Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error

This is one of THE most important books for anyone interested in the varieties of the human mind. Thanks to the compulsive thoroughness of an early 14th century inquisitor (a bishop who became pope), lengthy quotes from the people that he was interrogating came to be preserved in the Vatican library. The accused are heretics, stubborn country folk supporting "the resistance", as it were, that handful of Cathar holy men hiding in the woods following the Church's campaign savage against the flourishing southern French civilization around the town of Albi in the first quarter of the 13th century. In spite of the slashing and burning that had laid waste to the land of the Cathars in the previous century, the folks of Montaillou were stubborn in holding to their beliefs, and here it gets interesting.What on earth were these people like, what issues could possibly matter enough to medieval farmers for them to put their lives on the line over subtle theological distinctions, like whether the Trinity was indivisible? LeRoy Ladurie thankfully quotes extensively from the sources, and a picture emerges of a Christian religion influenced by contact with the Eastern Gnostics, leaning towards a belief in reincarnation and the virtues of vegetarian asceticism. The Catholic Church was seen as a nasty political beast at odds with a true faith, and the villagers turn out to have been surprisingly sophisticated, reading books, for instance, at a time when only hand-copied manuscripts existed. It is apparent that many popular religious movements preceded the protestant schism.In their literal testimony we glimpse the villagers' daily lives, their sense of time and reality, their relations with neighbors (like the Moors of northern Spain), as well as a social organization that was more communal (and less class-divided) than our unconsciously marxist-influenced history books would have it. The lady of the manor is seen regularly spending time gossiping in the kitchens of the farmers, the shepherds tend each others' flocks on cash contract, and when it's safe, religion is vigorously debated by the fire. It's not a dark oppressed feudal world. The romantic entanglements of the village priest alone are enough to liven the place up. If we had such documents for other times and places, in which people's thinking was as thoroughly documented, we might better appreciate our origins. This book is a gold mine.

Although I wish there was more direct quotes from the source, it’s a fascinating read

Montaillou is based on the meticulous, early 14th-century records of inquisitor-bishop Jacques Fournier (later Pope Benedict XII, r. 1334-42) who successfully hunted to the ground the Albigensian heresy in its final outpost, the remote area around a small village in the southwest mountain region of what today is France. Fournier's industriousness provided the raw material for Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's fine portrait of everyday peasant life in the Middle Ages--or at least the sort of peasant life lived in a region of the Pyrenees dominated by sheep herding.Le Roy Ladurie is most interested in sexuality, life course, social relationships, clan rivalries, and religious practice. (To my mind, the last is the most convincing because it was Fournier's chief concern as well.) The work is not a narrative, though it does have a protagonist of sorts, a parish priest who is both a shameless womanizer and a not-so-secret Cathar.Montaillou has been called a "microhistory." It might be better described as retrospective anthropology. Le Roy Ladurie often recycles the same testimony from the Fournier Register in different topical chapters to illustrate different points. Those who understand what the author is about will probably enjoy this unusual bottom-up view of the 14th century; those who don't may find the book dull, academic, and overly repetitive.

This gem of a book is a peek back in time at daily life in southern France between 1290 and about 1325 C.E. The author's source material is the detailed record of the Inquisition in Carcassone, France conducted by Bishop Jacques Fournier. Fournier's Inquisition successfully squashed the Cathar heresy once and for all at its center in the small village of Montaillou. Fournier went on to become Pope Benedict XII, which explains why the transcripts were retained for all those years in the Vatican and were thus available to the author.In text generously sprinkled with direct quotes from the Inquisition transcripts, Le Roy Ladurie paints a picture of village life much more primitive than our own lives in every tangible aspect, yet the personalities are so contemporary that we might recognize the characters as our own neighbors (except that most of them were illiterate.) Human nature hasn't changed much in all these years.Women often occupied themselves by picking lice off their friends and lovers while discussing philosophy and religion. A "heretic" wife was desirable so that a good "heretic" husband could freely discuss religion with her without fear that she would betray him to the Inquisition. This is the first time I have heard the word "heretic" used as a compliment!Tragically, five of the people we meet in these pages were burned at the stake and many others died in prison, however this fascinating account of their daily lives will not soon be forgotten.

Ladurie’s book is reminiscent of Carlo Ginzburg’s seminal The Cheese and the Worms, in how the anthropological approach of the Annales School crossed paths with the marginalia of history—thanks to well-preserved primary sources left behind for historians to discover, analyze and present to a modern audience. Ginzburg’s sixteenth-century microhistory focused on an individual, however, and Ladurie’s study is broader, going beyond “micro” while offering more anthropology that historians otherwise have overlooked. Also, while Ginzburg’s Menocchio is eccentric, Ladurie’s Clergues and Maurys are perfect in terms of representing the mentalité of Montaillou: The reader misses that eccentricity of Menocchio, but the more-profound study is Ladurie’s examination of Montaillou from the bottom up. As a result, Ginzburg’s study may have broader appeal, while Ladurie’s book is solely of interest to the reader specifically attracted to fourteenth-century France.

In my husband's words (the book was for him), interesting if you know the background.

Good

This is a wonderful summary of life in a medieval village (from about 1215 to 1225 AD), as told by the villagers themselves, and recorded by the scribes of the Inquisition. Love, jealousy, avarice, humility, kindness, and all other forms of human feelings are given voice, and are as poignant today as they were then. I found this book to be instructive for two reasons. One, social history is rare, and this is an insightful look into the affairs of ordinary people and how they lived. These folk were not the wealthy few, but the unwashed hoi polloi, who scrabbled a hard living from the earth and what little livestock they could afford. Two, history from that era has to be taken from written records, and those records were written by literate folk. The problem is that most folk were illiterate (even the wealthy), so to be able read what illiterate folk had to say about themselves and their compatriots is fascinating. These records from the French Inquisition are probably the only positive things to have come out of that era.

très bien