Menocchio, also known as Domenico Scandella, was a Friulian miller born in 1532 in the village of Montereale, twenty-five kilometers north of Pordenone. His philosophical teachings earned him the title of a heresiarch during the Inquisition and he was eventually burned at the stake in 1599, at the age of 67, on orders of Pope Clement VIII.
He was married and had eleven children.
Ginzburg’s book details the patient mechanism of the Inquisition in Counter Reformation Italy as it sought to eradicate suspected heresy and heretical groups rather in the same way that Stalin suspected counter-revolution everywhere.
The locals knew the sick sixty-seven-year-old well – he had long been a character in the local villages – being a miller by trade, a former mayor of nearby Montereale and an administrator of the parish church there. His name was Domenico Scandella but he was better known as Menocchio. With Giordano Bruno in far-off Rome, the virtually unknown and ill-educated old man shared the dangerous honour of being accused of heresy and of being burned alive. http://www.readysteadybook.com/BookReview.aspx?isbn=0801843871
did you even read what I said — these guys were not Catholics, hence out of the jurisdiction. the Puritans had their own version of the inquisition, as did the Calvinists in Geneva, Lutherans, Anglicans etc.