Roman cult of Isis at Benevento is real historical context, but the link with the modern janara remains interpretation.

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

In the same area

BMunacielloCampania — Naples and the Vesuvian areaBMonachicchioBasilicata, Calabria — Inland Basilicata and northern Calabria; strong attestation from Aliano (province of Matera)BScazzamurieddhuApulia — The whole of Puglia, with its epicentre in the Ionian-Salentine areaATarantateApulia, Basilicata — Salento, provinces of Lecce, Brindisi and Taranto; the ritual centre is the chapel of San Paolo at GalatinaAI vattienti di Nocera TerineseCalabria — Nocera Terinese (province of Catanzaro), Tyrrhenian Calabria; related flagellation rites are attested elsewhere in the region, for example at Verbicaro (province of Cosenza)

Related by theme

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

AMascaPiedmont — Langhe, Roero, Monferrato, Canavese, Cuneo valleysALe 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 RomeAGl’ Cierv, il Cervo di CastelnuovoMolise — Castelnuovo al Volturno, a hamlet of Rocchetta a Volturno (province of Isernia), at the foot of the MainardeCYee naaldlooshiithe United States — Navajo Nation, Colorado Plateau (north-eastern Arizona, north-western New Mexico, south-eastern Utah)

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