The Cheese and the Worms

Matthew Necelis

Professor diBatista

Harvest of the middle Ages

The Cheese and the Worms

The benevolent story of Domenico Scandella, otherwise referred to as Menocchio, is a moving story about a miller born in 1532 who ran into dealings with the Holy Inquisition. After Menocchio, on several occasions, was heard spreading word against the Church, Menocchio was arrested and brought before the Holy Inquisition. Carlo Ginzburg’s lack of evidence and his ability to quickly assume the worst portrays Menocchio as a heretical savage, while underneath there lays a man with a creative and intelligent mind. What started as something that could have been classified as a common trial turned into a trial that would shed new light on a stale tradition that has been overplayed.

Carlo Ginzburg takes a man, who strongly believes in ideas separate from the church, and transforms him into a dunce who cannot be creative on his own. Throughout the entire book Carlo Ginzburg takes miniscule details of conversation during Menocchio’s trial to try and connect them with heretical books from thousands of years prior from countries miles away. Carlo Ginzburg tries to connect Menocchio’s famous argument about the cheese and the worms and connect it to seven words (“worms/born to produce the angelic butterfly”) in the Divine Comedy. Carlo Ginzburg’s in depth version of the creation of life was stripped of its originality and integrity by these seven words that Carlo Ginzburg had very exaggeratedly connected to it. Ginzburg’s need to associate every word that came out of Menocchio’s mouth with an existing “heretical” group led a dull and inconclusive side story. Carlo Ginzburg’s poor connections did not end with the connections to distant readings, but continued to Reformation groups.

Carlo Ginzburg unsuccessfully tries to associate Menocchio with a type of heretical group after every time Menocchio makes a statement regarding anything that went against the church. He first attempted to...