In our recent tribute to Carlo Ginzburg, we emphasized the originality of his scholarship and the decisive role he played in reshaping historical studies during the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. For that very reason, it is worth recalling an aspect that is often overlooked in commemorative accounts: many of his most celebrated interpretations have since been subjected to substantial criticism and revision. This is the destiny of every great historian. Works that open new paths inevitably become the object of critical scrutiny by both contemporaries and later generations. If this were not so, historical scholarship would cease to be critical inquiry and become little more than hagiography.
In the days following the publication of our obituary, Carlo Ginzburg (1939–2026): Between Innovation and Controversy, we were particularly pleased to receive a message from Franco Cardini. For the benefit of our international readers, we reproduce below an English translation of his tribute:
Cardini's appreciation is particularly meaningful in light of the well-known public disagreement that opposed the two historians during the 2007 controversy surrounding Ariel Toaff's Pasque di sangue. On that occasion, Cardini openly challenged Ginzburg's criticism of Toaff and, more broadly, questioned aspects of Ginzburg's historical method.With the passing of Carlo Ginzburg, the international scholarly community loses a mind of the highest originality, one of the leading voices in historical studies over the past sixty years, as well as a free and rigorous spirit, deeply committed to original research and always willing to engage, without prejudice yet with courageous critical judgment, with ideas emerging from an admirably broad range of scholarly fields. He was also a citizen who never hesitated to speak with authority wherever culture and civic life intersected. His works are destined to retain their authority and relevance for many years to come, while I benandanti, Il formaggio e i vermi, and Storia notturna are already regarded as classics of historical and anthropological scholarship. His lesson on the "evidential paradigm" remains fundamental.
We could hardly agree more with Cardini's overall assessment. Ginzburg's influence on modern historiography is beyond question, and his books profoundly transformed the way historians approached popular culture, heresy, witchcraft, and historical evidence.
Precisely because of that influence, however, it is worth recalling another aspect of his legacy—one that is often overlooked in commemorative accounts. Virtually all of his best-known interpretations were later subjected to extensive criticism and substantial revision. This is not a contradiction, but rather the normal destiny of historians who truly change a discipline. Their works become unavoidable reference points not only for admiration but also for debate, correction, and reassessment.
In Ginzburg's case, however, the phenomenon is particularly striking.
The Benandanti
Originally published in 1966, I benandanti. Stregoneria e culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento (translated into english under the title The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) transformed a little-known Friulian phenomenon into an international historiographical case study. Drawing on inquisitorial records, Ginzburg argued that the benandanti preserved the remnants of ancient pagan fertility cults and interpreted their ecstatic nocturnal battles as survivals of a much older Eurasian religious tradition, closely related to forms of shamanism. Equally influential was his contention that inquisitorial pressure progressively reshaped both the external image and the self-perception of the benandanti, who gradually ceased to be regarded—and eventually came to regard themselves—as beneficent defenders of the harvest and became identified with diabolical witches.
This interpretation profoundly influenced the study of witchcraft, popular religion, and microhistory, yet it also became the object of one of the most significant historiographical reassessments of Ginzburg's career. In his landmark study Benandanti e inquisitori nel Friuli del Seicento (1999), Franco Nardon returned to the original archival documentation, considerably expanding the documentary base by examining numerous seventeenth-century trials that Ginzburg had either overlooked or deliberately left aside. Rather than isolating the benandanti as an exceptional case, Nardon reconstructed their activities within the broader social, judicial, and cultural context of seventeenth-century Friuli.
His conclusions substantially challenged Ginzburg's reconstruction. According to Nardon, no irreversible transformation of the benandanti into witches ever occurred. The decisive change concerned not the beliefs of the benandanti themselves but the priorities and mental frameworks of successive inquisitors. As the Holy Office gradually shifted its attention away from the diabolical sabba and toward magical healing, superstition, and everyday practices of counter-magic, the questions posed during interrogations changed accordingly. The surviving records therefore reflect changing inquisitorial interests rather than the disappearance of the benandanti's traditional identity. Even in the later seventeenth century, the benandanti continued to present themselves—and to be regarded within local communities—as beneficent healers and specialists in identifying and combating witches.
Nardon also questioned Ginzburg's decision to privilege the agrarian component of the phenomenon over its therapeutic and anti-witchcraft functions, arguing that this hierarchy derived less from the historical evidence than from an interpretative framework imposed upon it. Likewise, the celebrated comparison with Siberian shamanism and the centrality attributed to ancient fertility cults were significantly scaled back in favour of a more contextual reading rooted in the religious and social realities of early modern Friuli. Finally, by insisting that inquisitorial records cannot be read independently of the questions, assumptions, and objectives of the judges who produced them, Nardon implicitly challenged one of the methodological premises underlying Ginzburg's analysis: the possibility of recovering the voices of popular culture directly through inquisitorial documentation without first reconstructing the institutional logic that shaped those sources.
This interpretation profoundly influenced the study of witchcraft, popular religion, and microhistory, yet it also became the object of one of the most significant historiographical reassessments of Ginzburg's career. In his landmark study Benandanti e inquisitori nel Friuli del Seicento (1999), Franco Nardon returned to the original archival documentation, considerably expanding the documentary base by examining numerous seventeenth-century trials that Ginzburg had either overlooked or deliberately left aside. Rather than isolating the benandanti as an exceptional case, Nardon reconstructed their activities within the broader social, judicial, and cultural context of seventeenth-century Friuli.
His conclusions substantially challenged Ginzburg's reconstruction. According to Nardon, no irreversible transformation of the benandanti into witches ever occurred. The decisive change concerned not the beliefs of the benandanti themselves but the priorities and mental frameworks of successive inquisitors. As the Holy Office gradually shifted its attention away from the diabolical sabba and toward magical healing, superstition, and everyday practices of counter-magic, the questions posed during interrogations changed accordingly. The surviving records therefore reflect changing inquisitorial interests rather than the disappearance of the benandanti's traditional identity. Even in the later seventeenth century, the benandanti continued to present themselves—and to be regarded within local communities—as beneficent healers and specialists in identifying and combating witches.
Nardon also questioned Ginzburg's decision to privilege the agrarian component of the phenomenon over its therapeutic and anti-witchcraft functions, arguing that this hierarchy derived less from the historical evidence than from an interpretative framework imposed upon it. Likewise, the celebrated comparison with Siberian shamanism and the centrality attributed to ancient fertility cults were significantly scaled back in favour of a more contextual reading rooted in the religious and social realities of early modern Friuli. Finally, by insisting that inquisitorial records cannot be read independently of the questions, assumptions, and objectives of the judges who produced them, Nardon implicitly challenged one of the methodological premises underlying Ginzburg's analysis: the possibility of recovering the voices of popular culture directly through inquisitorial documentation without first reconstructing the institutional logic that shaped those sources.
Nicodemism
Ginzburg's influential interpretation of Nicodemism likewise generated considerable historiographical debate. In Il nicodemismo. Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell'Europa del Cinquecento (1970), he argued that Nicodemism should be understood not merely as a pragmatic response to religious persecution but as a coherent and self-conscious religious theory that circulated across sixteenth-century Europe. In his reconstruction, dissimulation became more than a strategy of survival: it represented a genuine ideological position, consciously elaborated by heterodox thinkers and adopted across different
confessional environments.
This interpretation, however, was soon questioned by a number of historians of the Reformation. Antonio Rotondò, whose pioneering studies had already emphasized the diversity of forms assumed by religious dissimulation in sixteenth-century Italy, regarded Nicodemism primarily as a range of practical responses to persecution rather than as a unified doctrinal system. Carlos M. N. Eire likewise argued that Ginzburg's reconstruction tended to extend Calvin's polemical category beyond its original historical meaning. From Eire's perspective, Calvin's attack on the Nicodemites was directed at a specific group of French Protestants who outwardly conformed to Catholicism, and the term cannot easily be transformed into a universal interpretative category for all forms of religious concealment in early modern Europe.
More broadly, critics questioned the very assumption that outward religious dissimulation could be subsumed under a single explanatory model. French Calvinists, Italian Protestants and other heretics—including Anabaptists, Antitrinitarians, and the followers of Juan de Valdés—as well as conversos, moriscos, and the many diverse communities of religious dissent found across Europe, adopted forms of religious dissimulation for profoundly different theological, political, and social reasons. To treat these heterogeneous experiences as manifestations of one coherent European "Nicodemite" theory, they argued, risks obscuring precisely those doctrinal and historical differences that made each case distinctive.
As with several of Ginzburg's other major works, the principal criticism concerned not the originality of the insight but the breadth of the synthesis. His attempt to identify an overarching logic behind disparate forms of religious dissimulation was widely admired for its intellectual ambition, yet many historians concluded that the documentary evidence supports a plurality of context-specific strategies rather than the existence of a single trans-European Nicodemite ideology. Consequently, Ginzburg's interpretation has often been regarded as more stimulating than demonstrable and as another example of his characteristic tendency to privilege large interpretative constructions over the diversity of the historical record.
Menocchio
Originally published in 1976, Il formaggio e i vermi. Il cosmo di un mugnaio del '500 (The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller), recounting the story of Domenico Scandella, known as Menocchio, a Friulian miller and peasant persecuted and ultimately condemned to death by the Roman Inquisition, remains Ginzburg's best-known work and one of the classics of twentieth-century historiography.
Yet even this masterpiece has been the object of sustained criticism.
Andrea Del Col, after publishing the complete trial records, proposed a markedly different reading of Menocchio's cosmology, interpreting it primarily as a history of salvation rooted in medieval heretical traditions rather than as the expression of an autonomous popular materialism.
Luca Addante subsequently questioned Del Col's conclusions as well, arguing instead that Menocchio's ideas were more convincingly explained through the diffusion of radical Antitrinitarianism and Anabaptist thought in the Venetian territories, particularly through the influence of Girolamo Busale and Juan de Villafranca.
In other words, what Ginzburg had presented as an essentially autonomous popular worldview has gradually been relocated by later scholarship within much more precise religious and intellectual contexts. And this is without even considering the methodological criticisms in greater depth, to which we shall return below.
Yet even this masterpiece has been the object of sustained criticism.
Andrea Del Col, after publishing the complete trial records, proposed a markedly different reading of Menocchio's cosmology, interpreting it primarily as a history of salvation rooted in medieval heretical traditions rather than as the expression of an autonomous popular materialism.
Luca Addante subsequently questioned Del Col's conclusions as well, arguing instead that Menocchio's ideas were more convincingly explained through the diffusion of radical Antitrinitarianism and Anabaptist thought in the Venetian territories, particularly through the influence of Girolamo Busale and Juan de Villafranca.
In other words, what Ginzburg had presented as an essentially autonomous popular worldview has gradually been relocated by later scholarship within much more precise religious and intellectual contexts. And this is without even considering the methodological criticisms in greater depth, to which we shall return below.
Storia notturna and the Witches' Sabbath
Ginzburg's most ambitious attempt to reconstruct the deep origins of European popular beliefs culminated in Storia notturna. Una decifrazione del sabba, published in 1989 (translated into english under the title Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath). There he argued that the early modern witches' sabbath was not merely an inquisitorial invention but the distant echo of much older ecstatic traditions rooted in Indo-European shamanic beliefs. According to his reconstruction, a wide variety of European traditions—from the Friulian benandanti to visionary groups scattered across the continent—preserved fragments of a common mythical substratum centred on nocturnal journeys, female supernatural beings, fertility rites, and encounters with the dead.
Widely regarded as one of the most original and intellectually ambitious books ever written on European witchcraft, Storia notturna also became one of Ginzburg's most controversial works. Unlike the debates surrounding Il formaggio e i vermi or I benandanti, the criticism here did not concern isolated interpretations but the very foundations of Ginzburg's methodology.
A first objection concerned the uneasy relationship between morphology and history. Ginzburg attempted to combine comparative morphology—the study of recurring symbolic forms—with historical reconstruction. Critics argued that formal similarities between myths do not necessarily demonstrate historical continuity or common descent. Jean-Claude Schmitt warned that the search for long-term survivals risked obscuring the specific historical contexts in which individual beliefs emerged and evolved, while Willem de Blécourt questioned the tendency to privilege large-scale mythological patterns over historically verifiable processes of cultural transmission.
A second line of criticism focused on the inquisitorial sources themselves. Ginzburg maintained that, beneath the stereotype of the witches' sabbath imposed by judges, it was still possible to recover traces of an authentic ecstatic folk tradition. Robert Rowland strongly challenged this assumption, arguing that trial records are not transparent windows onto popular culture but highly mediated judicial documents shaped by interrogation techniques, learned demonology, suggestion, and, frequently, torture. From this perspective, the sabbath emerged primarily as an intellectual and judicial construction rather than as the fossilized survival of an ancient religious tradition.
A third criticism targeted what has often been called Ginzburg's "Eurasian conjecture." In order to explain the recurrence of motifs such as nocturnal flights, battles for fertility, and soul journeys from Central Asia to Western Europe, Ginzburg hypothesized the existence of an ancient cultural tradition extending back to Indo-European prehistory. Many historians regarded this reconstruction as fascinating but ultimately impossible to verify empirically, pointing to the absence of documentary or archaeological evidence capable of tracing an uninterrupted chain of transmission across thousands of years and vast geographical distances. Alternative anthropological approaches suggested that similar symbolic patterns might instead arise independently as recurrent expressions of universal cognitive or cultural processes rather than through historical diffusion.
Finally, several scholars warned against the danger of a subtle form of neo-Romanticism. Although no serious historian equated Ginzburg's scholarship with Margaret Murray's discredited theory of witchcraft as the survival of a pagan fertility religion, some critics nevertheless observed that Storia notturna occasionally seemed driven by the same desire to recover a historical reality underlying the myth of the sabbath. Gábor Klaniczay, while expressing admiration for the book, observed that its fascination with identifying deep archaic origins sometimes came at the expense of the microhistorical sensitivity that had made Ginzburg's earlier works so compelling, replacing close contextual analysis with broad speculation about prehistoric cultural substrata.
Indeed, the methodological debates surrounding Storia notturna resonated well beyond the field of witchcraft studies. As noted at the beginning of this article, during the 2007 controversy surrounding Ariel Toaff's Pasque di sangue, Franco Cardini explicitly recalled the criticisms levelled against Ginzburg's book, citing Martine Ostorero's objections to its chronology and broader methodological weaknesses as evidence that Ginzburg himself had long been the object of rigorous scholarly criticism.
In retrospect, Storia notturna perhaps best illustrates both the extraordinary originality and the principal weakness of Ginzburg's historical imagination. Few historians possessed his capacity to perceive unexpected connections across cultures and centuries. Yet it was precisely this interpretative audacity that led many critics to conclude that some of his most brilliant hypotheses ultimately extended beyond what the surviving evidence could securely demonstrate.
Widely regarded as one of the most original and intellectually ambitious books ever written on European witchcraft, Storia notturna also became one of Ginzburg's most controversial works. Unlike the debates surrounding Il formaggio e i vermi or I benandanti, the criticism here did not concern isolated interpretations but the very foundations of Ginzburg's methodology.
A first objection concerned the uneasy relationship between morphology and history. Ginzburg attempted to combine comparative morphology—the study of recurring symbolic forms—with historical reconstruction. Critics argued that formal similarities between myths do not necessarily demonstrate historical continuity or common descent. Jean-Claude Schmitt warned that the search for long-term survivals risked obscuring the specific historical contexts in which individual beliefs emerged and evolved, while Willem de Blécourt questioned the tendency to privilege large-scale mythological patterns over historically verifiable processes of cultural transmission.
A second line of criticism focused on the inquisitorial sources themselves. Ginzburg maintained that, beneath the stereotype of the witches' sabbath imposed by judges, it was still possible to recover traces of an authentic ecstatic folk tradition. Robert Rowland strongly challenged this assumption, arguing that trial records are not transparent windows onto popular culture but highly mediated judicial documents shaped by interrogation techniques, learned demonology, suggestion, and, frequently, torture. From this perspective, the sabbath emerged primarily as an intellectual and judicial construction rather than as the fossilized survival of an ancient religious tradition.
A third criticism targeted what has often been called Ginzburg's "Eurasian conjecture." In order to explain the recurrence of motifs such as nocturnal flights, battles for fertility, and soul journeys from Central Asia to Western Europe, Ginzburg hypothesized the existence of an ancient cultural tradition extending back to Indo-European prehistory. Many historians regarded this reconstruction as fascinating but ultimately impossible to verify empirically, pointing to the absence of documentary or archaeological evidence capable of tracing an uninterrupted chain of transmission across thousands of years and vast geographical distances. Alternative anthropological approaches suggested that similar symbolic patterns might instead arise independently as recurrent expressions of universal cognitive or cultural processes rather than through historical diffusion.
Finally, several scholars warned against the danger of a subtle form of neo-Romanticism. Although no serious historian equated Ginzburg's scholarship with Margaret Murray's discredited theory of witchcraft as the survival of a pagan fertility religion, some critics nevertheless observed that Storia notturna occasionally seemed driven by the same desire to recover a historical reality underlying the myth of the sabbath. Gábor Klaniczay, while expressing admiration for the book, observed that its fascination with identifying deep archaic origins sometimes came at the expense of the microhistorical sensitivity that had made Ginzburg's earlier works so compelling, replacing close contextual analysis with broad speculation about prehistoric cultural substrata.
Indeed, the methodological debates surrounding Storia notturna resonated well beyond the field of witchcraft studies. As noted at the beginning of this article, during the 2007 controversy surrounding Ariel Toaff's Pasque di sangue, Franco Cardini explicitly recalled the criticisms levelled against Ginzburg's book, citing Martine Ostorero's objections to its chronology and broader methodological weaknesses as evidence that Ginzburg himself had long been the object of rigorous scholarly criticism.
In retrospect, Storia notturna perhaps best illustrates both the extraordinary originality and the principal weakness of Ginzburg's historical imagination. Few historians possessed his capacity to perceive unexpected connections across cultures and centuries. Yet it was precisely this interpretative audacity that led many critics to conclude that some of his most brilliant hypotheses ultimately extended beyond what the surviving evidence could securely demonstrate.
A Method Under Debate
The criticism did not concern only individual case studies but also Ginzburg's broader historical method. Giovanni Romeo referred explicitly to "a certain forcing of the documents" in Ginzburg's interpretation of the benandanti, suggesting that the search for coherent explanatory models sometimes exceeded what the sources themselves could securely sustain. Dominick LaCapra developed an even more far-reaching critique in his celebrated essay The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Twentieth-Century Historian. While acknowledging the originality and brilliance of Ginzburg's work, LaCapra argued that Il formaggio e i vermi ultimately revealed as much about the intellectual universe of its author as about that of the sixteenth-century miller Menocchio. In his view, Ginzburg projected onto his protagonist a highly unified conception of an autonomous popular culture, treating oral tradition as the master key capable of explaining Menocchio's worldview. LaCapra also questioned Ginzburg's structuralist methodology, his tendency to privilege elegant interpretative patterns over the ambiguities of the evidence, and his use of inquisitorial records as repositories of historical facts rather than as complex textual constructions requiring critical reading in their own right. Most strikingly, he criticized Ginzburg's suggestion that particularly conjectural historical reconstructions might require new standards of proof, arguing instead that historical interpretation should become more—not less—critical when confronted with fragmentary or unbalanced documentation.
The criticism did not concern only individual case studies but also Ginzburg's broader historical method. Giovanni Romeo referred explicitly to "a certain forcing of the documents" in Ginzburg's interpretation of the benandanti, suggesting that the search for coherent explanatory models sometimes exceeded what the sources themselves could securely sustain. Dominick LaCapra developed an even more far-reaching critique in his celebrated essay The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Twentieth-Century Historian. While acknowledging the originality and brilliance of Ginzburg's work, LaCapra argued that Il formaggio e i vermi ultimately revealed as much about the intellectual universe of its author as about that of the sixteenth-century miller Menocchio. In his view, Ginzburg projected onto his protagonist a highly unified conception of an autonomous popular culture, treating oral tradition as the master key capable of explaining Menocchio's worldview. LaCapra also questioned Ginzburg's structuralist methodology, his tendency to privilege elegant interpretative patterns over the ambiguities of the evidence, and his use of inquisitorial records as repositories of historical facts rather than as complex textual constructions requiring critical reading in their own right. Most strikingly, he criticized Ginzburg's suggestion that particularly conjectural historical reconstructions might require new standards of proof, arguing instead that historical interpretation should become more—not less—critical when confronted with fragmentary or unbalanced documentation.
Similar concerns were expressed by David Levine and Zubedeh Vahed, who argued that Ginzburg's celebrated reconstruction of Menocchio rested on a selective use of the available evidence. In their view, he readily dismissed documentary clues that did not fit his interpretative framework—notably those suggesting possible Islamic influences through the Qur'an—while relying on highly conjectural hypotheses concerning an undefined oral culture whose historical contours remained impossible to verify. They concluded that several of Ginzburg's most influential explanations depended less on demonstrable evidence than on speculative connections shaped by the historian's own interpretative preferences.
Comparable methodological reservations were subsequently raised by other specialists in the history of witchcraft and popular religion, who questioned Ginzburg's chronology, comparative framework, and application of the "evidential paradigm" (paradigma indiziario), maintaining that several of his most ambitious reconstructions rested on evidentiary foundations too fragile to sustain the conclusions drawn from them.
Beyond Early Modern History: The Sofri Affair
The debates surrounding Ginzburg were not confined to the history of heresy and witchcraft.
In 1991 he published Il giudice e lo storico. Considerazioni in margine al processo Sofri (translated into english under the title The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late-Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice), a book defending his close friend Adriano Sofri, who had been convicted as the instigator of the 1972 murder of Police Commissioner Luigi Calabresi. Applying analytical methods similar to those employed in his studies of inquisitorial trials, Ginzburg drew explicit parallels between the Sofri proceedings and early modern witchcraft prosecutions, arguing that the judicial evidence had been misinterpreted and that the conviction represented a miscarriage of justice.
The debates surrounding Ginzburg were not confined to the history of heresy and witchcraft.
In 1991 he published Il giudice e lo storico. Considerazioni in margine al processo Sofri (translated into english under the title The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late-Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice), a book defending his close friend Adriano Sofri, who had been convicted as the instigator of the 1972 murder of Police Commissioner Luigi Calabresi. Applying analytical methods similar to those employed in his studies of inquisitorial trials, Ginzburg drew explicit parallels between the Sofri proceedings and early modern witchcraft prosecutions, arguing that the judicial evidence had been misinterpreted and that the conviction represented a miscarriage of justice.
The book generated intense debate well beyond the community of early modern historians. While many readers admired it as a profound reflection on the relationship between historical inquiry and judicial reasoning, others questioned whether Ginzburg's personal involvement had compromised the detachment expected of a historian. For some critics, the Sofri case confirmed what they regarded as a recurring feature of his scholarship: a tendency to privilege elegant interpretative constructions over the constraints imposed by the documentary evidence.
A Complex Legacy
None of this diminishes Carlo Ginzburg's stature.
On the contrary, it may be the clearest measure of his greatness.
Only historians who fundamentally reshape a discipline compel later generations to test, revise, and sometimes overturn their conclusions.
Many of Ginzburg's hypotheses have now been substantially revised; others have been partially superseded; still others continue to provoke lively debate. His books undoubtedly transformed the questions historians asked.
Yet the subsequent historiography also reminds us of another fundamental principle of historical scholarship: no interpretation, however brilliant or influential, is exempt from critical re-examination. Perhaps that is the most enduring lesson of Carlo Ginzburg's remarkable intellectual legacy.
None of this diminishes Carlo Ginzburg's stature.
On the contrary, it may be the clearest measure of his greatness.
Only historians who fundamentally reshape a discipline compel later generations to test, revise, and sometimes overturn their conclusions.
Many of Ginzburg's hypotheses have now been substantially revised; others have been partially superseded; still others continue to provoke lively debate. His books undoubtedly transformed the questions historians asked.
Yet the subsequent historiography also reminds us of another fundamental principle of historical scholarship: no interpretation, however brilliant or influential, is exempt from critical re-examination. Perhaps that is the most enduring lesson of Carlo Ginzburg's remarkable intellectual legacy.
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