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The Cheese and the Worms is a study of the popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, a miller brought to trial during the Inquisition. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records of Domenico Scandella, a miller also known as Menocchio, to show how one person responded to the confusing political and religious conditions of his time. For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. 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. 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." Running time: 7.95 hours
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Il formaggio e i vermi, Carlo Ginzburg
- Language
- Released
- 2019
- Binding
- (Paperback)
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- Title
- Il formaggio e i vermi
- Language
- Italian
- Authors
- Carlo Ginzburg
- Publisher
- Adelphi
- Released
- 2019
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 231
- ISBN10
- 884593411X
- ISBN13
- 9788845934117
- Series
- Tags
- Historical Themes, Religious Topics, Theology, Church, Countryside, 16th century, Inquisition, Microhistory, Heresy, Millers, Doctrine, Turn of the 16th and 17th Century
- First published
- 1976
- Original title
- Il formaggio e i vermi
- Rating
- 3.75 out of 5
- Description
- The Cheese and the Worms is a study of the popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, a miller brought to trial during the Inquisition. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records of Domenico Scandella, a miller also known as Menocchio, to show how one person responded to the confusing political and religious conditions of his time. For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. 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. 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." Running time: 7.95 hours