The Cheese And The Worms: The Cosmos Of A Sixteenth-Century Miller

“‘I would say enough to astonish everyone,’ he had promised the townsmen. And indeed, the inquisitor, the vicar general, and the mayor of Portogruaro must have been astonished at a miller who could expound his views with such assurance and force.”

Menocchio’s words here reveal his boastful, self-approving character. Rather than treating this confidence as delusional, however, Ginzburg reaffirms it, imagining the inquisitors responded in the astounded way that Menocchio had hoped for. Menocchio’s confidence in his ideas and willingness to expound them even to those in authority reinforces Ginzburg’s theory that “high” and “low” cultures are dynamic and interrelated.

“Menocchio set forth a very different religion, where all members were equal because the spirit of God was in all of them. Menocchio’s awareness of his own rights, then, had specifically religious origins.”

Here, Ginzburg directly contrasts Menocchio’s religion with the Catholic Church’s religion, finding egalitarianism in the former and hierarchy in the latter. Menocchio’s political religiosity, aimed at dismantling the exploitative power structures he perceived in the church, mirrors the politics of the book itself, as Ginzburg also takes aim at elitist visions of culture.

“By breaking the crust of religious unity, the Reformation indirectly caused these old beliefs to emerge; the Counter-Reformation, attempting to restore unity, brought them to the light of day into order to sweep them away.”

Macrohistorical events, such as the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, play a significant role in The Cheese and the Worms, even though it is a microhistorical study. In a twist of historical irony, Ginzburg argues that upper-class malice (embodied by the Inquisition) against popular culture (embodied by Menocchio’s ideology) is actually what made the popular culture visible to modern historians. The legal record, created by the very people who sought to quell Menocchio’s rebellious ideas, turns out to have preserved his story.

“Menocchio was not claiming special revelations or illumination. It was to his own intelligence that he gave the chief credit. This alone was enough to distinguish him from the prophets, visionaries, and itinerant who had proclaimed obscure revelations in the public squares of Italian cities between the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries.”

This line of analysis requires readers to have some prior knowledge of late medieval popular religious culture, which was rife with figures (such as Joan of Arc and Margery Kempe) who claimed to have received visions from God. Ginzburg seems to view Menocchio’s way of discussing religion to be a clean break from this tradition, placing him firmly in the Early Modern era, although Menocchio will later adopt a prophetic self-image.

“Any attempt to consider these books as ‘sources’ in the mechanical sense of the term collapses before the aggressive originality of Menocchio’s reading. More than text, then, what is important is the key to his reading, a screen that he unconsciously placed between himself and the printed page: a filter that emphasized certain words while obscuring others, that stretched the meaning of a word, taking it out of its context, that acted on Menocchio’s memory and distorted the very words of the text. And this screen […] continually leads us back to a culture that is very different from the one expressed on the printed page—one based on an oral tradition.”

Ginzburg’s theory of a “filter” of perception applied by Menocchio to his reading materials is the central thesis of his book. With this metaphorical filter, he places his analytical focus on an abstract concept, The Challenges of Textual Interpretation. In Ginzburg’s interpretation of Menocchio’s views, Menocchio brings the sensibility of a peasant “oral tradition” to the elite culture of the written word.

“Menocchio’s manner of reading was obviously one-sided and arbitrary—almost as if he was searching for confirmation of ideas and convictions that were already firmly entrenched.”

This passage reveals another key characterization of Menocchio, one that clarifies his reading habits as uncritical, despite being intensely thoughtful. Such an understanding presents Menocchio as easily misinterpreting what he reads due to his desire to reinforce his own biases, reflecting The Challenges of Textual Interpretation.

“It may be possible to discern a partial convergence between the most progressive circles among the educated classes and popular groups with radical leanings.”

In his discussion of circularity (See: Index of Terms), Ginzburg specifies a connection between popular culture and a subset of elite culture based on progressive political alignment, reflecting the Relationships Between “High” and “Low” Culture in the 16th Century. The subjunctive mood of this sentence, however, reinforces the speculative nature of his argument, reminding readers that it is impossible to confirm with certainty.

“Through Mandeville’s Travels […] an echo of medieval religious tolerance, reached even the age of the wars of religion, of excommunications, and of the burning of heretics.”

Ginzburg’s characterization of a primordial popular peasant culture entails a belief in cultural continuity across centuries. Here, he presents books as the vehicle of this continuity, communicating historical ideas to new generations of readers.

“It was not the book as such, but the encounter between printed page and oral culture that formed an explosive mixture in Menocchio’s head.”

The metaphor of explosion here conveys the vibrancy of Menocchio’s inner world as Ginzburg sees it. In this analogy, books light the fuse, catalyzing the incendiary formation of Menocchio’s ideas. Whereas books are static objects, Menocchio’s internal processes are dynamic, converting their words into religious ideology and speaking to The Challenges of Textual Interpretation.

“MENOCCHIO: He is not produced by others but receives his movement within the shifting of chaos, and proceeds from imperfect to perfect.

INQUISITOR: Who moves the chaos?

MENOCCHIO: It moves itself.”

Chapter 26 is an unedited portion of the inquisition transcript, and as such, its dialogic format reads like a play. These are the final, highly dramatic, words of the included excerpt, and Ginzburg leaves them uninterrupted because they speak for themselves. Menocchio’s succinct rhetorical strategy is impactful in its bluntness, conveying a quiet assuredness even through the legal record.

“Using terms infused with Christianity, Neoplatonism, and scholastic philosophy, Menocchio tried to express the elemental instinctive materialism of generation after generation of peasants.”

Ginzburg’s projection of general peasant culture, not just across geography but across time, onto Menocchio’s person is another instance of his belief in historical continuity. His use of the descriptors “elemental” and “instinctive” to describe that continuous culture deprives each individual participant in it of their cultural agency. The passage also reflects the Relationships Between “High” and “Low” Culture in the 16th Century.

“It was the refusal […] to admit the existence of an immaterial principle in man—the soul—distinct from the body and from its operations that had led Menocchio to identify not only man with the world, but the world with God.”

Menocchio’s political spirituality is tied directly to materialism by Ginzburg. Dense theological argumentation leads him to this conclusion, which is underscored by the chiasmatic arrangement of concepts in the last two clauses.

“In societies founded on oral tradition, the memory of the community involuntarily tends to mask and reabsorb changes. To the relative flexibility of material life there corresponds an accentuated immobility of the image of the past.”

This analysis strays away from history and towards sociology. No citation is offered for this generalization about the function of memory in orally-based culture. It seems, therefore, to be a conclusion Ginzburg has reached based on his own observations.

“The instant Menocchio uttered his aspirations for a reformation in religion […] dictated to him by his ‘lofty mind,’ he was echoing, knowingly or not, the portrayal of Luther that he had read in Foresti’s chronicle.”

Ginzburg ties microhistory to macrohistory, arguing that Menocchio emulated Protestant reformers in ways that he was not even aware of. Once again, books are framed as the gateway between cultural words, as Menocchio makes references that he may not understand, once more reflecting The Challenges of Textual Interpretation. Subconscious or not, literary references form the backbone of Ginzburg’s body of evidence.

“Menocchio, as we saw, employed [‘new world’] differently, applying it not to a new continent but to a new society yet to be established.”

Ginzburg’s continuous usage of the first person plural is a choice that includes readers in the process of his reasoning, even as he simultaneously aims to educate the same readers about unfamiliar concepts. Here, he relates the nature of Menocchio’s heresy in easy-to-understand terms.

“There’s no doubt that the judges were trying to express a very real sentiment with this exaggerated literary verbiage: their astonishment and horror in the face of an unheard mass of heresies, which in their eyes must have appeared as nothing less than hell spilling over.”

In this moment, Ginzburg applies an empathetic eye to the inquisitors, imagining the trial from their perspective. The hyperbolic language of “hell spilling over” is not intended hyperbolically. Instead, it emulates the hell-fearing Catholic belief system of the inquisitors, invoking religious imagery that would have weighed heavily on their minds.

“Apparently no one found it scandalous that a heretic, a heresiarch in fact, should administer the funds of the parish: and, for that matter, as we recall, even the priest had had dealings with the Inquisition.”

Ginzburg here addresses the issue of Community and Marginalization within Montereale, characterizing the village as unconcerned with heresy. Unexpectedly, Menocchio resumes a central position in the community as a town official, indicating that the Inquisition’s attempts to isolate him did not immediately work. This observation runs counter to popular conceptions of average Early Modern people as rigidly religious and submissive to authority.

“Menocchio’s outward obedience to the rites and sacraments of the Church disguised a stubborn loyalty to his old ideas.”

Discrepancies between Menocchio’s internal and external worlds become increasingly problematic over the course of his life; during the second trial, their incompatibility results in his death. The contrast drawn between the two here succinctly summarizes this conflict, which is central to the narrative.

“Once again, Menocchio was trying to attribute his doubts, his anger, to diabolical temptation—only, however, to promptly reveal his belief in their rational basis.”

“Diabolical” here refers to the literal Devil, as opposed to informal usages of the word. Menocchio’s bad rhetorical habit of self-contradiction proved to be his downfall during the second trial, as Ginzburg outlines in this chapter and the surrounding ones. Rationality is at odds with mystery, and the two theories of religion go to battle within Menocchio’s words.

“In the first trial, as we recall, Menocchio had never revealed supernatural revelations. Now, instead, he was alluding to experiences of a mystical sort, even though he disavowed them vaguely as ‘vanities’ and ‘dreams.’ What may have influenced him was a reading of that Koran […] which the archangel Gabriel had dictated to the prophet Mohammed.”

In this observation, Ginzburg perceives character development in Menocchio away from rationalism and towards mysticism. This is a drastic shift in his core values, especially for a character whose other traits—stubbornness, confidence, and curiosity—remain largely stagnant for the duration of the study.

“I Menego also thought that death would free me from these fears, so I would not bother anyone, but it has done just the opposite, it has taken away a son of mine who was able to keep every trouble and suffering away from me; and then it has wanted to take my wife who looked after me; and the sons and daughters who remain to me consider me crazy because I have been their ruination, which is only the truth, and if only I had died when I was fifteen, they would be without the bother of this poor wretch.”

Menocchio’s tragic words in this document are some of the most emotionally-charged in the book. His mournful reflection personifies death, treating it as a central antagonist over the course of life. Such a dark tone and subject matter foreshadows his fast-approaching execution, contributing to the notion that Menocchio may have been aware of and indifferent to his own doom.

“These two millers ended differently; but the similarities in their lives are surprising, probably something more than an extraordinary coincidence.”

Comparing and contrasting Menocchio with Baroni, Ginzburg finds that he cannot accept random chance as an acceptable historical explanation for their shared ideas. The author’s frequent instinct to find pattern in what initially appears coincidental is a central aspect of his methodology, leading him to the book’s core arguments about cultural undercurrents amongst the general population.

“We have seen cropping up repeatedly, from beneath a very profound difference in language, surprising similarities between basic currents in the peasant culture we have endeavored to reconstruct and those in the most progressive circles of sixteenth-century culture. To explain these similarities simply on the basis movement from of high to low involves clinging to the unacceptable notion that ideas originate exclusively among the dominant classes.”

Likening culture to a body of water with his use of the word “current,” Ginzburg further reinforces his notions of fluid motion of ideas between social classes. Circularity (See: Index of Terms) is thus illustrated through metaphor, as familiar imagery clarifies the Relationships Between “High” and “Low” Culture in the 16th Century.