Fig. 4

Traditional customs on All Souls’ Day in Italy. Title page of a book dating back 1901 by Arturo Ferretto, who collected all the documents from 1265 to 1321 constituting il codice diplomatico delle relazioni tra la Liguria, la Toscana e la Lunigiana ai tempi di Dante, i.e., “the diplomatic code of the relationships between some regions of Northern Italy (Liguria, Lunigiana, and Tuscany) at the times of Dante Alighieri.” This book reports about the use of giving cantegore and explains that the cantegore were songs for the souls in purgatory that, during the Middle Ages, were traditionally sung by young people in the period from October to mid-November (and in particular on All Souls’ Day), as they walked begging for various foods, including faba beans. This medieval tradition survives in a few places in Italy, but traditional seasonal sweets are given away instead of beans and grains. (The digital document is from Società Ligure di Storia Patria. Biblioteca digitale. 2011. https://www.storiapatriagenova.it/Docs/Biblioteca_Digitale/SB/619ed2f0c43179836ebfd1c242eb3493/767cae010882c8c7d724846b01a31392.pdf).