In recent years, microhistory has gradually "gone out of the loop" in China. The publishing world has also translated a large number of non-fiction historical research works in the West. Microhistory pays attention to the daily life and ordinary individuals in history, studies the part with a "microscope" perspective, and goes deep into the history in rich and long details, so that the narrative method of "seeing the big in the small" has won the love of many public readers.
When it comes to the representative works of microhistory, Carlo Ginzburg's Cheese and Maggots: A Universe of 16th-Century Millers cannot be avoided. Since its first edition, the book has been considered a classic of microhistory, and Günzburg is considered one of the first historians to advocate this research orientation.
Cheese and Maggots: A Universe of 16th-Century Millers, by Carlo Günzburg, translated by Rui, Republic of | Guangxi Normal University Press, July 2021.
Using the Archives of the Inquisition, Günzburg constructs the psychic history of a small miller in a remote mountain village in northern Italy in the 16th century. The little miller saw the universe as a piece of cheese that had been bitten by maggots and had holes everywhere, hence the title of the book.
The question this book answers is: Where did this little miller's strange ideas come from? Günzburg analyzed it based on books he had read and confessions from interrogations. He allows us to see the inner world of the little people, and thus to interpret the society, religion and culture of the time. Dedicated to the study of ordinary people, this book is an example of writing the history of popular culture and microhistory.
Recently, this long-overdue classic of microhistory has finally been published in China. We have specially invited Wang Di, Distinguished Professor of the Department of History of the University of Macau, to write an article. Wang Di is a representative scholar of domestic microhistory. His previous works such as "The Tea House" and "Brother Robe" have focused on daily life and ordinary individuals in history. In this article, Wang Di starts from the concept of microhistory itself, and carefully dissects the ideological roots of microhistory and the rediscovery of ordinary people in history.
Written by | Distinguished Professor of History, University of Macau, Wang Di
01
What is microhistory?
Cheese and Maggots was the first microhistory book I read, and in 1996, when I was working on my doctoral dissertation on Street Culture at Johns Hopkins University, my supervisor, Professor Willian T. Rowe, recommended that I read the English version published by Hopkins University Press. For 25 years, I don't know how many times this book has been turned over, but in the United States and Macao, China, I have been teaching discussion classes on new cultural history, and I have used this book many times. In the summer of 2010-2014, for five consecutive years, I taught courses in popular culture history and new cultural history to graduate students at the Simian Research Institute of East China Normal University, but unfortunately, I could not use the book because there was no Chinese translation.
Over the years, I have been practicing microhistory myself, trying to change the disregard of historical researchers, students, and readers of ordinary people's history, and microhistory can be said to be an important opportunity for the paradigm shift of historical research. However, for the vast number of Chinese readers, what is micro history is not very clear, after all, this is a new form of historical writing, especially we are accustomed to historical writing to have great significance and grand narrative, and there are many unaccustomed and incomprehensible to the history of this kind of study of small people.
It should be noted that history is written trivially, with many stories and details, but what we call microhistory. For example, if we write a book by Zeng Guofan or Hu Shi, no matter how detailed, no matter how detailed, it is not what we call microhistory. One of the prerequisites of microhistory is to write the history of ordinary people. According to Günzburg, the basic unit of micro-historical analysis should be people, who can track stories through various archives, including tax records, birth registrations, court cases, etc.
According to Peter Burke in What is Cultural History, "Microhistory is a response to the collision of history and anthropology." According to him, it was "the microscope that became an attractive alternative to telescopes". In addition, microhistory is also a reaction to the disappointment of the "grand narrative". The so-called "grand narrative" describes human progress, and historical research is filled with ancient Greco-Roman to the rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and so on. These are certainly an important part of history, but not the whole of history.
What is Cultural History, by Peter Burke and translated by Cai Yuhui, Peking University Press, November 2020.
In Günzburg's view, microhistory values "those who were persecuted and conquered" who were "ignored, or often completely ignored, by many historians as marginal figures." Instead of studying the upper echelons, he studied an obscure miller. In the past, no matter how interesting and unique the information was, if it was to be used, it was at most "the material of a footnote", but now it has "become the subject of a book". In this way, Günzburg clearly distinguishes the book from the mainstream historiography of the past.
02
The ideological roots of microhistory
While reading the book, I was interested in the process by which Günzburg "began to learn how to be a historian." In the late 1950s, he began to try to trace the history of ordinary people from the trial records of the Inquisition. This effort was apparently influenced by Antonio Gramsci, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, in The Prison Notebooks. In Mussolini's prison, Gramsci wrote about this far-reaching reflection on the culture of the subaltern classes. Although Günzburg was influenced by Gramsci and had long been prepared to study the lower classes, according to his own foreword to the 2013 edition of Cheese and Maggots, the "radical political climate" of the 1970s also prepared him for this research. He did not elaborate further on this "radical political climate," but should have referred to the widespread spread of left-wing ideas around the world at the time.
Carlo Günzburg
The writing and publication of this book also appeared in the context of the transformation of Italian (and even European) historiography. Founded in 1966, Quaderni Storici played an important role in the rise of microhistory. Around this magazine, a special academic community has been formed. They criticize mainstream history for giving too much energy to the rulers and elites and neglecting the masses at large, especially the lower classes. The limited number of studies on the populace is often a distorted history.
In his preface, Günzburg recalls the book's origins. In the early 1960s, he went through an 18th-century compilation of inquisitors in Udine, Italy, with a catalogue of manuscripts of 1,000 trials of the Italian inquisition. He stumbled upon a few lines of case descriptions and became intrigued: the defendant was a small miller accused of having a different view of God. Günzburg wanted to have a chance to come back and read the archives later, so he copied the file number on a small piece of paper. It was only in 1970 that he had the opportunity to read the microfilm of the trial and was immediately struck by these records. Almost seven years later, he published Cheese and Maggots. That is, from the time he knew about the archive, to the time the book was finally published, it took a long 14 years.
03
Discover the voices of the common people
The biggest difficulty facing the study of microhistory is how to discover the voices of the lower classes. As Günzburg points out: in the literature, the lower classes never have their own voices, and their thoughts and consciousness are all written by the recorders. Even if the voices of the lower classes can be heard, they have been "heavily filtered." So the materials we see today, these recorded texts, are actually distorted things, not really their voices, and the so-called "mass culture" is also the culture imposed on the lower classes. Therefore, the writing of this book is a process of finding their voices.
Take, for example, the interrogation records of the small mill owner, which include the interrogators' questions, the clerk's records, and the final collation and transcription. Günzberg further stated that while Menocchio's letter to his son could be seen as a direct expression of his thoughts (mentioned below), prison and interrogation gave him both psychological and physical pressure, so it is questionable that "as a historical document, how much value it is" is doubtful. However, when we finished reading the book, we found that through Günzburg's interpretation, this value had been fully revealed.
The book is owned by Minor Miller Menocchio, who was indicted by the Inquisition for spreading "heresy" and executed after more than a decade of trial. Records of his trials in the Inquisition have been preserved intact, and From these complete records, Günzburg has tried to dig into his inner world.
It is astonishing that Menocchio, a peasant, often went to length in answering the inquisitor's questions, expounding in detail his views on the universe. The title of the book is taken from Menocchio's belief that at the beginning of chaos, all things appeared in heaven and earth, like worms born of cheese. The study also revealed that as the printing industry grew, books were no longer monopolized by the upper class, and Menocchio was also able to read some "forbidden books", and he had clearly surpassed other peasants of his time ideologically.
16th century Inquisition. The Italian astronomer Galileo Galileo is on trial for being accused of "heresy."
Günzberg analyzes how the little miller understood the texts, so that by studying such a small person who is insignificant in history, he can construct the psychic history of a small miller, and thus interpret the society, religion and culture of the time, and show the relationship and conflict between the Italian mass culture and the elite culture of the time. The focus of his research is actually the history of popular culture and subaltern culture as opposed to elite culture.
Judging from the structure of this book, it is not like writing an academic book, but the layout of the novel. Originally, the length of the book was not large, but it was divided into 62 chapters, and some chapters were only 1-2 pages, which was a very alternative academic monograph. But it is precisely because of this structure, even if almost all the information is based on archives, that it has the feeling of reading a novel, which brings us into the "dark middle ages" of the Italian countryside.
From this book, we can see that this peasant did not succumb to the church, refuted the so-called God-created man, but proposed his own set of explanations. He was clearly in danger, still unable to keep his mouth shut, liked to argue, and chattered about his opinion, saying that the Bible was deceitful and that Jesus did not die to save mankind, thus putting himself in danger.
In fact, his views are all open, his mouth is not hidden, and everyone is resigned to his world view everywhere. Although considered a strange person, he has been safe for many years. Unfortunately, he was denounced by a priest. But after the first long trial, he was able to escape the disaster. It was supposed to have landed successfully, but it was denounced for the second time and finally lost his life. Reading this book, it is even more painful to feel that his death is being manipulated by a hidden hand of God.
04
Details of the trial
The Roman Holy Office had strict requirements for interrogations, and its records were as detailed as everything that happened in court, including the questions asked at the interrogation, all the responses of the defendant, all the statements, every word and deed during the torture, even his sighs, cries, remorse, tears, and so on. It is the duty of the clerk to record truthfully and verbatim what happened. Both the questions and answers are paraphrased in the third person.
Before each case is pronounced, rome's supreme court scrutinizes the trial records, and the reason why such detailed records are requested is to try to prevent improper acts in the trial, such as some judges asking inducing or suggestive questions. Moreover, the Inquisition was not in a hurry to draw conclusions, and a case was tried over and over again, even if it lasted for many years.
From the description of this book, it seems that Menocchio was intoxicated by his own expression, and he seemed to enjoy having so many cultured people in the court listening to his incessant debates, which was not the same as the audience that could only be spoken to a group of peasants and craftsmen who could hardly understand the ink. He did not believe that the world was created by God, and he said that Jesus Christ was nothing but a man. He envisions a "new world" described in popular novels of the time, a kind of utopia, a world of so-called "happy towns": mountains of cheese, rivers of milk gushing out of caves, no family, sexual freedom, naked men and women, neither hot nor cold...
Judging from Menorchio's own confession, he was filled with hatred for the church, and after his interrogation, sometimes he "almost lost control of himself", declaring that he "wanted to run out and do some destruction" and wanted to "kill the priests, set fire to the churches, do something crazy". He felt isolated and helpless, and in the face of all the injustices he had encountered, his only reaction was to take revenge on those who persecuted him. In the end, however, he did not put it into practice, but only took care of his two young children.
After nearly two years of torture in prison, Menocchio finally gave in. In 1586, Menocchio wrote a letter of repentance, asking for forgiveness: first bitterly saying that he was pitiful as a "prisoner", "pleading" with the Inquisition to consider "whether it is worth forgiving", admitting that he was "at fault", and willing to make "more atonement". He said he was "in extreme distress" and "begged" for forgiveness.
He stated that he had been deprived of meeting his wife for more than two years since he had been taken from his home and "thrown into this cruel prison and punished," and that his children, because of their "poor days, were forced to abandon me, leaving me with only one death." It seems that after two years of trial, he has completely relented and is willing to abandon his past "strange theories" and admit that "he has repented and mourned for the great sins he has committed, and begged for forgiveness, first from our Lord God, and secondly from the holy inquisition." He asked the court for a "gift" to release him and promise to "live according to the teachings of the Holy Roman Church."
In the eyes of outsiders, Menocchio's body is really getting weaker, he is sick, once people even thought that "he will die", he "actually stayed up for so long" in prison, which is also unexpected. He often told the prison guards that he regretted "the stupid things he had believed before" and said that he had "never insisted on those things", but it was because of the "temptation of the devil" that those "whimsical ideas" entered his mind. It seems that he is about to "sincerely repent of his past mistakes".
05
Read the "Dark Middle Ages"
The Inquisition's judgment of the so-called "heretics" is the most common example of our reference to the "Dark Middle Ages." The specific process of the religious trial provided in this book gives me the impression that even if the charges are absurd, the interrogation is serious and serious, which is why it is so detailed.
After the confession was handed over, the bishop and the judge did not put it on the shelf, ignored it, and summoned Menocchio. He stated the condition of the prison: "the conditions were harsh, the mud was all over the ground, it was dark and dark, and it was damp", which completely ruined his health, he lay for 4 months without getting out of bed, his legs and face were puffy, and his hearing was almost lost, "as if he were wandering away from the body". He wept bitterly and pleaded, prostrated himself on the ground and humbly begged for forgiveness: "I deeply regret offending my Lord God", saying that he was "foolishly blinded by the devil", but in fact he did not understand "what the devil told me". He said he was not unhappy about being thrown into prison and said that if it were not for his wife and children, he would "rather spend the rest of his life in prison as compensation for his offense to Jesus Christ." But he was poor and had to support his wife, seven children and several grandchildren on two mills and two rented plots of land.
It seems that the bishop and judge were impressed by his confession, and after a very light punishment, released him. But he was forbidden to leave his place, to speak openly or to mention dangerous thoughts, and to confess regularly, to wear a confessional garment with a cross on the outside of his clothes, that is, to say that he was a sinner in public. If he wants to get out of prison, he must also have a guarantor, a friend named Biasio, who comes forward to vouch for him. If Menocchio violates the conditions of his release, a fine will be paid. Menocchio returned home, "physically and mentally broken."
Incredibly, he also "restored his position among the townspeople." Despite violating the rules of the Holy See, being punished, and being thrown into prison, in 1590 he was appointed administrator of the church and oversaw the diocesan fund. The new parish priest was a childhood friend of Menocchio's, and Günzburg suspected that he might have helped in the appointment. No one thought it was wrong to have a heretic, and in fact, a heretical leader, in this position. According to Günzburg, the position of administrator was often held by the miller, presumably because they had the financial means to advance the funds needed for the administration of the parish, and they usually delayed the payment of tithes collected from the faithful and made a profit from it.
Over time, Menocchio tried to remove the punishments imposed on him by the verdict, namely the prohibition on wearing a confessional suit and not being allowed to leave his place of residence. So, about 6 years after his release, he decided to go to Udine to see the newly appointed inquisitor of the Inquisition and ask for exemption from both punishments. Although the reply to the removal of the confessional robe was negative, his request for freedom of movement was granted and he could make a living in various places to "alleviate the poverty of himself and his family".
In the past, as we knew the "Dark Middle Ages", the judgment of the Inquisition was to eliminate heresy, but when we entered the details of history, we found that it was completely different from what we imagined. In contrast to the many things that have happened in the world since the Middle Ages, I sometimes think that none of us deserve to be called "modern society" and "modern man", because in modern times, the barbaric cruelty and recklessness of human life are often beyond the reach of the so-called "Dark Middle Ages". We have seen enough instances of countless innocent people being executed without trial, or merely pretending to be a scribbled trial, and the deaths of thousands of people not even of any deviant thoughts, but merely the whims of the great men who dominate their destiny, or merely to satisfy their personal ambitions.
06
The dust has settled
According to Günzburg, Menorchio had lived a normal life, and "the consequences of the old trials have been erased little by little." What he did not expect was that he wanted to remove two restrictions on him, which may have re-reminded the inquisition of the case that had been forgotten by the Inquisition. That is to say, he had already passed the most severe moment, although there was some embarrassment in life, but there should be no worries about life. It may also be that he thinks that this case has been forgotten, so he committed the old problem of his own mouth, and finally ruined Qingqing's life.
And what put him in danger began with a mundane conversation. It was supposed to be during the carnival of the previous year, when Menocchio, after receiving permission from the inquisitor of the Inquisition, left Monterreale for Udine. One day at vespers, he met a man named Lunardo Simon in the square and began to make small talk. They used to meet for attending religious festivals. However, this small talk killed him.
Lunardo wrote a letter of confession to the Inquisition reporting on the contents of the conversation. Even today, this conversation and his account at the first trial are nothing shocking. Menocchio asked, "I heard you were going to be a monk, really?" Lunaldo: "Isn't that a good story?" Menocchio: "No, because it's like reaching for food." In the conversation that followed, Menocchio began to attack the church again, showing that the confession in the letter years ago was not really a discard of his strange theories.
In fact, the denunciation was not dealt with in a timely manner until two years later, in October 1598, probably by accident, when the judge of the Inquisition, while reviewing the existing records, linked the denunciation letter to the previous interrogation, and "the machine of the Inquisition was started again."
Interestingly, before he was arrested again, he knew that an investigation into him had been initiated, and it was clear that he had a chance to escape, and that "he knew that he would die because of it", but he did not want to escape, because he remembered the assurances that his friend had made for him in the Inquisition, otherwise "he would have fled to Geneva". It can be seen that he is still a sentient and righteous person, and he has decided to sit still, even if he is "already looking forward to the end of his life", and he waits for the "arrival of the persecutors".
At the end of June 1599 he was arrested, and in July he appeared in court, and when the court asked him if he wanted to hire a lawyer, he replied: "I do not want to do any other defense than to ask for mercy; but if I could have a lawyer, I would accept it, but I am poor." When we read this detail, we must have been unprepared, and in medieval Italy could the court appoint a lawyer for a poor "criminal"? Or will this appointed lawyer actually defend the "criminal"?
But the fact is that a court-appointed defender was assigned to Menocchio, who then submitted a long summary of the case to the judges to defend the "poor" Menocchio. He claimed that the evidence was second-hand and contradictory, which clearly demonstrated the defendant's "simplicity and ignorance", and he requested that the defendant be acquitted. That is to say, the lawyer appointed by the court really sided with the accused, doing his best to clear the charges against him, although without success. In August 1599, the Religious Court unanimously ruled that Menocchio was a "repeat offender" and decided to torture the accused to obtain a list of accomplices. Menocchio's house was also searched. Subsequently, Menocchio was sentenced to death and executed.
07
The vitality of micro-history
In addition to Carlo Günzburg, emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Robert Darnton, Natalie Zemon Davis and others are active in the study of microhistory, and their masterpieces have not only been recognized by the historians, but also loved by readers outside the field.
Montaillou by Emmanuel Le Valladdhury, for example, examines everyday life in a mountain village in 14th-century France. The inquisition court records, like fieldwork by anthropologists, provide credible information for reconstructing life in the mountain villages of France centuries ago. Later works of this orientation include Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History, which is based on different sources, including folklore stories, autobiographies of artisans, city guides, police agent reports, Diderot's Encyclopedia, and correspondence between readers and publishers. The side discussion of the society and culture of early modern France is discussed.
The Book of the Slaughter of Cats: The Hook and Sink of French Cultural History, by Robert Darnton, translated by Lu Jianzhong, Sanhui Books | Nova Press, April 2006.
Then there's Natalie Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre, a legendary story that took place in rural France in the mid-16th century. Farmer Martin Gayle ran away from home for years without a word, and then suddenly returned to his hometown. A few years later, his father-in-law took him to court, accusing him of being an imposter, but he almost got the judge to believe his claims, and the real Martin Gale appeared. The story has long circulated in France, and in the early years there were two books on the subject of the case, one of which was written by the judge who participated in the trial of the case. Other derivative works based on this case include plays, novels, and films. Davis not only tells vivid stories in a micro-historical way, but also recreates the daily life and family life of farmers at that time.
My interest in microhistory over the years has led me to pay close attention to the study of Günzburg. A few years ago, the journal Notes on History, mentioned in the previous article, made a micro-historical topic and invited me to submit a paper. In the invitation letter, there is a specific reference to the history of Günzburg and this magazine, which I have the privilege of being author of, and seems to have some kind of doctrinal connection with Günzburg. Although he liked the book very much, and liked the author, he used to go to Los Angeles when teaching in the United States (he was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles before he retired), but he did not expect to visit him. However, due to the epidemic, there are more online activities, when I learned that at 1 a.m. on March 3 this year, he had a conversation online, or decided to look at this online lecture, I read it before going to bed, it was the first time I met him, although it was through online, it was to meet the curiosity of the author of this book.
These representative works of microhistory mentioned above have been published Chinese translations for many years. Chinese of Günzburg's first book, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, has long since been published, except for Cheese and Maggots, which "only hears the stairs and doesn't see people coming down." Over the years, although there have been many introductions to this book, readers have never been able to see it as it really is. I am very happy that the Chinese edition of this book has finally been officially published. I think the publication of this book will play an important role in further attention to microhistory in China.
Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agricultural Worship in the 16th and 17th Centuries, by Carlo Günzburg, translated by Zhu Geshu, Republic of | Guangxi Normal University Press, June 2021.
This article is exclusive original content. Author: Wang Di; Editor: Qing Qingzi; Proofreader: Fu Chunyan. It shall not be reproduced without the written authorization of the Beijing News.