A CRITICAL REVIEW OF CARLO GINZBURG’S

“THE CHEESE AND THE WORMS”

B Y M ATT CROMWELL  S EPTEMBER 30, 2010

I. INTRODUCTION

Carlo Ginzburg attempts in his work The Cheese and the Worms (Ginzburg, 1980) to

both narrate a story as well as utilize the emerging field called microhistory. In telling the

story of a seemingly insignificant miller from the province of Fruili, Italy Ginzburg is

shedding light on the inner workings of the Catholic justice system, the agricultural

economy of the area, and what he calls the peasant or popular culture. This paper will

summarize his narrative, evaluate his thesis, style, and approach, and provide my own

assessment of this work.

II. SUMMARY

Using an extensive collection of documents of two trials of the miller Domineco

Scandella (called Mennochio), Ginzburg describes the world Mennochio lived and died in.

Mennochio is on trial for heresies that he both believed and propagated. The nature of the

heresies cover a wide spectrum of Catholic doctrine, from the nature of God, to the

authority of the Pope and bishops, to the effectiveness of baptism. His ability to spread his

beliefs is what has brought him to trial. Ginzburg presents him as an oddity in the town; he

holds strange beliefs and seems intent on sharing them to the extreme discomfort of his

friends and neighbors.

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 Through the course of the trial Ginzburg highlights how certain aspects of

Scandella’s thought can be deduced to have had their origins in certain popular theological

tracts or works. Ginzburg presents a list of books that Scandella references throughout his

first and second trial. Many of the books were borrowed, which Ginzburg uses to illustrate

how books in that day were spread not only through sharing the physical book, but also

through discussion. Books began to have oral interpretations that sometimes strayed far

from their intent. Scandella then is “one embodiment” of “the encounter between the

printed page and the oral culture” (p. 33).

It is exactly his embodiment of the populace that seems to keep the Holy Office

concerned with him. They had tried various reformers before; and Ginzburg also cites their

trials of witches and other non-Christians religious believers. But Scandella was singular in

his loyalty to the Church as well as the extreme depth of his confusion and perversion of

Catholic doctrine. Their concern was mostly focused on how representative was Scandella’s

beliefs with the populace, and whether or not he might spread more confusion if not

properly dealt with.

To this end, Scandella was convicted of heresy and spreading heresy and

condemned to prison for an undetermined amount of time. After two years he won an

appeal to be reunited with his family again. But his freedom only lasted roughly 12 years

before word spread that he had taken up his old heresies again. The second trial focused on

reaffirming his heretical beliefs and seeking out any who he might have infected. Ginzburg

ends by confirming the execution of Mennochio by way of an ironic reference to another

unknown heretic named Marco in which it was said that he lived in the same town as

Scandella.

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III. GINZBURG’S THESIS

Ginzburg summarizes his thesis of this work really succinctly in the Preface to the

English edition, that is to show that “between the culture of the dominant classes and that

of the subordinate classes there existed, in preindustrial Europe, a circular relationship

composed of reciprocal influences, which travelled from low to high as well as from high to

low” (pg. xii). Basically, Ginzburg wanted to use the case of Mennochio to show how

influence between classes is a two-way street. Though the aristocratic and political classes

held power and exerted it to their benefit over the lower classes, it can also be shown how

there is power in numbers and the peasants influenced the current of change for their

superiors as well.

Ginzburg highlights many of the phrases and ideas that Mennochio expressed in his

trials that echoed or seemed derived from that of Martin Luther or other “reformers” of the

Church. Though Mennochio is not able to weave all of his various and inconsistent thoughts

into a whole, he nevertheless holds many ideas of his time in his mind and is able to apply

them in the context of the trials against him. Some examples:

1. Scandella often describes sacraments and practices of the Church as just

“business”. The baseness of this phrase alone made the church officials very

unhappy; but they could not deny that it was a sentiment expressed popularly

among the peasants.

2. His indirect and direct references to “a new world” not only have sway because

of the recently discovered Americas, but also because of the new way of life

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 propagated by the Protestant Reformers. Their new world was not over the

ocean, per se, but a new way of running cities and religious communities.

But Mennochio’s heresy goes much further beyond typical Lutheranism. It is

precisely because of the wide variety of potential originating culprits that the Holy Office

seems so intent on trying and convicting Mennochio. While describing the second trial,

Ginzburg summarizes the views and stories of several other contemporaries of Mennochio

who were known as or being tried as heretics by the Church. In so doing, it becomes clear

how focused the Church was on protecting their doctrinal identity specifically in light of the

Reformation and new ideas being spurred by the New World.

If this story were understood only according to the written history recorded by the

Church then the extreme length of documentation on Mennochio’s case would just seem

odd. But Ginzburg’s ability to highlight motivations behind the Church’s reception of

Mennochio help to see exactly how the power they exert over the peasantry is also used

conversely to influence themselves. Mennochio’s ideas may be convoluted, but it’s what

they represent that make him so important for the Church.

IV. GINZBURG’S STYLE AND APPROACH

Ginzburg is a leading proponent of microhistory, which is an approach that has had a

rough introduction and long road to acceptance. Ginzburg wrote a very revealing article in

which he explains his motivations and approach in writing The Cheese and the

Worms.(Ginzburg, 1993) He states clearly that his motivations were unknown to him at the

time but undoubtedly influenced by other historians doing similar and effective work

before him. Nevertheless, he makes very explicit the effect of the goal of Leo Tolstoy’s War

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and Peace on his thought, specifically in writing this work. Ginzburg was particularly struck

by how Tolstoy understood that “a historical phenomenon can become comprehensible

only by reconstructing the activities of all the persons who participated in it.” In this way,

Ginzburg finds it completely unacceptable to reconstruct the world of the miller based only

on the accounts of those who sent him to the pyre. Ginzburg knows that the task in its

completeness is unrealizable, but it nevertheless sent him into a style of research that

created this extremely unique work.

In order for this approach to work, there are many blanks that need to be filled.

Taking the documentation of the Church that tried Mennochio at face value may lead to a

complete story, but not necessarily one that is whole and representative of all parties

involved. Ginzburg explains how even the court notation is filtered because it is a

representation of Mennochio through the ears of the court. In that case, how can one

understand Mennochio’s world and thought without hearing directly from him? It is

difficult to describe how Ginzburg accomplished this exactly except to describe him like a

crime investigator. It doesn’t suffice for Ginzburg to hear Mennochio say that the world was

created like a cheese from milk, and the angles and even God came from the cheese like

worms; Ginzburg wants to know how Mennochio could have arrived at that understanding.

In this sense, microhistory is in no way “small”. The research involved in surveying the

various works of the time that might have influenced Mennochio’s thought is massive.

But, by the nature of seeking a voice for the voiceless, much of the influences that

Ginsburg mentions in regard to Mennochio’s thought are not direct and complete fact. It is

likely that he believed that Jesus was the son of St. Joseph (and not God) because he read Il

Fioreto della Bibia (p. 28), but there could have been a wide variety of sources for that

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belief as well. What makes this great scholarly work is not only that Ginzburg is able to

reference these other works as potential influences, but that he also recognizes the

limitations of what he is implicating. If this we a story of Queen Elizabeth I, then such

limitations would not be easily tolerated. But the goal here is to elucidate the Zeitgeist of

the time through the experience of those who didn’t have the luxury of writing their own

history.

V. CONCLUSION: MY OPINION

I have often wondered how our descendants will tell our story as their history.

Because of the affordability and broad acceptance of modern consumer technology ours is

easily the most well and variously documented era of any time yet. I don’t think it would be

overly difficult to put together a story of the life of Matt Cromwell based on historical

Facebook records, digital images, and blog posts, let alone public records and Blackboard

discussions. This question shows the relevance that microhistory will soon have because of

how accessible it will be. For example, what type of historical picture can now be drawn

about the 9/11 attacks based solely on a microhistory approach through the accounts of

the witnesses? This “bottom-up” approach might help future generations understand

better why then-Senator Obama was so appealing to our electorate, or why our television

news media is still extremely biased and polarizing.

The biggest challenge I was left with after reading Ginburg’s book was how

important a truly deep and broad knowledge of one’s specialty is regardless of one’s

approach. I felt throughout the book that Ginzburg presented the case without bias or

motive other than to tell the story and show the “circularity” of influence between classes

despite who writes the final history.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ginzburg, C. (1980). The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Ginzburg, C. (1993). Microhistory: Two or Three Things I Know About It. Critical Inquiry.
Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343946.

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