La Maiola

La Maiola | The 400-year trial of a Valtiberina witch
 
Sunday 31 May, 6.15 pm – Anghiari Theatre
 
Final performance of the 2026 theatre workshop
 
Directed by Andrea Merendelli
 
Her name was Lucrezia Verzaia, but everyone knew her as ‘La Maiola’, after the name of her home village in the Montefeltro region, where she was born in the first half of the 16th century. For years she was the caretaker of the Spedale dei Poveri in Valsavignone: she looked after the sick and tended to their wounds, treating them with the herbs she had known all her life and with prayers that she mixed with the remedies, just as one mixes salt with bread, because for Lucrezia the sacred and the natural were not two separate things. She was declared a ‘witch’ and condemned, vanishing from the records and from history. Thanks to the research of Sonia Savini, we have rediscovered her and dedicate a springtime tale to her, full of herbs and herbal teas, in this valley where they have been put to good use for centuries. Even at the risk of being called witches…