The Cheese And The Worms: The Cosmos Of A Sixteenth-Century Miller

“I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels.”

This is the quote from which the book takes its name, describing Menocchio’s baffling cosmogony. His use of simile here ties the spiritual world to the material world, demonstrating the phenomenon of peasant materialism and introducing the Relationships Between “High” and “Low” Culture in the 16th Century.

“‘I would say enough to astonish everyone,’ he had promised the townsmen. And indeed, the inquisitor, the vicar general, and the mayor of Portogruaro must have been astonished at a miller who could expound his views with such assurance and force.”

Menocchio’s words here reveal his boastful, self-approving character. Rather than treating this confidence as delusional, however, Ginzburg reaffirms it, imagining the inquisitors responded in the astounded way that Menocchio had hoped for. Menocchio’s confidence in his ideas and willingness to expound them even to those in authority reinforces Ginzburg’s theory that “high” and “low” cultures are dynamic and interrelated.

“Menocchio set forth a very different religion, where all members were equal because the spirit of God was in all of them. Menocchio’s awareness of his own rights, then, had specifically religious origins.”

Here, Ginzburg directly contrasts Menocchio’s religion with the Catholic Church’s religion, finding egalitarianism in the former and hierarchy in the latter. Menocchio’s political religiosity, aimed at dismantling the exploitative power structures he perceived in the church, mirrors the politics of the book itself, as Ginzburg also takes aim at elitist visions of culture.