Driven out by San Bernardo from the mountain passes of Valle d’Aosta, the devils that once lived their went to Mont Maudit; but, once in awhile, they would leave the cursed mountain to carry out wild rackets in Val Veny, inviting other witches and all kinds of evil spirits. They turned the entire valley upside down, stepping on sown fields and destroying harvests. The canonry and high priests, in reply to the people’s pleas, carried out useless exorcisms: after every exorcism, the wicked forces seemed to become bolder and nobody knew why.
But, one day, a devil that retired only at dawn because he hurt himself during “seun-goga” (1), spoke to a farmer and let slip that the priests called to chase the evil spirits away had failed because their hearts were not pure. The community, having met to examine the situation after these new revelations, decided to search for a more worthy religious man, but not at the higher levels, at the lower levels of the ecclesiastical scale instead. They chose a humble monk from the convent of San Francesco di Aosta. The inhabitants went through with what they had decided that the prior - who would’ve definitely chosen someone more worthy and illustrious than the humble monk - gave in with their requests and told the begging monk, who kept telling him that he was not suitable for the mission, to follow the delegation that had come for him. From the cursed mountain the devils saw the trembling monk make his way up. They tried to search for loopholes to escape from his pleas to leave the mountain, but to no avail. They accused him of having stolen a handful of grass for his shoes: but the monk had replaced that piece of grass that he had in his sandals; they then tried to accuse him of having taken a bunch of grapes from a vineyard: but the monk had paid for the grapes with a coin which he had left on the wall and they weren’t for him but for one of his sick brothers… Defeated by the pureness of the monk’s heart, the crestfallen demons were forced to return to hell. From that day on, the Val Veny was never again disturbed by evil spirits.

1 - word from the Valdostan dialect that means “witches’ sabbath”, in other words the meeting between devils and witches. The derivation from the word “synagogue” is evident.

Based on: “Il fiore del leggendario valdostano” (The Flower of the Legendary Valdostan) by Tersilla Gatto Chanu Edizioni Emme/Torino (publishers)