His name was Domenico Scandella, but he was called Menocchio. He was born in 1532 (at his first trial he claimed he was fifty-two years old) in Montereale, a small hill town of the Friuli twenty-five kilometers north of Pordenone at the foot of the mountains, Here he had always lived, except for two years when he was banished following a brawl (1564-65). These years he spent at the neighboring village of Arba and in an unspecified place in the Carnia. He was married and had eleven children, four of whom had died. He declared to the canon Giambattista Maro, vicar general to the inquisitor of Aquileia and Concordia, that he earned his living as a "miller,carpenter,sawyer,mason,and otherthings." But mostly he worked as a miller; he also wore the traditional miller's costume, a jacket, cloak, and a cap of white wool. Thus dressed in white he presented himself at his trial in 1584.