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The Cheese And The Worms
''The Cheese and the Worms'' ( it, Il formaggio e i vermi) is a scholarly work by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, published in 1976. The book is a notable example of cultural history, the history of mentalities and microhistory. It is "probably the most popular and widely read work of microhistory". The study examines the unique religious beliefs and cosmogony of Menocchio (1532–1599), also known as Domenico Scandella, who was an Italian miller from the village of Montereale, twenty-five kilometers north of Pordenone. He was from the peasant class, and not a learned aristocrat or man of letters; Ginzburg places him in the tradition of popular culture and pre-Christian naturalistic peasant religions. Due to his outspoken beliefs he was declared a heresiarch (heretic) and burned at the stake during the Roman Inquisition. Menocchio's life Education and cultural horizon Menocchio's literacy may be accounted for by the establishment of schools in the villages surroun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carlo Ginzburg
Carlo Ginzburg (; born April 15, 1939) is an Italian historian and proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for ''Il formaggio e i vermi'' (1976, English title: '' The Cheese and the Worms''), which examined the beliefs of an Italian heretic, Menocchio, from Montereale Valcellina. In 1966, he published '' The Night Battles'', an examination of the ''benandanti'' visionary folk tradition found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Friuli in northeastern Italy. He returned to looking at the visionary traditions of early modern Europe for his 1989 book '' Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath''. Life The son of Natalia Ginzburg, a novelist, and Leone Ginzburg, a philologist, historian, and literary critic, Carlo Ginzburg was born in 1939 in Turin, Italy. His interest for history was influenced by the works of historians Delio Cantimori and Marc Bloch. He received a PhD from the University of Pisa in 1961. He subsequently held teaching positions at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Inquisition
The Roman Inquisition, formally the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, was a system of partisan tribunals developed by the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church, during the second half of the 16th century, responsible for prosecuting individuals accused of a wide array of crimes according to Roman Catholic law and doctrine, relating to catholic religious life or alternative religious or secular beliefs. It was established in 1542 by the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Paul III. In the period after the Medieval Inquisition, it was one of three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition along with the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition. Function and functioning Main function of the institution was to maintain and implement papal bulls and other church rulings, in addition to their function of administering legalistic ramifications upon deviants of Catholic orthodoxy within states that cooperated with the pope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great Cat Massacre
''The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History'' is an influential collection of essays on the cultural history of early modern France by the American historian Robert Darnton, first published in 1984. The book's title is derived from its most famous chapter which describes and interprets an unusual source detailing the "massacre" of cats by apprentice printers living and working on Rue Saint-Séverin in Paris during the late 1730s. Other chapters look at fairy tales, the writing of the ''Encyclopédie'' and other aspects of French early modern history. Methodology Darnton, influenced by Clifford Geertz who was a colleague of Darnton's and had pioneered the approach of " thick description" in cultural anthropology, aimed to gain greater insight into the period and social groups involved by studying what he perceived to be something which appeared alien to the late modern mind – the fact that killing cats might be funny. ''The Great Cat Massacre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Night Battles
''The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries'' is a historical study of the ''benandanti'' folk custom of 16th and 17th century Friuli, Northeastern Italy. It was written by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, then of the University of Bologna, and first published by the company Giulio Einaudi in 1966 under the Italian title of ''I Benandanti: Stregoneria e culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento''. It was later translated into English by John and Anne Tedeschi and published by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1983 with a new foreword written by the historian Eric Hobsbawm. In ''The Night Battles'', Ginzburg examines the trial accounts of those ''benandante'' who were interrogated and tried by the Roman Inquisition, using such accounts to elicit evidence for the beliefs and practices of the ''benandanti''. These revolved around their nocturnal visionary journeys, during which they believed that their spirits traveled out of their bodi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.O'Collins, p. v (preface). The church consists of 24 ''sui iuris'' churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The bishopric of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small enclave of the Italian city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is a speech crime and religious crime usually defined as an utterance that shows contempt, disrespects or insults a deity, an object considered sacred or something considered inviolable. Some religions regard blasphemy as a religious crime, especially the Abrahamic religions, including the speaking the " sacred name" in Judaism and the " eternal sin" in Christianity. In the early history of the Church heresy received more attention than blasphemy because it was considered a more serious threat to Orthodoxy. Blasphemy was often regarded as an isolated offense wherein the faithful lapsed momentarily from the expected standard of conduct. When iconoclasm and the fundamental understanding of the sacred became more contentious matters during the Reformation, blasphemy was treated similar to heresy, and accusations of blasphemy were made not only against people who made off-the-cuff profane remarks while drunk, but against those types of persons who espoused unorthodox ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing.: ), which consist of verses (pl.: , sing.: , cons.: ). In addition to its religious significance, it is widely regarded as the finest work in Arabic literature, and has significantly influenced the Arabic language. Muslims believe that the Quran was orally revealed by God to the final prophet, Muhammad, through the archangel Gabriel incrementally over a period of some 23 years, beginning in the month of Ramadan, when Muhammad was 40; and concluding in 632, the year of his death. Muslims regard the Quran as Muhammad's most important miracle; a proof of his prophethood; and the culmination of a series of divine messages starting with those revealed to Adam, including the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel. The word ''Quran'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decameron
''The Decameron'' (; it, label=Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dante Alighieri's ''Comedy'' "''Divine''"), is a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. Boccaccio probably conceived of the ''Decameron'' after the epidemic of 1348, and completed it by 1353. The various tales of love in ''The Decameron'' range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence (for example on Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir John Mandeville
Sir John Mandeville is the supposed author of ''The Travels of Sir John Mandeville'', a travel memoir which first circulated between 1357 and 1371. The earliest-surviving text is in French. By aid of translations into many other languages, the work acquired extraordinary popularity. Despite the extremely unreliable and often fantastical nature of the travels it describes, it was used as a work of reference: Christopher Columbus, for example, was heavily influenced by both this work and Marco Polo's earlier '' Travels''. Identity of the author In his preface, the compiler calls himself a knight, and states that he was born and bred in England, in the town of St Albans. Although the book is real, it is widely believed that "Sir John Mandeville" himself was not. Common theories point to a Frenchman by the name of Jehan à la Barbe. Other possibilities are discussed below. Some recent scholars have suggested that ''The Travels of Sir John Mandeville'' was most likely written ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Golden Legend
The ''Golden Legend'' (Latin: ''Legenda aurea'' or ''Legenda sanctorum'') is a collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine that was widely read in late medieval Europe. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived.Hilary Maddocks, "Pictures for aristocrats: the manuscripts of the ''Légende dorée''", in Margaret M. Manion, Bernard James Muir, eds. ''Medieval texts and images: studies of manuscripts from the Middle Ages'' 1991:2; a study of the systemization of the Latin manuscripts of the ''Legenda aurea'' is B. Fleith, "Le classement des quelque 1000 manuscrits de la Legenda aurea latine en vue de l'éstablissement d'une histoire de la tradition" in Brenda Dunn-Lardeau, ed. ''Legenda Aurea: sept siècles de diffusion", 1986:19-24 It was likely compiled around the years 1259–1266, although the text was added to over the centuries. Initially entitled ''Legenda sanctorum'' (''Readings of the Saints''), it gained its popularity under the title by which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a variety of forms originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. These texts include instructions, stories, poetry, and prophecies, among other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text can vary. The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of the Bible. It is called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning ''five books'') in Greek; the second oldest part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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