Table Of ContentCarlo Ginzburg
~/
~lues,
Myths, and the
Historical Meth~
Translated by
John andAnne C. Tedeschi
TheJohns Hopkins UniversityPress
BaltimoreandLondon
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OriginallypublishedasMitiemblemispie:morfologiaestoria.
Copyright© 1986Giulio Einaudieditores.p.a.,Torino
© 1989TheJohnsHopkinsUniversityPress
Allrights reserved
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Ginzburg,Carlo
[Miti,emblemi, spie.English]
Clues,myths,andthehistoricalmethod/ CarloGinzburg;
translatedbyJohnandAnne C.Tedeschi.
p. em.
Translationof:Miti, emblemi,spie.
Bibliography:p.
Includesindex.
Contents:Witchcraftand popularpiety-FromAbyWarburgtoE.H.
Gombrich-Thehighand the low-Titian,Ovid,and sixteenth
centurycodes forerotic illustration-Clues-Germanic
mythologyand Nazism-Freud,thewolf-man,and thewerewolves
Theinquisitorasanthropologist.
ISBN0-8018-3458-9
1.History-Methodology. 2.Historiography. 1.Title.
D16.G5213 1989
907'.2-dc20 89-45483
en-
~Contents
PrefacetotheItalian Edition
VII
Translators'Note xv
BibliographicalNote
XVII
Witchcraftand PopularPiety: Notes on aModenese Trial
of1519 1
FromAbyWarburgto E. H. Gombrich: AProblemofMethod 17
The Highand the Low: TheTheme ofForbiddenKnowledge
in the Sixteenthand SeventeenthCenturies 60
Titian, Ovid, and Sixteenth-CenturyCodes for Erotic
Illustration 77
Clues: Roots ofan EvidentialParadigm 96
GermanicMythologyand Nazism: Thoughtson an Old Book
byGeorges Dumezil 126
Freud, the Wolf-Man, and the Werewolves 146
The InquisitorasAnthropologist 156
Notes 165
Index ofNames 223
~ Preface to the Italian Edition
This collection, with the exception of the final essay, which is
published here for the first time, consists of texts that appeared
between 1961 and 1984. The subtitle reflects recent preoccupations
dealt with explicitlyin the papers on Freud and Dumezil, Today, the
relationship between morphology and history seems to me to be the
common thread (at least partially) running through the entire group.
But perhaps the reader willfind that these writings on such different
subjects actuallyhavelittlein common.
I should like to explain why they were selected and the context in
which they came into being. I apologize for the partially
autobiographical character ofthese observations. In the mid-1950s I
was reading fiction; the idea that I might become a historian never
crossed my mind. I also was reading Lukacs, impatientwith the way
inwhich he discussed Dostoyevskyand Kafka. Ithought that Iwould
like to deal with literary texts, avoiding both the frustrations of
rationalism and the mire of irrationalism. Today I find this project
obviously naive in its ambition; however, I cannot forsake it. I still
find myselfcaught up in it. The antithesis between rationalism and
irrationalism recurs at the verybeginningof"Clues," apiece that can
be read as an attempt to justifya method of research in historical and
ingeneralterms.
An equally powerful thread of continuity binds me, despite
everything, to my first relatively independent intellectual choices
made in this period, choices thatare not directly attributable to family
background. Croce and Gramsci (that is, Croce read through
Gramsci); Spitzer, Auerbach, Contini. These were the writers being
discussed during those years in the review Officina, which I
remember perusingwith intense curiosity. I have never been terribly
fond ofPasolini (except for a few of his films), who was one ofthe
moving spirits ofthis journal; today I can see clearly, however, that
the intersection of populism and stylistic criticism, typical of Italian
culture in the late fifties, provided the background for my first
attempt at research, "Stregoneria e pieta popolare" (1961; reprinted
vii
viii / PrefacetotheItalianEdition
here as "Witchcraft and Popular Piety"). Subsequent encounters
with people and books complicated and enriched the picture,
without, however, erasing it. Hermeneutics applied to literary texts
and, more specifically, the taste for telltale detail guided my later
in-depth work, which was mostly directed towards a totally different ..
typeofdocumentation.
Among the motives impelling me towards the study ofwitch trials
there was also a desire to demonstrate that an irrational and (atleast
for some) atemporal phenomenon - and one thus historically
irrelevant - could be studied in a rational, but not rationalistic key.
After more than twenty-five years and numerous studies devoted to
witchcraft (then definitely a peripheral subject), the polemic implicit
in this position appears to be obvious, or even incomprehensible. But
the decision to study not only the persecution of witchcraft but
witchcraft itself still appears to be both fruitful and not so patent.
(Other, more personal motives pushing me in this direction only
became clear to me later.) Even my reading ofDe Martino's Mondo
magico,whichreachedmethroughPavese'sDialoghiconLeuco,seemed
an invitation to overcome by the means of concrete research the
ideological antithesis betweenrationalism and irrationalism.
The hypothesis formulated at the conclusion of "Witchcraft and
PopularPiety," which sawthe witch trials as aclash betweencultures
(as distinct from the other thesis, which viewed witchcraft as a
primitive form ofclass struggle), found confirmation some time later
in the Friulian materials studied in I Benandanti (1966; TheNight
Battles, 1983). It waspossible, then, to reconstruct a culture radically
different from our own, in spite ofthe intervening filter represented
by the inquisitors. But the benandanti ("well-farers," "do-gooders")
themselves confronted me with a new contradiction. The beliefs I
encountered in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Friuli had
disconcerting similarities with spatially distant (and perhaps also
chronologically distant) phenomena: the myths and rites ofSiberian
shamans. Could this connection be dealt with in historical terms? At
the time I thought not - and not just because ofmyown limitations.
Recalling an argument in Bloch's TheRoyal Touch (a decisive book
for me), I thought it possible to oppose a typological comparison
between historically independent phenomena, on one hand, and a
more strictly historical analogy on the other - and I opted for the
latter. This time the antithesis seemed insurmountable because it
wastied to an intrinsic limitation within the discipline itself. And yetI
wasn't certain that my choice exhausted the possibilities'offered by
PrefacetotheItalianEdition / ix
the documentation on the benandanti. For a time I toyed with the
notion of presenting my work in two different forms: one concrete
and descriptive, the other abstract and diagrammatic. Pulling me in
the second direction was my encounter with the writings of
Levi-Strauss, specifically his Structural Anthropology. Even if
typological or formal connections were out of bounds for the
historian (as Bloch maintained), why not analyze them anyway, I
asked myself?
Still today I have not been able to cope with this challenge.
Nevertheless, underneath, it continued to sustain much ofmy work
in the ensuing years, (At least that is how I see it now.) At the
beginning of the 1960s, thanks to Cantimori, I discovered the
WarburgInstitute. My attempts to come to termswith the intellectual
traditionassociatedwith itforced me to reflectnotonlyon the uses of
figurative evidence as a historical source, but also on the persistence
of forms and formulae outside the context in which they had
originated. The resultwas"FromAbyWarburgto E. H. Gombrich."
My intention to study basic categories, anthropological in character,
in different cultural settings - an ambitious project that ended up
givingbirth to a mouse ("The High and the Low") - also dates from
the same period. After this failure, the old idea oftransgressing the
tacit boundaries ofthe discipline, pushingthemback, presenteditself
in a different form. This time it was a question of restoring to the
purview of history not so much obviously atemporal as apparently
negligible phenomena - something resembling the witch trials. This
was behind IIformaggio e i uermi (1976; The Cheese and the Worms,
1980), but also there was much else: for example, Don Milani
(Lettera a una professoressa, 1967) and the events of 1968. But for
demonstrating the significance of seemingly negligible phenomena,
instruments ofobservation and scales ofresearch different from the
usual were needed. Thinking about the problem ofdetailed analysis
ofa microscopic type resulted in "Clues." Initially I had intended to
justify my working methods indirectly by constructing a private
intellectual genealogy, which would include principally a small
number ofbooks which I thought had influenced me in aparticularly
significant way: Spitzer's essays, Auerbach's Mimesis, Adorno's
Minima Moralia, Freud's. Psychopathology of Everyday Life,
Bloch's TheRoyal Touch, all books that I had read between eighteen
and twenty years of age. Then the project burst out in other
directions. Once again I was tempted to analyze the object of illy
research (an objectthat seemed ever beyond'mygrasp because itwas
x / PrefacetotheItalianEdition
constantly expanding) over a long, in fact, immense sweep oftime,
while focusing, however, on a series ofdetails examined close-up. I
had thought ofa similar telescopic and microscopic approach fifteen
years earlier when I was mulling over the notion (which came to
nought) ofwritingabookon thesubjectof"The Highand the Low."
In the meantime, however, somethingin me had changed.
I am well aware that I have been using ridiculously agonistic terms
- "challenge," "obstacle," etc. - to describe innocuous intellectual
activities. But the anguish is largely interiorized. The objections
voiced within me are never the same as those of public critics.
Negative reviews sometimes annoyme, sometimes make me happy; I
forget them almost immediately. With the passing oftime they have
become more frequent, but my readers have also become more
numerous and the subjects ofmy research, for a variety ofreasons,
have moved from the periphery to the center of the discipline.
Contemporaneously, however, the antagonist within me has become
much stronger. Once, it used to place obstacles in my way which I
usually could overcome in one wayor another- in the worst case, by
ignoring them. But for the first time, while working on "Clues," I
experienced a sensation that made itself more pronounced as the
years passed: I did not know if I would side with myselfor with my
opponent. Did I want to broaden the horizons ofhistorical research
or tighten its boundaries, solve the difficulties tied to my work or
continuallycreate new ones?
What got me into trouble was the decision taken in the
mid-seventies to return to problems associated with the benandanti
and especiallyto one thathad eluded me before: the analogybetween
benandanti and shamans. In the meantime, perhaps wrongly, I had
become less prudent. I was no longer willing to discard a priori the
possibility that resemblance implied a historical link (to be
reconstructed from top to bottom). But the contrary hypothesis, ofa
purely typological relationship, was equally possible, and certainly
moreplausible. Allthis would require an expansionofthe researchto
a sphere that, chronologically and geographically, was much vaster
than late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-centuryFriuli. Moreover,
the relationship between typological (or formal) connections and
historical connections had to be confronted even in its theoretical
implications.
The research on the sabbat of which I am speaking is still in
progress. Anumberofits provisional findings are containedin abrief
article not included in this collection ("Presomptions sur Ie sabbat,"
PrefacetotheItalianEdition / xi
Annales:E.S.C.,1984). I do notrule outthateven this projectmaybe
destined for partial failure. I see now, however, thatin the meantime
the theoretical difficulties associatedwith ithave cropped up again on
anotherlevel,in connectionnotwith myths butwith paintings.
This awareness is retrospective. I have permitted myself to be
guided bychance and curiosity, notbyaconscious strategy. Butwhat
appeared to be distractions (although fascinating ones) at the time,
now do not seem such. What myths and paintings (works of art in
general) have incommonis,on the one hand, thatthey originatedand
were transmitted in specific cultural and social contexts, and on the
other, their formal dimensions. That this can be illuminated by an
analysis ofthe contextis obvious (except to strict formalists): implicit
references to literarytexts and the reactionsofthe publicassist us, for
example, tobetterunderstandTitian'seroticpaintings("Titian,Ovid,
and Sixteenth-Century Codes for Erotic Illustration"). But the
prospect ofpeaceful collaboration suggested indirectlyin that essay,
on the basis of a division of labor between formal analysis and
historical research, did notsatisfyme on a generallevel.Which ofthe
twoapproaches,I asked myself:has, inthe last resort, greaterpowerof
interpretation?
This question, in some ways foolish, stemmed (as I think I
understandnow)from the researchon the sabbatinwhich I havebeen
stuck for so long. The documentationwhich I had beenaccumulating
seemed to be forcing me to choose between a historical connection
which I wasnotable toprove andapurelyformal one which I resisted.
On the otherhand, acompromisesolution, theoreticallypossible, had
to be preceded (or so I thought) by an evaluation ofthe respective
weight of the two alternatives - and thus, provisionally, by their
radicalization. The contrast between external and stylistic data as
elements to establish the chronologyofPiero della Francesca'sworks
(Indagini suPiero, 1981; TheEnigma ofPierodellaFrancesca, 1985) isa
comparableexpedientinatotallydifferentcontext. Theproposalfor a
chronology based on extrastylistic data was made necessary by the
limits of my knowledge, certainly not by a prejudicial hostility of a
theoretical nature. The morphological approach ofaconnoisseurlike
Morelli(whichisexaminedin"Clues")fascinated me, asdid Longhi's
exceedingly more complicated one. The attempt to reconstruct
otherwise unknown historical phenomena (artistic personalities,
dating of art works) through a series of purely formal connections
could be checked and corrected, ifnecessary, by the discovery ofa
differentdocumentation,butitslegitimacyremainedintact.
xii / PrefacetotheItalian Edition
I suddenly realized that in my long research on the sabbat I had
been pursuing a method that was much more morphological than
historical. I was collecting myths and beliefs from different cultural
contexts on the basis of formal affinities. Beyond superficial
similarities I recognized (or at leastI believedI recognized) profound
connections, being inspired more by Longhi than Morelli. The
l
previously known historical links could not guide me because those
myths and those beliefs (independently of the date in which they
appeared in the sources) could go back to a much older past. I was
usingmorphologyas an instrumentto probe depths beyond the reach
ofthe usualhistoricalmethods.
I have mentioned Longhi and Morelli: but more immediately my
model was and remains Propp, for reasons that are both specific and
theoretical. Among the latter is his distinction, so precise and so
fruitful heuristically (certainly not owed to external political
... pressures) between the "morphology of the folktale" and the
"historical roots offairy tales." In my plan, the work ofclassification
should constitute a preliminary phase, meant to reconstruct a series
. of phenomena which I would like to analyze historically. All this
unexpectedly became clear to me some years back when I stumbled
on that passage in the Notes on Frazer's "Golden Bough" where
Wittgenstein juxtaposes two ways of presenting material, one
synoptic and achronic, the other based on a hypothesis of a
chronological development, emphasizing the superiority of the
former. The reference to Goethe (to Goethe the morphologist) is
explicit, as it also is in Propp's Morphology oftheFolktale, written in
... the same period. But Propp, unlike Wittgenstein, considers
morphological analysis a useful instrument in historical research, not
an alternative toit.
In the case of my current work on the sabbat, the integration of
morphology and history is only an aspiration which may be
impossible to realize. Butthe manner in which Propp in his Historical
Roots of Fairy Tales (a great book despite its defects) filled the
inevitable gaps in the documentation with a series ofcommonplaces
based on a rigid evolutionism, makes clear the risks associated with
an endeavorofthis kind.
This digression on a still unfinished book has a single purpose: to
clarify the links that otherwise might not be immediately evident
between two of the essays in the collection and the others. The
difficulties which continue to beset my research on the sabbat arise
from the discovery, irrefutable in myopinion, ofa mythical nucleus
PrefacetotheItalian Edition / xiii
which retained its vitality fully intact for centuries - perhaps for
millennia. This continuity, traceable despite numerous variations,
cannot be generically credited to a tendency in the human spirit.
Having discarded in'advance pseudo-explanations which restate the
problem ("archetypes," "collective unconscious"), I inevitably came
to a critical reappraisal ofFreud and Dumezil, My conclusions are
partial and provisional; but a few ofthe implications of mywork are
now clear to me. In the essays presented in this volume I think I can
recognize some of the stages that brought me, after many comings
and goings, to the pointwhereIamnow.
Postscriptum 1989
This English edition (for which I am indebted, once again, to the
abilityand patience ofmyfriends John and Anne Tedeschi) contains
a previously unpublished essay, "The Inquisitor as Anthropologist,"
that was not included in the Italian volume. Like the essays on
Dumezil and Freud, it too originated in the course of research on
witchcraft that had begun many years before. The publication of
Storia notturna: Una decifrazionedelsabba (Turin: Einaudi, 1989) now
closes, provisionally, a cycle of work reflected by the writings
collected here.
