<p>This is a reissue of Carlo Ginzburg's book on the world-view of a 16th-century Italian miller, burnt at the stake as a heretic in 1599.</p>

The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

History

Ginzburg, Professor Carlo

Europe

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Based on research in the Inquisitorial archives, the book recounts the story of a peasant fertility cult centred on the benandanti. These men and women regarded themselves as professional anti-witches, who (in dream-like states) apparently fought ritual battles against witches and wizards, to protect their villages and harvests. If they won, the harvest would be good, if they lost, there would be famine. The inquisitors tried to fit them into their pre-existing images of the witchesâ€™ sabbat. The result of this cultural clash which lasted over a century, was the slow metamorphosis of the benandanti into their enemies â€“ the witches. Carlo Ginzburg shows clearly how this transformation of the popular notion of witchcraft was manipulated by the Inquisitors, and disseminated all over Europe and even to the New World. The peasantsâ€™ fragmented and confused testimony reaches us with great immediacy, enabling us to identify a level of popular belief which constitutes a valuable witness for the reconstruction of the peasant way of thinking of this age.

The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century

<p>"In the diversity of methods and objects of analysis it offers, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method offers a fresh perspective on this Italian historian who has become such an essential point of reference in many domains of cultural study today."--Dana Polan, Camera Obscura.</p>

Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ginzburg, Professor Carlo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ginzburg, Professor Carlo

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ginzburg, Professor Carlo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century

Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method