He was given or loaned books by friends among the upper classes and priesthood: the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, etc. Although only a peasant, Menocchio could read and write. He was born in 1532 in Montereale, a small hill town in what is now Italy. Similarly, Ginzburg here examines trial records to bring to life Domenico Scandella, also know as Menocchio, a miller who was brought to trial by the Inquisition. Ronald Hutton, author of The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700, makes use of churchwarden's accounts and household accounts to determine English seasonal rituals and pastimes, looking for example at the time when churches paid for minstrels or morris dancers. The problem, of course, is that there is little in the way of written records about peasants who could not read or write. Many of us who are tired of hearing about the parade of wars and failed conquests that make up traditional histories are eager to hear about the lives of ordinary people in centuries long past. The subtitle to this book is “The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |