Microhistory pioneer Carlo Ginzburg, who gave voice to the marginalized, dies at 87

ROME — Carlo Ginzburg, an Italian historian whose pioneering work transformed the study of the past by recovering the voices of marginalized people, died Wednesday at 87.

The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he was both a student and professor emeritus, said he died in the northern Italian city of Bologna.

Ginzburg was a pioneer of microhistory, which focuses on small, specific units of analysis – such as an individual, a community, or a singular event – to reveal broader themes and issues within history.

A leading figure in contemporary historiography, Ginzburg developed the so-called “evidential paradigm,” a method based on interpreting clues, traces and seemingly minor details to reconstruct the experiences of those excluded from dominant narratives.

His early work focused on the “benandanti,” a pagan fertility cult in the 16th- and 17th-century Friuli region whose members, seen as shamanic healers, were accused of heresy by the Inquisition.

The research underpinned his first book, published in 1966, in which he traced the cult’s roots to older Central European beliefs.

He later explored heresy in his landmark 1976 book “The Cheese and the Worms,” widely regarded as one of the most important works of Italian historiography.

The book reconstructed the trial of a 16th-century Friulian miller accused of holding unorthodox beliefs about the origins of the world and Jesus Christ.

Drawing on inquisitorial records, Ginzburg showed how power and resistance are embedded in the same documents, using small-scale cases to illuminate broader tensions between elite and popular culture, and between authority and dissent.

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.

He received numerous international honors, 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 that it 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 his two daughters, Silvia, an art historian, and Lisa, a writer and essayist, from his marriage to his former wife, late historian Anna Rossi-Doria.