The spider and Apulian tarantism: from Baglivi to De Martino
Arachne in the Metamorphoses, the tarantula of Salento, Kircher and Baglivi, the chapel of Saint Paul at Galatina and Ernesto De Martino's classic study.
Nowhere else in Europe has the spider played a cultural role comparable to the one it played in Apulia, and especially in Salento. For centuries it was believed that the bite of a spider, the taranta, caused in some people a state of malaise and crisis that could only be resolved through music and dance. This complex of beliefs and rites, known as tarantism, was described by physicians, Jesuits and anthropologists, and has become one of the most studied chapters of Italian popular culture.
The spider in ancient myth
Classical tradition linked the spider to a story of pride and punishment. Ovid, in the sixth book of the Metamorphoses, tells of Arachne, a young weaver from Lydia who dared to challenge Minerva in the art of the loom. Her flawless tapestry depicted the guilty loves of the gods; the offended goddess struck her and turned her into a spider, condemning her to weave for ever.
The scientific term arachnids derives from Arachne's name. The myth gave the spider an aura of almost superhuman skill and at the same time of guilt, and this ambivalence runs through many later beliefs, in which the spider is at times a sign of luck and domestic industry, at others a venomous and treacherous creature able to act unseen.
Physicians and Jesuits before the taranta
The phenomenon soon drew the attention of scholars. The Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, in his Magnes of 1641, devoted a long discussion to tarantism and transcribed some of the melodies used to heal the tarantati, regarded as proof of the magnetic power of music. In 1696 the physician Giorgio Baglivi published in Rome a dissertation on the anatomy, the bite and the effects of the tarantula, trying to explain the phenomenon with the tools of the medicine of his time.
Two spiders above all were held responsible. Lycosa tarantula, the large wolf spider named after Taranto, has a painful but not very dangerous bite. More venomous is the malmignatta, Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, a relative of the black widow, whose bite causes serious symptoms. Even early observers sensed that the severity of the phenomenon did not depend on venom alone.
The land of remorse
The interpretive turning point came with Ernesto De Martino, who in June 1959 carried out research in Salento with a team that included the ethnomusicologist Diego Carpitella, the psychiatrist Giovanni Jervis, the anthropologist Amalia Signorelli and the photographer Franco Pinna. The results flowed into the book La terra del rimorso, published in 1961 and later translated as The Land of Remorse.
De Martino observed the tarantate in their homes, during long musical sessions with tambourine and violin, and in the chapel of Saint Paul at Galatina, where on 29 June, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, they went to invoke the saint's grace. Paul was linked to the theme of venom because, according to the Acts of the Apostles, he survived the bite of a viper on Malta.
The scholar interpreted tarantism neither as an illness nor as a mere superstition, but as a symbolic system that allowed existential crises, family conflicts and social suffering to be given form and ritual resolution. The very title of the book plays on the double meaning of the Italian «rimorso», both remorse and a renewed bite that returns every year.
Today tarantism as a healing rite has disappeared, but its music, the pizzica, is enjoying a season of great popularity with festivals and concerts. The story of the Salento spider shows how a small animal can become the centre of a whole world of meanings, studied over the centuries from different perspectives and still able to speak of the identity of a land.