Anabaptism is a Christian movement, deemed heretical by the Catholic Church, best known for believing that baptism should not be performed until an individual can decide to participate in the sacrament. This belief is in conflict with the popular Christian practice of baptizing babies at a young age. The Anabaptist movement can be traced back to the Protestant Reformation in the early- to mid-16th century; various subgroups across Central Europe pushed for more radical religious reform than even Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli were enforcing. By 1527, Swiss Anabaptists put their beliefs into writing, composing the Schleitheim Confession, which remains the most comprehensive account of Anabaptist teachings across denominations.

As the movement gained traction, the Roman Catholic Church began persecuting Anabaptism as heresy, and this is the context in which Anabaptists appear within The Cheese and the Worms. Ginzburg speculates that Menocchio may have had contact with Anabaptist painters who had gone into hiding, but cannot confirm this theory with complete certainty.

In the Cheese and the Worms, the term “circularity” is used to refer to the feedback loop that exists between upper and lower-class cultures within a society, though it can be used to mean many different things in other contexts.