The Cheese and the Worms is an incisive study of popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, the miller known as Menocchio, who was accused of heresy during the Inquisition and sentenced to death. Menocchio's 500-year-old challenge to authority remains evocative and vital today.The now-classic tale of a sixteenth-century miller facing the Roman Inquisition. The Italian miller's story and Ginzburg's work continue to resonate with modern readers because they focus on how oral and written culture are inextricably linked. In a thoughtful new preface, Ginzburg offers his own corollary to Menocchio's story as he considers the discrepancy between the intentions of the writer and what gets written. Ginzburg's influential book has been widely regarded as an early example of the analytic, case-oriented approach known as microhistory. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together and of that bulk a mass formed-just as cheese is made out of milk-and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."
In his trial testimony he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records to illustrate the religious and social conflicts of the society Menocchio lived in.įor a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. The now-classic tale of a sixteenth-century miller facing the Roman Inquisition.
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