A closer look
Imagine telling the Inquisition that God is just a maggot in the cosmic parmesan. That’s exactly what Menocchio, a 16th-century Italian miller, did. Historian Carlo Ginzburg dug this guy out of obscure Vatican archives to birth the entire genre of microhistory. Instead of focusing on boring kings and popes, Ginzburg proved that history is infinitely more entertaining when you look at illiterate peasants who develop their own unhinged cosmological theories. Menocchio got burned at the stake, but at least he died as history's ultimate dairy-based visionary.
