Correspondence with Ginzburg on Menocchio's Death

I

Me to Carlo Ginzburg

4/23/2019 at 12:20 PM

Good day, when in 1599 was Domenico Scandella called Menocchio burned?

And how do we know it?

I mean, when I had recently converted to the Catholic Church, I was discussing your book with a then history student, now history professor in Lund.

She - Yvonne Maria Werner - among other things criticised your book for concluding he was finally burned on pure probabilities without a document on that.

I don't think my memory of back then (your book was fairly new in Swedish translation) is too faulty. I don't think she would have concluded to your presenting a burning on pure probabilities without document if she had not thoroughly looked for one and found one lacking.

Has there come to light any document since then?

Hans Georg Lundahl

II

Carlo Ginzburg to me

4/23/2019 at 1:09 PM

RE: Good day, when in 1599 was Domenico Scandella called Menocchio burned?

You may go back to my book. See also

Domenico Scandella known as Menocchio : his trials before the Inquisition (1583-1599) / [edited] by Andrea Del Col ; translated by John & Anne C. Tedeschi, Binghamton 1996.
Carlo Ginzburg

III

Me to Carlo Ginzburg

4/23/2019 at 1:44 PM

Re: RE: Good day, when in 1599 was Domenico Scandella called Menocchio burned?

Grazie.

IV

Me to Carlo Ginzburg

4/25/2019 at 1:23 PM

Re: RE: Good day, when in 1599 was Domenico Scandella called Menocchio burned?

Could not find the second book, did look at the end of yours.

5.IX1599 a letter to Rome is sent from Frioul, which is lost.
Letters 30.X.1599 and 13.XI.1599 refer back to its content which was obviously already known to the inquisitors in Frioul.

Its content is not known to us.

26.I.1600 Menocchio has heirs.
6.VII.1601 a man appearing before the tribunal deposits having heard from a landlady of some inn that Scandella had been executed by the Holy Office.

Certainly, it seems very probable that he was indeed executed to death, but not the only option.

• 1) Scandella was 64. To a man of good health, this was perhaps no age, but he was a miller. They have a hard job and often eat much. So, he could have died a natural death by heartstroke, I knew a baker who died at 55, and the justice in question (30.X.1599) could be about burning his corpse after it came out he had relapsed between last time in inquisition and a burial in a normal churchyard, it could be about his not polluting the churchyard by heresy;
• 2) he could have committed suicide, similar observations about a normal burial being unjust to the Christians corpses who would hopefully rise to glory and might not want to have a damned suicide beside them when they woke up on Doomsday;
• 3) he could have heirs because juridically dead, and the execution by the Holy Office could be like a sentence in contumaciam, the burning in effigie.

I would admit the first two options are somewhat less likely than his being executed, since execution is what the gossip of the landlady was hinting at, but with a burning in effigie, the symbolic act could have been routinely referred to as an execution. It would definitely have involved a civic death so he could have heirs.

I am reminded that a few centuries earlier, Bernard Guy in 930(?) processes (of which the relative majority were incarcerations), had burned about 1/10, but only about 1/20 in person, and the other about 1/20 only in effigie.

As I could not find the book by Andrea Del Col here, do you know if some discovery of his after your work has cleared up that he was indeed burned to death or immediately after being strangled to death?

A note, you noted that you were correcting one P. Paschini who claimed that only one had been executed by the Inquisition in Frioul, a smith in 1568, so that makes, if you are right, two. And it seems the dossier was running in processes 449 to 546, and this would mean that in 546 processes one or two men were executed for heresy. Am I missing something?

Hans Georg Lundahl
at Nanterre UL
Fifth Day of Easter, 25.IV.2019

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Carlo Ginzburg to me

4/25/2019 at 6:02 PM

RE: RE: Good day, when in 1599 was Domenico Scandella called Menocchio burned?

Your speculations about Domenica Scandella's death are frivolous. The evidence about his death on the stake can be disproven, in principle, only on the basis on some conflicting, and more reliable evidence. I am not aware of it.
How many men and women were tortured and/or put to death, for centuries, by the Inquisition? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? We'll never kow. The historical judgement about the institution does not depend from those figures.
A pope (John Paul II) publicly asked forgiveness for the Church's mistakes – belatedly and too vaguely.
This exchange, as far as I am concerned, is over.
Carlo Ginzburg

VI

Me to Carlo Ginzburg

4/27/2019 at 11:36 AM

Re: RE: RE: Good day, when in 1599 was Domenico Scandella called Menocchio burned?

The evidence for his dying on the stake is on the contrary ambiguious. An execution can refer to a burning in effigie.

The fact Rome wrote twice may imply Inquisitors in Frioul were "buying time" - so Scandella could escape. Or dienaturally.

The wording in the letters from Rome certainly may refer to punishing a living Scandella most severely, that is by burning, but could also refer to punishing a dead Scandella by exhumation from an undue Christian burial. Or to punishing some lynchmob who had taken the matter in its own hands for killing him after Inquisitors were more or less satisfied with his future at least token Orthodoxy.

I do not say each of these possibilities is as likely as his being burned, but it is sufficiently likely to be a not frivolous doubt.

"How many men and women were tortured and/or put to death, for centuries, by the Inquisition? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? We'll never kow."

I suppose you mean "know".

In other words, you have shown a bias towards accusing Inquisitors of killing many.

I must confess to the opposite bias.

"The historical judgement about the institution does not depend from those figures."

In the balance between Bernard Guy burning 930 and Bernard Guy burning 42 or 45 among 930, it does. Hence my question if in over 500 processes in Frioul, only two (including) or - if my doubts are taken into account - only one certainly and another one dubiously were actually burned.

It is not the difference between killing or not killing over faith. But it is the difference between "damned as soon as accused" and "a fairly high security of rights (relative to a system which killed over faith)."

"A pope (John Paul II) publicly asked forgiveness for the Church's mistakes – belatedly and too vaguely."

A non-Pope, Antipope Wojtyla, also scandalous against Catholic orthodoxy on other occasions, like twice over 1986.

"This exchange, as far as I am concerned, is over."

Your choice.

Hans Georg Lundahl