The fiftieth-anniversary edition of the classic tale of a sixteenth-century miller facing the Roman Inquisition.

The Cheese and the Worms is an incisive study of popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, the miller known as Menocchio, who was accused of heresy during the Inquisition and sentenced to death. In the fiftieth anniversary edition of this now-classic book, Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records to illustrate the religious and social conflicts of the society Menocchio lived in.

For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony, he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccios Decameron, Mandevilles Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."

Ginzburgs massively influential book has been widely regarded as an early example of the analytic, case-oriented approach known as microhistory. In the preface, Ginzburg offers his own corollary to Menocchios story as he considers the discrepancy between the intentions of the writer and what gets written. The Italian millers story and Ginzburgs work continue to resonate with modern readers because they focus on how oral and written culture are inextricably linked. Menocchios 500-year-old challenge to authority remains evocative and vital today.

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 Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller and Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, also published by Johns Hopkins.

Contents Preface to the 2013 Edition Translators Note Preface to the English Edition Preface to the Italian Edition Acknowledgements 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 dont 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

Coming soon! The Cheese and the Worms (fiftieth anniversary edition) by Carlo Ginzburg.

When The Cheese and the Worms burst into print fifty years ago, it opened up a new dimension to cultural history. Now it has become a classic, as fresh as ever.
—Robert Darnton, author of The Writers Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France

The Cheese and the Worms is the masterpiece of microhistory. It disturbs and puzzles with its intimate portrait of an obscure millers wild cosmology that led to his execution as an unrepentant heretic and uncovers deep layers of popular religious thought boiling in the caldron of the Reformation.
—Edward Muir, author of Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta in Renaissance Italy

In 1976, The Cheese and the Worms deciphered in the exceptional life story of a sixteenth-century miller some of the fundamental beliefs of early modern European societies. Fifty years after, Carlo Ginzburgs book is as lively and inspiring as it was for its first readers.
—Roger Chartier, author of Won in Translation: Textual Mobility in Early Modern Europe

Ginzburgs pioneering study of a most uncommon common man takes evident delight in the gregarious miller Menocchio Scandella and the bizarre beliefs he professes with such reckless gusto, but it is Menocchios courageous insistence on freedom of thought and speech before the Inquisition that raises him, and with him so many of his voiceless contemporaries, to tragic stature.
—Ingrid D. Rowland, author of The Lies of the Artists: Essays on Italian Art, 1450–1750