Carlo Ginzburg dies at 87, reshaping microhistory

Carlo Ginzburg, the Italian historian who helped remake how scholars study the past by focusing on small lives and neglected voices, died Wednesday at 87 in Bologna. A pioneer of microhistory and the “evidential paradigm,” he reconstructed trials and evidence

ROME — Carlo Ginzburg didn’t chase history from a distance. He returned to it the way you might return to a courtroom record—looking closely at traces, clues, and the kinds of details dominant narratives often ignore.

Ginzburg, an Italian historian whose pioneering work helped transform the study of the past by recovering the voices of marginalized people, died Wednesday at 87. The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa said he died in Bologna, where he was also a student and professor emeritus.

He became a defining figure in microhistory. a method that narrows the lens to small. specific units of analysis—an individual. a community. a singular event—to reveal broader themes and issues in history. In Ginzburg’s hands, this wasn’t just a scholarly technique. It was a way of insisting that “minor” evidence could still carry meaning. and that the people written out of records could still be heard.

Central to his approach was what he called the “evidential paradigm. ” a method built on interpreting clues. traces. and seemingly minor details to reconstruct the experiences of those excluded from dominant narratives. That framework helped power his early work on the “benandanti. ” a pagan fertility cult in the 16th- and 17th-century Friuli region. Members were viewed as shamanic healers and were accused of heresy by the Inquisition.

The research fed into his first book, published in 1966, in which he traced the cult’s roots to older Central European beliefs. Later, he turned to heresy in what has become one of the most influential works of Italian historiography: his 1976 landmark book, “The Cheese and the Worms.”

In that book. Ginzburg reconstructed the trial of a 16th-century Friulian miller accused of holding unorthodox beliefs about the origins of the world and Jesus Christ. Using inquisitorial records. he showed how power and resistance were embedded in the same documents—using small-scale cases to illuminate tensions between elite and popular culture. and between authority and dissent.

Ginzburg was born in Turin in 1939 to writer Natalia Ginzburg and anti-fascist activist Leone Ginzburg. He taught at universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of California, Los Angeles. His books were translated into more than 30 languages.

His work brought wide recognition, including the Prix Aby Warburg, the Balzan Prize, the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize, and the Humboldt Research Award.

In a 2023 interview with the Italian cultural magazine Lucy, Ginzburg said his approach could extend beyond historical research and should be applied “in everyday life” to better understand others.

In a statement, the Scuola Normale Superiore said he “changed the way of practicing the historian’s craft,” adding that he “restores voice to those who lack it, shows that the rigor of proof is a form of justice, and upholds a demanding idea of truth.”

He is survived by two daughters, Silvia, an art historian, and Lisa, a writer and essayist, from his marriage to his former wife, late historian Anna Rossi-Doria.

Carlo Ginzburg microhistory evidential paradigm The Cheese and the Worms Friuli Inquisition benandanti Italian historiography Bologna