SKILLFUL PIGMIES ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

The below is taken from tomorrow's inquisition reading, which I'll have you know is an entire book, titled The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.

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"'The peoples of these lands have different laws, because some worship the sun, some fire, some the trees, some serpents, and others the first thing they encounter in the morning.  Still others worship images and idols. . . ' Mandeville related these facts at the beginning of the second part of his travels in speaking of Chana, a small island off the Indian coast. . . . Menocchio's mental universe now consisted of Inda and Cathay and islands inhabited by cannibals, Pigmies and men with the heads of dogs.  It was on the subject of Pigmies that Mandeville wrote a page destined to enjoy an extraordinary success: 'they are people short in stature, who are about three spans long: and they are beautiful and graceful, both men and women, because of their smallness.  They marry when they are six months of age and beget children when they are two or three years old and generally they do not live beyond six or seven years: and those who live eight years are considered ancient.  These Pigmies are extremely skillful and great masters in working with silk and cotton in everything that there is in the world.  And they frequently battle against the birds in their country and are often taken and eaten by them.  These small people work neither land nor vineyards, but have large people of our stature dwelling among them who cultivate the land.  They despise them just as we would despise the Pigmies if they lived among us. . . . '  The scorn of the Pigmies for the 'large people of our stature' is the key to the confusion that this book caused Menocchio to experience."