The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

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Summary: Keep this book in mind
Review: Anytime you want to tell yourself that the Catholic Church isn't that bad, just keep this book in mind. It is just more proof that the church is the most corrupt institution in the history of time. . .with that in mind. The book is very interesting, it deals with the trial of a smart man at the time who was accused of heresy. So throughout the trial we begin to realize how well read this man is and how well he has developed his ideas. It is a good case study of the life of a common man in 1599.

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Summary: Microhistory of the masses
Review: Borne of the microhistory genre, "The Cheese and the Worms" provides a glimpse into the life of a miller in medieval Italy. No ordinary miller is 'Menocchio', however, as he is inquisitioned for his radical religious philosophies. In a time and place where Catholicism was undoubtedly the religion of Europe, Menocchio harbored unique ideas about religious doctrine, the teachings of the Catholic Church, and man's purpose. Although some of his many ideas contradict others that he had, he was well-read and surprisingly well-educated for a man of his station. As Ginzburg says, though, we must look to the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press as being major catalysts for such learning and religious evolution. Within the microhistory genre, "The Cheese and the Worms" is most fascinating when we ask the question: Was this an isolated phenonmenon or was this a reflection of many people's views? The answer, I suppose, lies with Menocchio, but there is still much to be gleaned from this book.

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Summary: Historiography at its best!
Review: Carlo Ginzburg was one of the first historians to put into practice anthropological ideas about culture as a historically transmitted system of meaning. These ideas were developed by Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, and ultimately, Michel Foucault. In using Menocchio, Ginzburg makes a statement about making history from the point of view of the excluded, the liminal characters of society. In this sense, Menocchio's story ceases to be an anecdote and becomes a reflection and a statement about the way Italian society was constructed in the 16th century. All this from the point of view of those upon whom power was imposed.

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Summary: Cheesy Worms?
Review: Carlo Ginzburg, author of CLUES, MYTHS, AND THE HISTORICAL METHOD (1989), THE ENIGMA OF PIERO: PIERODELLA FRANCESCA-THE BAPTISM, THE AREZZO CYCLE, THE FLAGELLATION (1988), and THE NIGHT BATTLES: WITCHCRAFT AND AGRARIAN CULTS IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES (1983), is professor of history at the University of Bologna and the University of California, Los Angeles. In his work The Cheese and the Worms, Ginzburg relates the story of a medieval miller of Friuli, Domenico Scandella, called Menocchio, who is put on trial for heresy during the Italian Inquisition. Ginzburg nicely recreates the experience of a medieval trial-something monotonous, seemingly endless, and without apparent utility-at least to moderns who generally suffer from a culture infused with impatient pragmatism. This relentless prodding of the inquisitors for answers to their hairsplitting questions, of Menocchio for meaning to his contemptible existence, and of Ginzburg for threads of connection between the trial proceedings and possible sources is laborious. Contemporary readers, except for specialists in cosmology, derivative theology, evolutionary anthropology, and late medieval history, likely will have little tolerance for such esoteric musings. As stated, Menocchio, an obscure miller who is nevertheless important to his local village, is on trial by Inquisition authorities for heresies which are numerous, fluid, and conflicting. Ginzburg's main objective, however, is to get at the sources for Menocchio's thinking, especially his bizarre cosmological view involving cheese and worms that are born in the cheese. Like a relentless detective, Ginzburg takes the reader into excursions, asides, and digressions. He explores written sources such as the Bible in the vernacular, the Koran, Sir John Mandeville's Travels, Dominican Albert da Castello's Il Lucidario della Madonna, and many others. He postulates an eclectic medieval oral tradition from which Menocchio might have gleaned his ideas. But all this chasing of sources makes the reader feel like the proverbial rat trapped in the maze. There are many variations of possibilities for escape, but there is no resolve. The discussion of oral versus written sources goes on and on. Yet one thing is certain. All oral tradition unless codified is unpredictable and not easily discernable. While a valid hypothesis concerning source material for Menocchio's religious ideas, oral tradition remains unverifiable. After all, the written codification of the oral tradition of Menocchio's trials is what Ginzburg found in the Archivio della Curia Arcivescovile of Udine, and this discovery sparked his writing The Cheese and the Worms. Furthermore, Menocchio's suggestion that he is a tabula rasa who simply creates these things in his own mind seems incredulous. That Ginzburg would take this seriously is all the more unbelievable. Menocchio is not unaffected by his environment which includes written sources, as Ginzburg so ably points out. With the question of the origin of Menocchio's ideas about origins aside, what is left to discuss? A Religionsgeschichtlich approach falls quick prey to quaint anthropological inquiries. This is what Ginzburg offers and little more. Perhaps more development of the Church hierarchy and the consternation of the peasant against his elite accusers by way of a sociological reading of religion in sixteenth century Italy would prove useful. But Ginzburg does little to develop this. His real concern is prodding the interaction of inquisitor, miller, and Menocchio's acquaintances in order to find out about "Cheese." When this is attributed to an ancient Indian myth in the Vedas, derived from residual medieval oral tradition, Ginzburg's work is done. No more is left to ascertain from Menocchio. There is no complete characterization of Menocchio-his family, his work, his accomplishments as mayor, his business dealings. These things are not explored, but these are what would make Menocchio come alive and would give contextual meaning to his religious ideas. Why Ginzburg does not broaden his research is unclear, but the failure to do so leaves Menocchio as a religious oddity, a heretic without significance, another faceless victim of an oppressive religious hierarchy. Perhaps Ginzburg is unable to draw a more complete likeness of Menocchio from the trial proceedings. Although the specialist might prefer to study the complete text of these trials, as exegete of Menocchio's hearings, Ginzburg is superb. As phenomenologist on this Friulian miller's religious thought, Ginzburg is without peer. But THE CHEESE AND THE WORMS can hardly be dubbed a serious Quellenforschung or traditionsgeschichte except for a very narrow slice of sixteenth century Italian history. Michael Hunter notes, "Few will be able to accept Ginzburg's general thesis, his argument that Menocchio gives expression to a lively and homogeneous peasant culture" (HISTORY 1981 66:296). Further, Bennett Hill suggests, "The general reader will find the style opaque and the results unexciting. [The book is] for research libraries" (LIBRARY JOURNAL 1980 105:1512). At best, Menocchio provides an illustration of "the ingenuity and determination of the human spirit in face of adverse circumstance" (see J. H. Elliott, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS 1980 27:38). At worst, Menocchio is just another heretic that follows a typical pattern with nothing exceptional, so Ginzburg (p. 112). To adapt an old cliche, when you've seen one heretic, you've seen them all.

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Summary: Well written, fascinating tale
Review: Description of a miller with an intresting ('modern') cosmological belief whose rebellion in thought is prosecuted by the Taliban of that time, the Roman Catholic Church. Forced to explain his nonAristotelian views (and, if Ginzburg is telling the truth, he responded extremely well to the inquisitors' questions!), the miller outwits his arrogant, narrow-minded judges and so wins the reward of torture and imprisonment, losing his wife, family, everything in the end. Galileo, who had a higher social position and powerful protectors, suffered no worse than house arrest, in comparison.

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Summary: Groundbreaking historiographical analysis...
Review: Everything that Carlo Ginzburg has ever written has always been groundbreaking and exhilirating. Here he uses Inquisition documents to describe and analyze the ideas of a common man, which are probably more complicated and interesting than those of the philosophers and theologians of his time. And remember that this was the age of the so-called Renaissance (an absurd concept) and Reformation (ditto). Ginzburg leaves the reader wondering how an "un-educated" man could have such complicated ideas. Highly recommended.

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Summary: Groundbreaking historiographical analysis...
Review: Having read the reviews already listed here, I believe the one major facet of this book has been downplayed. Dr. Ginzburg's approach is to utilize and interesting story scraped from the otherwise monotonous and one-sides Inquisitorial records from the Roman Inquisition. What is most important about this book, is that it demonstrates a separation of culture, call it "high" culture and "low" or "peasant" culture. We follow the great thinkers of the past two millenia from grade school through graduate studies, never fully attempt to delve into a concurrently extant peasant "history of ideas." What Dr. Ginzburg has displayed through this fascinating yet sad tale is that the great thinkers we know of, i.e., Augustine, Aquinas, Occam, Galileo, etc., are a representation of a literate educated class which by no means excludes a secondary ideology which flourished mostly thorugh an oral culture. Dr. Ginzburg seeks merely to bring our attention to this fact and more or less demonstrate the wealth of knowledge and study that has yet to be done in light of the fact. Menochio merely highlights the existance of long standing ideas which otherwise would have been lost to history were it not for "high" society's interest in synchretism. This book is therefore an eye-opener to anyone who believes that the great thinkers speak for everyone and that only they should be reserved for study.

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Summary: Slipshod speculations of a doctrinaire thinker
Review: Mr. Ginzburg's "The Cheese and the Worms" is destined to be enormously successful among young, undisciplined students who lack the discernment or the inclination necessary to tell history from fantasy (as several of the reviews above will attest.) Ginzburg, although an accomplished researcher and a fine writer, has written a very murky and extremely biased interpretation of Domenico Scandella's life. Ginzburg is far too facile and quick to cite his own unsubstantiated assertions as "proof" of his conclusions, and his slipshod thinking mars what might otherwise have been a fine and valuable book.

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Summary: interesting case in realistic recreating of cultural history
Review: This book presents an interesting case in realistic recreating of history; when the well-documented record of the 16th century Inquisition Trial are brought into scrutiny based on the cultural context of the times. The most fascinating things for me were descriptions of the bookshelf of the 16th century peasant; with so few book which can influence oneself (and for most people it was just one book - a Bible). Unfortunately, the book tends to become more repeatable, looses focus and ultimately my interest. One can sense hesitation of the author - am I really writing a history or fiction; it is not thorough and detailed enough to be history, and narrative development is not exciting enough for it to become very good literature.

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Summary: Reconstructing the reconstuction
Review: This is a spectacular application of the clue-based evidentiary paradigm, in which Ginzburg pursues lead after lead in an effort to reconstruct the world view of an outspoken miller dragged in front of Roman inquisitors in 16th-century Italy -- and then to reconstruct the origins of this world view in, simultaneously, peasant oral culture, secular philosophy, and Reformationist thought. One might, of course, quibble with particularities, and Ginzburg seems a little too sure of many of his speculations, a confidence which he attempts to slip by his readers with words like "clearly" and "undoubtedly." But for anyone interested in the way in which big pictures are inferred from small clues, this is exquisite reading.