Carlo Ginzburg

The Cheese and the Worms is a pioneering 1976 microhistory that examines the life of Domenico Scandella, a 16th-century miller known as Menocchio. Menocchio developed a bizarre cosmology, suggesting the universe formed out of chaos like cheese forming out of milk, with worms appearing in it. Ginzburg uses trial records from the Roman Inquisition to explore how this peasant uniquely interpreted the high culture of the Renaissance.

Microhistory is an approach that focuses on a very small, specific subject—like a single trial, village, or individual—to uncover broader cultural and social realities of an era. Ginzburg and his colleagues believed that reducing the scale of observation reveals details that get lost in broad macro-historical studies. It relies heavily on reading against the grain of official archival documents.

Ginzburg outlined the 'evidential paradigm' to describe how historians work, comparing their methods to detectives, art authenticators, and psychoanalysts. He argued that historians often must rely on indirect, marginal clues and traces to reconstruct a larger truth, rather than applying strict scientific laws. He famously illustrated this by comparing a doctor diagnosing symptoms to an art historian identifying a painter's brushstroke.

Yes, early in his career, Ginzburg wrote Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath, an extensive study of European witch trials. He traced the origins of the witches' sabbath back to ancient, subterranean fertility cults and shamanistic flight myths. While his evidence has been debated, it cemented his reputation as an innovative scholar of early modern popular culture.