Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller.

Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller. Translated by John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992

Is it possible to make a macro-argument through micro-historical analysis? The Cheese and the Worms is a rare treat that attempts to answer large questions with small samples sizes. It masterfully illuminates the beliefs of a miller, Menocchio, and his interpretations of the world. In essence, the book attempts to reconstruction popular consciousness through Menocchio. Though not a powerful or even particularly influential man, Menocchio is a remarkable historical focal point because of his heretical beliefs. He was a profound thinker whose literacy enabled him to develop complex political, social, and religious theories. For example, as the title of the book suggest, Menocchio’s creation myth began as such: “…earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk of mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were angels.” When asked about where his ideas originated, Menocchio refered to many books he had read but was unable to accurately describe their narratives. (52) In the end, Menocchio’s fate is death because he refuses to repent and keep quiet. Carlo Gizburg argues that Menocchio’s unique cosmology reflects a fragment of a “persecuted, obliterated, forgotten peasant culture” that was in contradiction to wider Christian culture. (xiv, xxiii) The purpose of this book is to expose others to a miller “...who had strange ideas, and who had read a number of books” and to explore the complicated relationship between popular religion and elite culture. (x)

Ginzburg begins his prefaces (2003 version, English version, Italian version) by examining two main historiographic trends and setting them against each other. Ginzburg grapples with two larger questions that saturate the entire book: to what extent do aspects of the dominant elite culture permeate popular culture and to what extent does popular culture represent a deliberate acculturation of rural and elite beliefs? In particular, Ginzburg points out that Mandrou’s thesis argues that popular culture must be imposed from the top-down, while Bolleme’s thesis understands popular culture as autonomous from elite culture. In contrast to both, Ginzburg examines Menocchio’s literary culture in light of rural culture. Ginzburg’s most significant thesis suggests that popular culture is influence by both rural and elite culture. His argument utilizes the theoretical frame works of Foucaultian Post-Modernism and Levy-Bruhl’s mentalité, while also being informed by Marxism.

Subsequent chapters detail the story of Menocchio. His radically non-Christians beliefs and his unwillingness to abandon them are central to the book’s discourse on popular culture. The book utilizes Inquisition records from the interrogation of Menocchio in Friuli over a fifteen-year period. Ginzburg executes this argument through sixty-two short and precise chapters. In a way, this allows Ginzburg to grab the attention of his readers by creating unique and novelesque narrative. This narrative style enables an organic relationship between the reader and Ginzburg based on mutual fascination with Menocchio and complicated questions of popular culture. Additionally, Ginzburg’s organization and framework express the difficulty of both Ginzburg and Menocchio’s to organize and execute the complex ideas with which they deal with.

The Cheese and the Worms comes up against minor problems when addressing the issue of sources and their ability to reconstruct and accurately reflex historical popular consciousness. Of course, this is an inherent problem with pre-modern Inquisition records. Ginzburg argues that Menocchio’s beliefs were a well-organized body with “an abstruse and complicated anthropology.” (68) However, Ginzburg is unable to validate Menocchio’s ideologies without additional sources and over sixty chapters.

Although a brilliant book, the basic evidence is repetitive, thin, and often overreaching. His arguments hinges on the existence of pre-Christian rural religious traditions. However, he cannot provide evidence that it existed. His propensities for generalizations are crucially important to the outcome of the book. Suggesting that Menocchio’s ideas indicate a more widespread significance, rather than a fascinating set of individual beliefs, is difficult to prove. I do not question Ginzburg’s description of Menocchio but instead questions whether there could have been thousands of other like Menocchio. If there were, how can we know if they were adhering to “traditional rural beliefs”? Even Menocchio was careful to deny such claims under the pressure of physical torture. He insisted that his ideas were developed through literature.

Too often the reader is left with unproven assertions and over-simplifications. While Ginzburg spends a majority of his analysis exploring the origins of Menocchio’s beliefs, I was not completely convinced of Ginzburg’s answers. His explanation of mills as “a place of meeting, of social relations…a place for the exchange of ideas” was the most convincing aspect of his argument. (119) But how can we account for the oral traditions of religious materialism? (68) This is a question that haunts many social historians and Ginzburg’s willingness to address and wrestle with it warrants both praise and criticism. Though, I would argue that what makes this book brilliant is not its evidence or overall conclusions but its methodology, execution, and the questions it raises on the nature of belief and unbelief in Early Modern Europe. After reading this book, Ginzburg’s last sentences rings true: “About Menocchio we know many things… about the so many other like him who lived and died without leaving a trace, we know nothing.”