This paper explains that, in Carlo Ginzburg's "The Cheese and the Worms: the Cosmos of a
Sixteenth-Century Miller", the miller
Menocchio, who was charged with heresy in Italy at the age of fifty-two, and then again fifteen years later, is a tale of class conflict and how the tension between the classes in the
sixteenth century was influenced by the Protestant Reformation. The author points out that this period was a tumultuous time, both socially and religiously, because of the emergence in Europe of the middle class as illustrated by Menocchio's raise from the peasant tradition to become a moderately wealthy miller. The paper states that the case of Menocchio can be seen as a reaction to an oppressive ruling class, which was unique because of the new influence of literature on lower society and because it was one of the first times that a poor,
self-taught individual dared to stand-up to the ecclesiastical order on the basis of logic.