48 pages • 1 hour read
Carlo GinzburgThe Cheese And The Worms: The Cosmos Of A Sixteenth-Century Miller
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historiographic Context: Carlo Ginzburg and the Birth of Microhistory
Microhistory is a field of historical research that adopts a small scale of study, whether it be an individual event, a small community, or one person’s life experience. This method of research is a counterpoint to more traditional studies, which tend to focus on large-scale questions, trends, and high-impact events. Though such studies previously existed, most notably George R. Stewart’s 1959 work, Pickett’s Charge: A Microhistory on the Final Attack at Gettysburg, the microhistorical method did not congeal into a coherent scholarly movement until roughly two decades later in the late 1970s.
In Northern Italy, a group of scholars, including Giovanni Levi and Edoardo Grendi, began to articulate the characteristics and aims of microhistory. Carlo Ginzburg is widely recognized as one of these Italian pioneers of the method; The Cheese and the Worms is one of microhistory’s earliest triumphs, and in 1979 he coauthored an article with Carlo Poni that “outlined a program for microhistory” (Tristano, Richard M. “Microhistory and Holy Family Parish: Some Methodological Considerations.” U.S. Catholic Historian, vol. 14, no. 3, Summer 1996, page 26).
At the time of writing The Cheese and the Worms, the term microhistory was not yet commonplace, and Ginzburg did not use it to describe his own work. He finds the origins of his methodology in the novels he read as a child, most notably War and Peace:
[Tolstoy] was the one who taught me that in order to relate a battle we should relate the experience of everyone who participated in it. Not only the general’s experience but also that of the humblest soldier. In retrospect, my idea of microhistory stems from there (Guerreiro, António. “Carlo Ginzburg: The Historian as Detective.” Electra, no. 10, 2020).
In this quote, it is evident that Ginzburg understands narrative as an intrinsic component of microhistory, and this formulation is applied throughout The Cheese and the Worms. For obscure figures who have long been ignored by mainstream history, such as Menocchio, establishing the narratives of their lives is just as paramount to the field as analyzing their lives’ significance. As such, microhistorical narratives have significance beyond their immediate scope of study, encouraging readers to challenge their own notions of what is and is not historically important.
Historical Context: The Roman Inquisition in Northeastern Italy
Broadly speaking, “the Inquisition” refers to a series of religiously-motivated judicial proceedings held by the Catholic Church to combat what it regarded as religious heresies. The proceedings spanned several centuries and multiple continents. The Spanish Inquisition of 1478-1834 is the most infamous of the inquisitions, but inquisitorial courts were also opened in France, Italy, and Portugal. Furthermore, as Catholic colonial powers gained territory outside of Europe, they opened inquisitions there; courts prosecuted heretics everywhere from India to Peru.
The Cheese and the Worms deals with the Roman Inquisition, which occurred between the mid-15th century and the mid-18th century, and was conducted by the Papacy in Rome. The translators of The Cheese and the Worms caution that readers should not conflate the Roman Inquisition with other Inquisitions. This warning is echoed by historian Thomas Mayer, who writes that the term Inquisition in its “loosest” form is applied “especially to the Spanish variant,” but that this common understanding must be discarded in order to understand the Roman Inquisition’s specific character (Mayer, Thomas F. The Roman Inquisition: On the Stage of Italy, c. 1590-1640. The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014, page 10).
Mayer’s account of the Roman Inquisition begins in the same decade that Menocchio underwent his second trial, and pays close attention to its workings in Northeastern Italy. He argues that the papacy’s political aims in the region, particularly in terms of its fraught relationship with the Venetian government, dictated the course of the Inquisition there (Mayer, The Roman Inquisition, page 3). Tensions were motivated by the Republic’s conviction that it had primary control of the clergy in the region, not the Roman authorities. This stance prompted a response from Rome in the form of the 1606-1607 Venetian Interdict, a law issued by the Pope that restated his authority. In a profound power struggle between the Holy See and the Venetian Republic, Inquisition became the Pope’s primary form of diplomacy in the Northeast (Mayer, The Roman Inquisition, page 6).
Although these tensions culminated a decade after Menocchio’s death, the struggle between Papal and local authorities emerges at various points in The Cheese and the Worms, and can be understood as a political dynamic largely unexplored by Ginzburg because of its macrohistorical nature, but one influential to Menocchio’s trial proceedings nonetheless.
