The Cheese and the Worms Quotes

“As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own conditional liberty.”
― Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

“We can readily see the function of nature, how it reconciles discordant things in such a fashion that it reduces all the differences to unity and combines them into one body and one substance: and also it combines them in plants and in seeds, and by the joining of male and female engenders beings according to the natural course.' —Fioretto della Bibbia”
― Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

“It was the encounter between the printed page and the oral culture, of which he was one embodiment, that led Menocchio to formulate -first for himsel, later for himself, later for his fellow villagers, and finally for the judges- the "opinions ... (that) came out of his head.”
― Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

“He said, go on, and tell me why the sky is called sky. He answered, because it is created of vapor, vapor from the steam of the sea. He asked, whence comes its green? He replied, from Mount Caf, and Mount Caf received it from the emeralds in paradise. This is the mountain that girdles the circle of the earth and holds up the sky. He asked, does the sky have a door? He replied, it has doors that hang down. He asked, and do the doors have keys? He replied that they have keys that are to God’s treasure. He asked, of what are the doors made? He answered, of gold. He asked, you, tell me the truth, but tell me, this sky of ours from what was it created? He replied: the first of green water, the second of clear water, the third of emeralds, the fourth of the purest gold, the fifth of hyacinth, the sixth of a shining cloud, the seventh of the splendor of fire. He said, and in this you speak the truth. But what is there above these seven skies? He replied, a life-giving sea, and above it a nebulous sea, and proceeding in this way in order, there is the aereal sea, and above it the sorrowful sea, and above it the somber sea, and above it the sea of pleasure, and above that the Moon, and above that the Sun, and above that the name of God, and above it supplication …” and so forth”
― Carlo Ginzburg , The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller