Reddit mentions of The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

I think that's part of it, but Great Man theory isn't the only historical framework that puts an emphasis on characters, even singular important characters. One example that comes to mind is Shiela Fitzpatrick's Commissariat of Enlightenment (https://www.amazon.com/Commissariat-Enlightenment-Organization-Lunacharsky-Post-Soviet/dp/0521524385). It is very much based in social history, but also focuses on the importance of Anatole Lunacharsky throughout. It is not only his story, but it is a story to which he is central and someone who is interested in stories could certainly find an interest in that book.

Another example is microhistory - something that really hasn't proven to be very popular at all outside of academia. This is a kind of history that focuses intensely on something very small, sometimes a single person. Gizberg's The Cheese and the Worms is the prototypical example of the genre in this case (https://www.amazon.com/Cheese-Worms-Cosmos-Sixteenth-Century-Miller/dp/0801843871).

There is something kind of easy about it though. Our popular media is filled with stories of archetypal heroes and villains and the Great Man theory does, perhaps, lend itself to writing stories about characters that can slide into that particular kind of narrative.

That being said, Great Man history isn't the only thing that sells well. Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History has been very popular and is about as far from a narrative about a single person as you can get (especially if you don't count salt as a person!!)

There was more than one Inquisition. There was a Roman Inquisition and a Spanish Inquisition, and so forth. The Cheese and the Worms is a study of a trial of a heretical miller by the Roman Inquisition using trial records. You will be "surprised" at how even-handed the proceedings were. Far more professional than other trials of the 1500s.

The Spanish Inquisition was less concerned with justice. It was used as an instrument of the Spanish rulers for expansion and religious persecution. Good example why Christians should never mix their faith with political authority.

So you need to ask "which one?"

The Cheese and the Worms is awesome. Glad you mentioned it, it's an even-better example of what I was trying to explain.

Not sure if it counts as a "firsthand account," but the inquisition records of Domenico Scandella (AKA Menocchio), a heresiarch in 16th C northern Italy, are fascinating.

The guy was fearless in articulating his heretical interpretations of Christian theology to the inquisitors who were interrogating him. You can read about this in The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg.

You seem to be interested in "microhistory". Believe it or not, since the 1970's, some academics have been asking big questions out of small places, and this has progressed into "New Historicism" and the history of ideologies.

For microhistory, see:

• Giovanni Levi: L’eredita immateriale. Carriere di un esorcista nel Piemonte del seicento.
  
  
• Carlo Ginzburg: The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller
  
  For New Historicism:
  
  
• [Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare] (http://www.amazon.com/Renaissance-Self-Fashioning-Shakespeare-Stephen-Greenblatt/dp/0226306593/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342813933&sr=1-6&keywords=stephen+greenblatt) I really love this one and have used it for graduate school papers in the past. The introduction is particularly enlightening.
  
  EDIT: hhawks12, great post! I like your thinking!

The Cheese and the Worms. Story about Domenico Scandella, an Italian man from the sixteenth century who came to the belief that the creation of the universe was like 'worms in cheese'. He spoke of these beliefs and the Inquisition conducted a heresy trial. Refusing to renounce, the Pope ultimately ordered his execution and he was burnt at the stake. The book examines sixteenth century religious order through translations of the trial proceedings, a microhistory of a singular event to extrapolate a macrocosm of religious values at that time.

Also: Cheese and Worms. The Universe. Too fucking weird.

I loved People's History, Salt, The Cheese and the Worms, the Edmond Morris series on TR, Common Women, and Gender and Jim Crow.

when i was doing it in class, there was a lot of emphasis on vico

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vico/

and Carlo Ginzburg

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cheese-Worms-Cosmos-Sixteenth-Century/dp/0801843871?tag=duckduckgo-d-20

I found them both to be interesting reads.

Sorry it took so long to reply, it wasn't for lack of trying just lack of time.

Three books that really stuck out to me were The Cheese and The Worms, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath and Bread of Dreams. What facinated me about the picture they presented was how little influence The Christian Church had in rural Europe (which was most of Europe). Most people in Europe not only knew little to nothing about Christianity, but many rural priests were just as confused. As a result, a very interesting cosmology existed in a time where I assumed most people were Catholic.

In summary: Most people in medieval Europe were not Christian.

One of my all-time favorite stories is about the trial of a guy named Menocchio, a laborer in Italy during the 16th century.

the TL;DR version is: Menocchio had some, shall we say, unorthodox views about the nature of man and god. After all, he had read 12 books. According to him, "I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."

The Catholic Church at the time wasn't thrilled about this, and so they brought him up on charges of heresy. But during the trial, they realized that his view of the world was quite a bit more substantial (and a bit more zany) than the prosecutors realized, and so sent him away with a warning not to say anything more about his beliefs. Well, guess what, Mennochio didn't listen and actually started spreading the good news about this new understanding of the world of cheese and worms. Which landed him in a second and a third heresy trial.

At the second, he confessed that he might have been influenced by the devil to say such things, and was let off the hook again. But at the third, which was to be his last, Mennochio admitted that he had, big surprise, actually made it all up. That the universe was not, in fact, cheese.

He was burned at the stake for refusing to admit that blasphemy was actually a sin, for, in the words of the historian Carlo Ginzburg, who wrote a really really great book about the episode, he had not realised that he had "a tendency to reduce religion to morality."

You can get the book here for less than a buck: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cheese-Worms-Cosmos-Sixteenth-Century/dp/0801843871