The Cheese and the Worms

A wonderful book... Ginzburg is a historian with an insatiable curiosity, who pursues even the faintest of clues with all the zest of a born detective until every fragment of evidence can be fitted into place. The work of reconstruction is brilliant, the writing superbly readable, and by the end of the book the reader who has followed Dr. Ginzburg in his wanderings through the labyrinthine mind of the miller of the Friuli will take leave of this strange and quirky old man with genuine regret. -- J. H. Elliott New York Review of Books Ginzburg has excavated a marvelous and melancholy tale. Lay readers know that historical work of this order requires formidable skills and dogged research... Ginzburg's discovery of Menocchio is a dazzling entry into the historical world of popular culture. -- Lauro Martines Washington Post Why should we reread the story of Menocchio thirty-eight years after its publication? First, this new edition is a timely update. Ginzburg has penned a new preface and bibliographical information has been augmented. Second, because it is a work of rare scholarship that no student should forget, despite the fact that the context in which this book was crafted has significantly changed. -- Cristiano Zanetti Sixteenth Century Journal

Carlo Ginzburg has taught at the University of Bologna, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. The recipient of the 2010 International Balzan Prize, he is author of The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, also published by Johns Hopkins.

Preface to the 2013 Edition Translators' Note Preface to the English Edition Preface to the Italian Edition Acknowledgments 1. Menocchio 2. The town 3. First interrogation 4. "Possessed?" 5. From Concordia to Portogruaro 6. "To speak out against his superiors" 7. An archaic society 8. "They oppress the poor" 9. "Lutherans" and Anabaptists 10. A miller, a painter, a buffoon 11. "My opinions came out of my head" 12. The books 13. Readers of the town 14. Printed pages and "fantastic opinions" 15. Blind alley? 16. The temple of the virgins 17. The funeral of the Madonna 18. The father of Christ 19. Judgment day 20. Mandeville 21. Pigmies and cannibals 22. "God of nature" 23. The three rings 24. Written culture and oral culture 25. Chaos 26. Dialogue 27. Mythical cheeses and real cheeses 28. The monopoly over knowledge 29. The words of the Fioretto 30. The function of metaphors 31. "Master," "steward," and "workers" 32. An hypothesis 33. Peasant religion 34. The soul 35. "I don't know" 36. Two spirits, seven souls, four elements 37. The flight of an idea 38. Contradictions 39. Paradise 40. A new "way of life" 41. "To kill priests" 42. A "new world" 43. End of the interrogations 44. Letter to the judges 45. Rhetorical figures 46. First sentence 47. Prison 48. Return to the town 49. Denunciations 50. Nocturnal dialogue with the Jew 51. Second trial 52. "Fantasies" 53. "Vanities and dreams" 54. "Oh great, omnipotent, and holy God . . ." 55. "If only I had died when I was fifteen" 56. Second sentence 57. Torture 58. Scolio 59. Pellegrino Baroni 60. Two millers 61. Dominant culture and subordinate culture 62. Letters from Rome Notes Index of Names