Religious Syncretism and Social Reform in the Cosmologies of Giordano Bruno and Domenico Scandella, Pt. 3

Finally, it is important to understand the cosmologies of both Bruno and Menocchio to understand the Church’s difficulties with them. Menocchio’s constant use of analogy to explain his own beliefs demonstrated an internal desire to clarify his own oftentimes disorganized thoughts by bringing the theoretical in line with the practical. His vocabulary corresponded to those things to which he related on an everyday basis. This cosmology did not come directly from the books he had read but from a sometimes uncomfortable combination of his imperfect knowledge of these texts, practical experiences, Friulian folk beliefs, and popular interpretations of the Catholic faith.[1] This uneasy alliance of assorted beliefs denoted an attempt on his part to reconcile Catholic theology with folk practices and beliefs. In the most famous example, Menocchio explains the origins of the cosmos by combining the traditional Ptolemaic-Aristotelian description of “chaos…that is earth, air, water, and fire…all mixed together” with down-to-earth terminology: “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. The most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the angels, and among the number of angels there was also God, he too being created out of that mass at the same time.”[2] Similarly, he described the Trinity in material terms:

Questioned: “What do you think God is?” he replied: “Light, happiness, consolation, that signifies the Trinity. The Trinity resembles a candle: The wax is the Father, the wick is the Son, and the light is the Holy Spirit. I believe that there is the Trinity in the Sacrament of the Eucharist because there is happiness, consolation, and light, and what makes me believe this is that when I go to this sacrament of communion repenting for my sins and have done my penance, I feel happiness, consolation, and light.”[3]

While Menocchio was almost certainly unaware of the new materialistic outlook of the burgeoning empirical sciences of Kepler, Galileo, and others, he imbued physical descriptions with metaphysical significance, which suggests that these new ways of thinking were not confined to the elite classes.

The reasons for Menocchio’s heavily analogous language are twofold. On the one hand, his Inquisitors asked him specific questions regarding his own personal theology, and his lack of theologically elite vocabulary required him to explain his beliefs through these practical examples. On a deeper level, however, Menocchio seems to have consciously endeavored to reconcile a lifetime of religious thought that heretofore had been an incoherent mass of diverse philosophical statements. Considering his tendency to fuse the material and spiritual, it is bizarre that he had difficulty resolving the nature of God the creator. Menocchio was not only a miller but also a “carpenter, sawyer, mason and other things”[4] requiring manual labor, and he expresses pride in Christ’s profession as a carpenter, but seems unable to conceive of the creator of the universe as a mere craftsman:

Questioned: “Could God have done everything himself without the existence of angels?” he replied: “Yes, just as someone who is building a house uses workers and helpers, but we say that he built it. Similarly, in making the world, God used the angels but we say that God made it. And just as that master carpenter in building a house could also do it by himself, but it would take longer, so God in making the world could have done it by himself, but over a longer period of time.[5]

In a sense, Menocchio’s cosmology was materialistic without being informed by the incipient rational discourses of the day.

Members of the upper and lower classes communicated with one another in a variety of ways. Carlo Ginzburg notes the dialectical relationship between the popular or peasant classes and the elite classes, and asserts that it was a reciprocal one not necessarily characterized by dominant and repressed categories. True, elites retained the power to discredit erroneously interpreted theology, especially when it infringed upon the doctrinal territory of Church officials. However, for peasants, this relationship was marked both by the natural convergence of elite and common ideas through increased access to vernacular literature and by a conscious amalgamation of popular folk beliefs with elite intellectual thought. Rather than a distortion based on lack of knowledge or inability to comprehend knowledge, many peasants actively pursued an understanding of theological concepts from which they had been excluded. The authorities seemed to have had trouble comprehending the nature of Menocchio’s beliefs precisely because they constituted a confusing admixture of elite theoretical concepts and bizarre descriptions based on practical popular experience.[6]

Popular religion is not an easily definable term, for it is often employed to describe the resultant culture born out of the Protestant Reformation as well as the various non-Christian folk traditions of European peasantry.[7] Not all popular religious movements of the sixteenth century were specifically Protestant or Catholic. What of the nominally Catholic peasants, like Menocchio, who came to new understandings of religion apart from those beliefs imposed by the Catholic Church following the Council of Trent? Certainly, Menocchio’s own preconceived notions of religion, his inadequate doctrinal knowledge, and his limited theological vocabulary deeply colored his textual exegesis.[8] Martin D.W. Jones has termed it “highly artificial” to describe popular and elite cultures as distinct from one another, but the mere existence of a Catholic reform movement reveals that Church elites assumed lower class religious beliefs were in need of modification.[9] At the very least, popular religion and the Catholicism of the Church elites intermingled in way that required reconciliation. Peasants grew more educated and literate and the elites attempted to direct this education where possible.

Scholars have interpreted Bruno’s cosmology in a number of ways.[10] From the 1880s until the 1930s, Bruno was regarded as an Italian hero and harbinger of the Scientific Revolution, and his trial and execution distinguished him as a martyr for science and free thought. This idea of martyrdom emerged out of Bruno’s acceptance of Copernicus’ heliocentric theory decades before Galileo’s observations, despite the fact that Bruno, unlike Galileo, arrived at this conclusions independent of the empirical scientific method.[11] Bruno was far more interested in Hermetic magic and Neoplatonic philosophy, both of which posited the possibility of an infinite universe full of many worlds. According to Frances Yates, Bruno’s condemnation was more closely tied to his involvement in these occult activities;[12] however, these areas of study were common in pre-Revolutionary Renaissance science and it seems unlikely that this alone contributed to his denunciation.

As scientific thinking evolved to be more materialistic and came to depend more and more upon empirical evidence, Bruno’s quasi-religious dabbling in these topics simply “rel[ied] on the wrong sort of discourse.”[13] The astronomer and historian Owen Gingerich, who has examined more first and second edition copies of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus than any other scholar, claims that there is little evidence that Bruno even read the book because his copy contains no annotations and his references to Copernicus elsewhere contain numerous errors.[14] “I care little about Copernicus,” wrote Bruno, “and little care I whether you or I understand him.”[15] Beyond geometry, Bruno was decidedly non-mathematical, because his religiously motivated belief in a sun-centered universe required no familiarity with the rational and quantitative world of physics and mathematics. Rather, his heliocentrism was spiritual, magical, and qualitative. It may seem counterintuitive from a modern perspective, but for Bruno, mathematics reduced the accuracy of these cosmological theories because finitely quantifying an infinite Copernican universe or Platonic world of forms proved impossible to Hermetic modes of thinking.[16] In short, Bruno was not a Copernican for “scientific” reasons but for “external” reasons that portended a wider and more comprehensive religion in closer harmony with the natural world.[17] Bruno’s cosmology was syncretic: he seems to have been in search of a truly universal religion, and it was this universality that especially appealed to him during the religious strife of late sixteenth century Europe. According to Giuseppe Candela, Bruno’s “return to Hermetic magic” was “the cure for the wars, persecutions, and social miseries of contemporary Europe, and certainly an improvement of the bloody feuds of Western Christendom.”[18]

Were Giordano Bruno and Menocchio consciously in search of a new religion combining the theology of Catholicism with more esoteric notions of the universe? Probably not. However, the aggregation of decidedly non-Christian elements in their own personal descriptions of the cosmos suggests that a synthesis of their diverse ideas was necessary to reconcile their cosmological beliefs with their Christianity. For the authorities, no readily available categories accurately defined their offenses other than simple heresy—they were variously accused of Lutheranism, Catharism, pantheism, and other identifiable Catholic infractions that all failed to comprehensively describe their beliefs. Giordano Bruno subscribed to a set of quasi-scientific precepts that had been part of the intellectual dialogue for centuries but only a generation later would cease to be acceptable under the new auspices of empirical science. The paradox for Menocchio is that he directly benefited from the rise of literacy and lay education following the decrees of the Council of Trent but his free use of this education is precisely what offended the Church authorities. In spite of their social and intellectual differences, both Bruno and Menocchio succumbed to the sweeping reforms and purgations of the late sixteenth century Church.


So, there's the paper. I thought it turned out all right, though I have some criticisms of it myself and received some very constructive criticism from my panel at the conference. My own biggest complaint with myself is that I didn't really get into the actual texts that Bruno wrote, especially his "Italian dialogues," four books written across fewer than two years (1584-1585) while he was in England. These really enunciated his worldview rather forcefully, and while I read them cursorily for my research, I didn't really integrate them or cite them into the text. In part, this was because my space was limited, and this was one of the things that that simply got left out. But looking back, I think his Copernican, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic tendencies really can't be understood without looking very directly at what he wrote, and these assertions are couched in very difficult, poetic, symbolic texts. It doesn't help matters much that these were written in Italian, not a language I understand, and though I have the English translations, it's just not the same. I've had a difficult enough time trying to muddle my way through Latin and French without throwing that into the mix. In short, I guess I feel like I focused a bit too much on historiographical context rather than primary source analysis for Bruno, This wasn't as big of a problem with Menocchio, about whom almost everything is know through his trial records, which, though difficult to follow at times, are relatively easy to read. Surprisingly, this is not something I was criticized for at the conference. Rather, my commentator said that his greatest problem with the paper was the fact that I conceded to Menocchio a certain level of typicality that he felt did not represent him. That is, I was comparing Bruno and Menocchio as socially very different but in the eyes of the Church and Inquisition, heretics all the same. He felt that my treatment of Bruno was sound and that viewing him through the lens of a post-Council of Trent offender made a lot of sense. For Menocchio, he thought it made a lot more sense to look at him as essentially an oddity who was castigated for his bizarre behavior and his unwillingness to relent to the authorities. In a sense, I very much agree, but I think, in some ways, the personalities of both Bruno and Menocchio were congruent enough to merit some serious analysis.

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[1] Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, 56-57.

[2] Andrea del Col, Dominico Scandella Known as Menocchio, 25.

[3] Ibid., 49.

[4] Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, 1.

[5] Andrea de Col, Domenico Scandella Known as Menocchio, 57.

[6] Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, xii and xix.

[7] Martin D. W. Jones, The Counter Reformation, 2 and 118-124.

[8] Ibid. 33.

[9]Ibid., 118-119. Jones is rightly wary of this distinction because it has often been cast in terms of lower class “superstition” versus upper class “religion” and he proffers evidence that elites followed similar “superstitious” practices as commoners. However, he minimizes the important distinction of “devotional” religion and “functional” religion. The latter aptly describes the nature of many peasant beliefs, while the former seems to have transcended class structures. See also William Monter, Ritual, Myth, and Magic in Early Modern Europe (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983).

[10]Hilary Gatti, “The State of Giordano Bruno Studies at the End of the Four-Hundredth Centenary of the Philosopher’s Death,” Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 252-261. Bruno studies have undergone enormous historiographical shifts since the 1880s when students in Rome commissioned and erected a statue of him on the spot of his execution in the Campo de’ Fiori. This statue’s creation occurred less than two decades after Italian unification and coincided with the rise in late nineteenth century Italian nationalism. Gatti tracks the shifting attitudes toward Bruno from his earlier place as a hero of science to his later place as a Renaissance Hermeticist to his still later place as a traveling scholar and political participant in the affairs of his many adoptive nations of residence. Gatti attempts to bring Bruno full circle and resituate him within the history of science by contending that since Hermetic and Neoplatonic thought were both a part of the scientific outlook of the late sixteenth century—and would remain so until after Galileo and Newton—Bruno was a perfectly representative scientific thinker of his age.

[11] For an early critique of Bruno’s Copernicanism, see K.F. Herzfeld, “The Process of Giordano Bruno,” Science 75 (1932): 241-242.

[12] Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 450.

[13] Ernan McMullin, “Bruno and Copernicus,” Isis 78 (1987): 65.

[14] Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (New York: Penguin Books, Ltd., 2004), 64 and 255 and Ernan McMullin, “Bruno and Copernicus,” 56. For example, Bruno supposed that the Earth and the Moon share an orbit about the sun and that the planets still revolved around the sun in epicycles.

[15] Giordano Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, trans. and ed. Edward A. Gosselin and Lawrence S. Lerner (Hamden, Connecticut: Shoestring Press, 1977), 192. In a manner much like Plato’s dialogue, the Symposium, Bruno uses the Copernican theory as an analogy for his own Hermetic/Neoplatonic beliefs. He expounds the theory that the universe is infinite, has no center, and is populated by multiple worlds.

[16] Paul Henri Michel, The Cosmology of Giordano Bruno, trans. R.E.W. Maddison (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1973), 40.

[17] Ernan McMullin, “Bruno and Copernicus,” Isis 78 (1987): 66.

[18] Giuseppe Candela, “Overview of the Cosmology, Religion, and Philosophical Universe of Giordano Bruno,” Italica 75 (1998): 361.

Religious Syncretism and Social Reform in the Cosmologies of Giordano Bruno and Domenico Scandella, Pt. 2

Bruno followed a different path to the stake. He was born in Nola, a provincial southern Italian town not much larger than Menocchio’s village, in 1548. In the mid-sixteenth century southern Italy lay in the midst of the Mediterranean and served as a crossroads in the maritime trade network that spanned from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Middle East. While Nola itself was small and largely homogeneous, it was situated a mere thirty miles from the more metropolitan Naples, the fourth most populous city in Europe when Bruno relocated there at the age of seventeen.[1] Consequently, this international exposure revealed to him a world of diverse cultures, languages, and ideas.[2] The various and sometimes incongruous views advocated by Bruno and the particularities of his worldview indicate the influence of both the worldly Naples and the modest Nola. Indeed, Bruno referred to himself as “the Nolan philosopher” throughout his entire scholarly career.[3] In Naples, Bruno entered the Dominican monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, distinguished himself as an outstanding scholar of metaphysics and theology, and proved quite adept in the mnemonic arts. This latter ability established him as an asset to various noblemen across Europe who recognized the practical value of recalling vast amounts of detailed information. Following an accusation that he had promoted anti-Trinitarian ideas and possessed forbidden books, Bruno unceremoniously withdrew from the Dominican Order in 1576 and became a peripatetic scholar who did not reside in one location longer than a few years until his imprisonment in 1592.[4] After nearly two decades of itinerant teaching throughout the scholarly centers of Europe, he returned to Italy in 1591 and was supported by the patronage of Giovanni Mocenigo, a minor Venetian nobleman, who endeavored to learn the secrets of the art of memory from Bruno. Unable to master these arts, Mocenigo suspected Bruno of fraud and denounced him to the Venetian Inquisition for various heresies.[5] Eventually, Bruno was handed over to the less tolerant Roman Inquisition, and after a nearly eight year long trial, Bruno was eventually executed as a heretic in Rome in 1600.

In order to understand Bruno’s ultimate fate, one must understand his transient lifestyle. After he left the Dominican order in 1576, his wanderings took him to several northern Italian towns including Turin, Venice, and Padua (1576-1579). He taught for a short time in Calvinist-controlled Geneva in 1579, traveled to Lyons and Toulouse in 1580-81 where he obtained a degree in theology, and ultimately attached himself to the court of King Henri III in Paris. His most prolific years as a writer came in England (1583-1585) where he made the acquaintance of such luminaries as Sir Philip Sydney and Thomas Digges.[6] Between 1585 and 1592, Bruno lectured on Aristotle and imparted his techniques of memorization in Wittenberg and Prague, after which he returned to Venice where he first encountered difficulties with the Inquisition.[7] In nearly every case, troubles with secular or religious authorities preceded his departures from these locations. Significantly, Geneva, London, and Wittenberg were all major Protestant centers.

How ultra-sensitive to the threat of Lutheranism were Catholic authorities with regard to Bruno and Menocchio? Though there were only incidental parallels, Inquisition authorities suspected both Bruno and Menocchio of following Luther’s teachings based on the testimony of others and their own seemingly non-Catholic behavior. Assigning the label of Lutheran was a convenient way to demonize one’s enemies among Catholics in the sixteenth century regardless of their actual beliefs, and we find both an accusation and a denial in Menocchio’s trial records. When interrogated about Menocchio’s faith, a peasant acquainted with him for more than thirty years replied that “he has a poor reputation, namely that he holds evil opinions following the sect of Luther and frequently I have heard him speak and dispute about matters of faith.”[8] Menocchio later defended himself by asserting that “a Lutheran is one who goes about teaching bad things, and eats meat on Friday and Saturday,” which illustrates that he likely did not even understand what Lutheranism entailed.[9]

When questioned regarding his belief in the power of saints and their relics and images, Menocchio elaborated on tenets similar to Protestant thought: “We should not adore their images but only the one God, who created the heavens and the earth. Don’t you see that Abraham cast down all the idols and all the images and adored only the one God?”[10] Bruno, like Menocchio, was unconvinced of the efficacy of images. During his time as a Dominican monk in Naples, he removed all images of the Madonna, Saint Catherine of Sienna, and other iconic figures from his monk’s cell in San Domenico Maggiore and displayed only a single crucifix on his wall.[11] Significantly, the bishops at the Council of Trent considered the education of the laity concerning the value of the sacraments and saints a priority.

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[1] Ingrid Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher Heretic, 19-24.

[2] Ibid., 22.

[3]Ibid., 14-18. Rowland, deferring to Bruno’s own self-reference as a “Nolan philosopher,” describes his peculiar and difficult to define philosophy as “the Nolan philosophy.” In this way, she gives his beliefs a broader foundation than simply Hermetic, Neoplatonic, or otherwise, and aggrandizes Bruno with his own nominal system.

[4] Ibid., 70-76.

[5] Ibid., 226-229 and 244-245. According to Rowland, the Venetian Inquisition normally did not extradite prisoners to Rome, and Rome generally tolerated this because the wealth and power of Venice protected Rome from its external enemies. However, with the encroachment of Protestantism into northern Italy and Venice’s need for Rome as an ally against the increasingly bellicose Holy Roman Empire, Venice began to more readily defer to Roman religious authority throughout the late sixteenth century.

[6] Digges was also an early proponent of Copernicus.

[7] Ingrid Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher Heretic, 77-86, 101-103, 113-116, 130-131, 186-187, and 199-222.

[8] Andre del Col, Domenico Scandella Known as Menocchio, 8.

[9] Quoted in Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, 18.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ingrid Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher Heretic, 30 and 99-100.

Religious Syncretism and Social Reform in the Cosmologies of Giordano Bruno and Domenico Scandella, Pt. 1

Here's the paper that I presented at the Sixth Annual Graduate Student History Conference at the University of North Carolina State last weekend. Technically, it is my first peer reviewed academic paper, and also (technically) my first published paper. The "published" part is a bit of a stretch because it's published in their online journal as "proceedings" of the conference, and I was a bit unclear as to what they meant when they said it would be "eligible" for publication. In any case, it can go on my curriculum vitae, so I'm claiming it as a piece of published work. It has undergone some major edits since I first submitted it for consideration last November, and I've re-edited it for this post for typos, but the argument presented here remains largely the same. I'll add something at the end about the constructive criticisms leveled by the moderators at the conference, but for the most part, it was relatively well-received. As with most of my writings, it is rather long, so I'm going to break it up into three chunks, and hopefully post them successively throughout the week. I've left the footnotes in for this one because a good deal of important information that I left out due to constrains of space and time were contained therein. Enjoy (hopefully).

In August 1599, after enduring a lengthy trial and languishing in prison, the Italian Inquisition executed a peasant named Domenico Scandella, known as Menocchio, for “heretical depravity.” This included, among more than twenty other offenses, a belief in the equality of all religions; a denial of the efficacy of the “human inventions” of the Eucharist, baptism, and ordination; and, perhaps his greatest transgression of all, persuading others of his unorthodox beliefs.[1] Less than six months later, the Hermetic philosopher Giordano Bruno met a similar fate for his belief in the plurality of worlds and the infinity of the universe. Both were condemned for holding erroneous opinions on the nature of Christ, the Virgin, transubstantiation, and the Trinity.[2] In spite of their immense social differences, they represent an attempt by both elite and peasant classes to reconcile and syncretize seemingly divergent philosophico-religious ideas. To counteract this movement, the Catholic Church augmented the authority of the Counter Reformation throughout the sixteenth century by rigorously enforcing orthodoxy through the office of the Inquisition. Although the Catholic Counter-Reformation reacted against heterodox religious movements, it also sought to educate the masses for the first time in the codified theology of the Church elites.[3] The trials and executions of Giordano Bruno and Menocchio epitomize the overarching authority of the Catholic Church as it sought greater control over the laity at all social levels. Their distinct worldviews reflect the shifting conceptions of the cosmos at a time when a multitude of contradictory scientific, philosophical, and religious ideas proliferated. These categories had not entirely disentangled themselves from one another by the late sixteenth century, and Bruno’s affinity for religiously syncretic language aroused the suspicion of the Inquisition.[4] He was also an early proponent of Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, and though his reasons for adopting it were not empirical, he has earned a place in the history of science. Menocchio’s efforts to explain a cosmology unlike the prevailing Catholic models indicates the growing potency of the newly literate proponents of popular religion.[5] Although Bruno and Menocchio differed in social status and educational background, the similarities between their religiously syncretic cosmologies and their trials and executions signify that the sweeping reforms of the Catholic Counter Reformation and the authority of the Inquisition transcended the increasingly indistinct boundaries between classes in early modern Europe.

Although the Counter Reformation is often depicted as a direct response to the rise of Protestantism, many modern scholars have portrayed it as a “parallel movement,” under the direct control of the Church, designed to address precisely the issues introduced by Protestants. It simply obtained a new immediacy following the events of 1517.[6] As a reform movement managed hierarchically and emanating from the elites, the Counter Reformation may be characterized, in the words of one scholar, as “a movement directed by bishops, implemented by parish priests, and aimed at the laity.”[7] By the early sixteenth century, many Church officials became alarmed by the growing spiritual distance between the clergy and the laity. For example, Erasmus, though many of his works would later be banned by the Church, represented the spirit of the early Counter Reformation through his desire that

…even the lowliest woman read the Gospels and Epistles. I would that they were translated into all languages so that they could be read and understood not only by the Scots and Irish, but also by the Turks and Saracens… would that, as a result, the farmer sing some portion of them at the plow, the weaver hum parts of them to the movement of his shuttle.[8]

This elite acknowledgment of the lack of lay comprehension of religious texts and liturgy necessitated an educational program in order to advance orthodoxy. In the words of its founder, Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuit Order—introduced in the 1530s out of the Church’s desire to more effectively proselytize—regarded the “advancement of souls and propagation of the faith” as the ultimate goal of Catholicism. The global scope of spreading the Gospels to “the Turks or to the New World or to the Lutherans or others, be they infidel or faithful” expressed the need for religious education among diverse groups of people.[9] Similarly, in order to facilitate better lay comprehension of doctrine, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) proscribed specific rules for a priest’s explanation of the “efficacy of the sacraments” and the “sacred scriptures…during the celebration of the Mass”:

…the Holy Council commands all bishops…explain their [sacraments’] efficacy and use but also that they shall see to it that the same is done piously and prudently, by every parish priest, and in the vernacular tongue if need be and it can be done conveniently, in accordance with the form which will be prescribed for each of the sacraments by the holy Council in catechism, which the bishops shall have faithfully translated into the language of the people…[10]

In spite of these lofty goals, the decrees of the Council of Trent pushed the institutional Church into more rigid and reactionary discourse with its perceived enemies, especially in areas where the interpretation of cosmology and metaphysics infringed upon doctrinal authority. In order to fully understand the Counter Reformation’s complementary goals of combating Protestant reform and educating the laity, one must examine both upper and lower class interpretations of these new intellectual and religious paradigms.

The lives of Bruno and Menocchio offer ample comparison of this twofold approach. The details of Menocchio’s life are rather scant and it is only by chance that its details have become known to history. They derive almost entirely from his trial records before the Inquisition, which include his own statements and the testimony of others regarding his heresies. Menocchio was born in 1532 in the village of Montereale in the Friuli region of the northeastern Italian peninsula, and he spent almost his entire life there.[11] He was a literate miller who, in many ways, bridged the ever shrinking gap between the lay peasantry and the educated elites. His profession exposed him to a greater degree of cultural diversity and pluralism than the typical lay peasant, and he benefited intellectually from the rise of the printed word. As a miller, Menocchio performed an integral function in Montereale, and his association with both upper and lower class members of society marked him as something of a transitional figure in the intermingling class structures of early modern Europe. He was brought before the Inquisition in 1583 for spreading heretical ideas about Christ but he was released on the condition that he repent and discontinue teaching his personal philosophy. His execution in 1599 took place due to a relapse.[12]

It is significant to note that Menocchio was a miller because millers were popularly regarded in as devious, crafty, or simply as thieves. In late medieval and early modern Europe, millers occupied a social position in the upper stratum of the peasant class. They certainly did not approach nobility—for they were neither highborn nor landowners—but neither were they among the lowest of the peasant class because they possessed an occupational knowledge that set them apart from their peers.[13] Economic, geographic, and social factors all contributed to the negative stereotype of a miller. Firstly, a miller might double as a proxy for the economic power of a lord. Peasants often distrusted millers because millers were the key partners in a system that worked to their disadvantage. In the medieval system, mills were expensive to build and operate, and consequently, they were usually owned by lords who exerted monopolistic control over their use. Peasants brought their grain to the mill and paid the miller a fee—essentially a tax—to grind it. This system ensured not only a steady source of income for the local lord but also the loyalty of the miller whose own lucrative share of income depended upon his participation.[14] A popular contemporary song from Tuscany attests to this negative typecast of millers:

Listen and now I’ll tell you.
Look who is grabbing with his hands,
It’s the miller of the white flour.
Look who is stealing with his hands,
It’s the miller of the white flour.
He passes the quarter off as the full bushel;
The biggest thief of all is the miller.[15]

A similar song from Germany during this time period describes “millers and thieves” as “all blood brothers.”[16] This arrangement engendered a popular suspicion in the general occupation of miller and the particular person who filled this position in a community.

Geographically, mills tended to be located on the outskirts of villages and this peripheral setting hindered a full integration of the miller into the community. Millers constantly received not only local villagers but merchants and traders frequenting the mill to grind grain for food production, and a trade of ideas accompanied this trade of goods. However, by the mid sixteenth century, feudal economics does not accurately describe the situation of Montereale. The exact economic circumstances of the village are unknown, but Menocchio rented both mills he operated and at least one of them was privately owned.[17] In any case, Menocchio served as a middleman between the peasants and an elite property owner.

Menocchio was well educated for a peasant and his ability to read and write indicates the intellectual prowess a miller might possess.[18] He possessed copies of Jacob Voragine’s The Golden Legend, a whimsical compendium of hagiographies, a translation of Sir John Mandeville’s Travels, as well as an apocryphal gospel and a copy of the Bible in the vernacular.[19] A degree of education beyond that of the average peasant was a part of the late medieval image of a miller. For example, Chaucer’s miller had completed a liberal arts education:

With him there was dwelling a poor scholer,
Had lerned art; but all his fantasye
Was turned for to lerne astrologye—
And koud a certain of conclusiouns,
To deemen by interrogaciouns,
If that men asked him in certain hours
Whan that man shold have drought or ells showres,
Or if men asked him what shold befalle
Of everything—I may not reckon hem alle.[20]

Not only is Chaucer’s miller educated in the liberal arts, he also studied the art of astrology. Astrology maintained a precarious and complicated position in late medieval European thought. Various universities held academic chairs in astrology while authorities simultaneously accused numerous charlatans of heresy due to their practice of this proto-science. This double standard signifies the legal disparity between upper and lower class practitioners of similar arts and sciences, but it also implies that lower class figures were perfectly capable of intellectual pursuits typically reserved for educated elites. Menocchio had referred to himself as an astrologer on occasion because of its applicability to his philosophy.[21]

Like Menocchio, Chaucer’s miller was literate and used this literacy to his advantage:

His Almageste and bookes greet and smalle,

His astrelaby longing for his art,

His augurim stones, layen fair aparte

on shelves couched at his beddes heed.[22]

Chaucer himself was an astrologer and wrote an important treatise on the astrolabe, and his insertion of these particulars within his tale likely points to his own personal interest in the subject. Nevertheless, poetry and popular lore typically depicted millers as educated beyond their social station and economic means, and these stories tend to portray them engaged in activities that authorities were justified in questioning. Just as the economic structures of feudal manors differed from that of early modern towns, so too did the cultural perceptions of millers in Chaucer’s England and Menocchio’s Italy differ. Although we must not glean too much information from this comparison, the stereotype of a miller as figure of disrepute seems particularly resilient across time and space during this era. Gratuitous education mixed with an unwarranted rise in social standing proved a dangerous combination for the image of early modern millers.

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[1] Andrea del Col, Domenico Scandella Known as Menocchio: His Trials Before the Inquisition, 1583-1599, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1996), 156-159.

[2] Ingrid Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher Heretic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 288 and Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 354.

[3] Martin D. W. Jones, The Counter Reformation: Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 96-98.

[4] Giuseppe Candela, “An Overview of the Cosmology, Religion, and Philosophical Universe of Giordano Bruno,” Italica 75 (1998): 356.

[5] Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi, (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1980), xxiv.

[6] John C. Olin, Catholic Reform: From Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent, 1495-1563 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990), ix and 4-7, and Martin D.W. Jones, The Counter Reformation, 28-29. Olin traces the origins of the Counter Reformation to 1495 when Savonarola, firmly in control of Florence, preached publicly on the wickedness and decadence of the institutional Church and its hierarchy. Among those influenced by his message was humanist scholar Francisco Ximenes, a patron to Ferdinand and Isabella, and future Archbishop of Toledo. His later life’s work entailed “ecclesiastical, intellectual, and religious reform” within the Catholic Church. Jones traces it as far back as c. 1480 by pointing out the sharp rise in apocalyptic discourse among Catholic writers and thinkers due in part to the perceived decline of the Church’s authority on earth. For Jones, the direct reaction to the Protestant Reformation describes only the years from 1517 to 1545.

[7] Martin D.W. Jones, The Counter Reformation, 96.

[8] Quoted in Martin D.W. Jones, The Counter Reformation, 32. Erasmus occupies an uneasy position in Church history. Pope Paul IV regarded him as a harbinger of the Protestant Reformation and banned all his works in the 1560s. Though Catholic liturgy would still be spoken in Latin, Catholic reformers as early as Archbishop Ximenes noted that the Latin Bible itself was a translation and understood the necessity of translation for lay comprehension.

[9] Quoted in John C. Olin, Catholic Reform, 84.

[10] Ibid., 111.

[11] Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and Worms, 1.

[12] Ibid., 110-112, and Andrea de Col, Domenico Scandella Known as Menocchio, 154-155.

[13] George Fenwick Jones, “Chaucer and the Medieval Miller”, Modern Language Quarterly 16 (1955), 6.

[14] Richard Bennett and John Elton, History of Corn Milling: Feudal Laws and Customs (London, 1898-1904; reprint ed. 1966), 106-108. This is a contested assertion. Millers were popularly regarded as intellectually superior to their lay peers due to their increased contact with traders and merchants. However, Bennett and Elton describe millers as among the poorest of the peasant class and nearer the lower end of the social spectrum than their counterparts because their occupation produced no goods directly as did other serfs. This argument does not correspond to popular conceptions of millers in legends, fables, and the literature of late medieval Europe, nor does it accurately describe Menocchio’s status. Menocchio not only worked a miller but also served as mayor of Montereale and camararo, or administrator, of a local parish church.

[15] Quoted in Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, 119.

[16] George Fenwick Jones, “Chaucer and the Medieval Miller,” Modern Language Quarterly 16 (1955), 15.

[17] Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, 96 and 120, and Andre del Col, Domenico Scandella Known as Menocchio, xiv.

[18] Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, 119-120.

[19] Ibid., 29-30. See Ginzburg for a full list of Menocchio’s books.

[20] Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Donald R. Howard (New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969), 165.

[21] Andrea del Col, Domenico Scandella Known as Menocchio, lxxv.

[22] Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, 165.