The Cheese and the Worms

> 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 most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the angels, and among that number of angels there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at the same time, and he was named lord with four captains, Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. That Lucifer sought to make himself lord equal to the king, who was the majesty of God, and for this arrogance God ordered him driven out of heaven with all his host and his company; and this God later created Adam and Eve and people in great number to take the places of the angels who had been expelled. And as this multitude did not follow God's commandments, he sent his Son, whom the Jews seized, and he was crucified.

Even though this sounded nuts to people in Menocchio’s time, it’s not completely implausible. The whole thing about order arising from undifferentiated chaos is pretty Greek, as is the idea of life arising spontaneously from decaying matter (Aristotle believed that). God arising from some preexisting substance is kind of radical but I’m sure there were precursors to that too. The rest of it is almost stock standard Christian mythology.