Status
Available
Collection
Publication
New York : Vintage Books, [1979]
Description
In the early 1300's the village of Montaillou-and the surrounding mountainous region of Southern France-was full of heretics. When Jacquest Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers, launched an elaborate Inquisition to stamp them out, the peasants and shepherds he interrogated revealed, along with their position on official Catholicism, many details of their everyday life. Basing his absorbing study on these vivid, carefully recorded statements of peasants who lived more than 600 years ago-Pierre Clergue, the powerful village priest and shameless womanizer is even heard explaining his techniques of seduction-eminent historian Le Roy Ladurie reconstructs the economy and social structure of the community and probes the most intimate aspects of medieval life: love and marriage, gestures and emotions, conversations and gossip, clans and factions, crime and violence, concepts of time and space, attitudes to the past, animals, magic and folklore, death and beliefs about the other world.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member baswood
This book was written from an examination of the inquisition register compiled by Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers, a zealous churchman who went on to become a pope at Avignon under the name of Benedict XII. Much of the material was gleaned from the villagers themselves. They were all rounded up
Catharism was a Christian heresy and was ruthlessly stamped out by the catholic church. The last Cathar stronghold at Montsegur fell to the catholics in 1244 and so the small village of Motaillou was an isolated pocket of Catharism that briefly flowered 50 years after Monsegur was destroyed. This book is not therefore a history of Catharism nor of the village of Montaillou but is akin to an anthropological study at a particular moment in time.
There is some fascinating detail here. The people of this Pyrenean mountain village led a Kafkaesque existence. With over half the houses sheltering the heretics and the other half being more or less orthodox catholics. The local vicar seems to have been a sort of double agent. All were in fear of being denounced at the inquisition. It is the goings on in the village that are brought vividly to life: the dominant clans, social relationships, the mental outlook, concepts of time and space, sexual liaisons, childhood and death and the position of women.
There are also some brilliant chapters on the shepherds who seemed to lead a sort of nomadic existence in the mountains, coming down to the villages and providing an escort service for the heretics. Pierre Maury was one of these freewheeling shepherds and is described as:
"detached from the goods of this world careless of the almost inevitable certainty of being arrested at some time by the inquisition, leading a life that was both passionate and passionately interesting, Pierre Maury was a happy shepherd."
Life for the women in the village was not so happy as this proverb demonstrates:
Qui bat sa femme avec un coussin
Croit lui faire mal et ne lui fait rien
Roughly translated says "the man who beats his wife with a cushion thinks he is hurting her but isn't doing anything"
The book is not a difficult read and the translation by Barbara Bray seems adequate, however there is quite a bit of repetition of incidents and its not always clear who is who, this is not helped by some of the characters having the same or very similar names. As a snapshot of life in a 14th century mountain village at a particular moment in time it is thoroughly absorbing.
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in 1308 and examined by Fournier some ended up being burnt at the stake.Catharism was a Christian heresy and was ruthlessly stamped out by the catholic church. The last Cathar stronghold at Montsegur fell to the catholics in 1244 and so the small village of Motaillou was an isolated pocket of Catharism that briefly flowered 50 years after Monsegur was destroyed. This book is not therefore a history of Catharism nor of the village of Montaillou but is akin to an anthropological study at a particular moment in time.
There is some fascinating detail here. The people of this Pyrenean mountain village led a Kafkaesque existence. With over half the houses sheltering the heretics and the other half being more or less orthodox catholics. The local vicar seems to have been a sort of double agent. All were in fear of being denounced at the inquisition. It is the goings on in the village that are brought vividly to life: the dominant clans, social relationships, the mental outlook, concepts of time and space, sexual liaisons, childhood and death and the position of women.
There are also some brilliant chapters on the shepherds who seemed to lead a sort of nomadic existence in the mountains, coming down to the villages and providing an escort service for the heretics. Pierre Maury was one of these freewheeling shepherds and is described as:
"detached from the goods of this world careless of the almost inevitable certainty of being arrested at some time by the inquisition, leading a life that was both passionate and passionately interesting, Pierre Maury was a happy shepherd."
Life for the women in the village was not so happy as this proverb demonstrates:
Qui bat sa femme avec un coussin
Croit lui faire mal et ne lui fait rien
Roughly translated says "the man who beats his wife with a cushion thinks he is hurting her but isn't doing anything"
The book is not a difficult read and the translation by Barbara Bray seems adequate, however there is quite a bit of repetition of incidents and its not always clear who is who, this is not helped by some of the characters having the same or very similar names. As a snapshot of life in a 14th century mountain village at a particular moment in time it is thoroughly absorbing.
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LibraryThing member isabelx
I have read this book before, a long time ago, but picked this copy up at a BookCrossing meeting in Birmingham.
The Pyrenean village of Montaillou and the surrounding area were hot-beds of Catharism at the turn of the 14th century. At the time Montaillou was in the Comté de Foix, which was still
It's lucky that there is a list of members of Montaillou's main families at the back of the book, since so many of them are called Guillaume, Raymond, Guillemette and Raymonde that it is hard to remember which is which. There are also lots of men called Arnaud, Bernard, Jean, Pierre and Pons, and many women called Alazais, Esclarmonde, Mengarde, Rixende and Sybille.
The Pyrenean village of Montaillou and the surrounding area were hot-beds of Catharism at the turn of the 14th century. At the time Montaillou was in the Comté de Foix, which was still
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independent of France, but now the village is in the French department of Ariège. The local bishop ensured that the inquisition's questioning of suspected heretics and witnesses was documented in detail, and since he preferred to arrive at the truth through detailed interrogations rather than torture, the inquisition's records contain a wealth of information about the everyday lives of the peasants from this mountainous region, as well as about their heretical beliefs.It's lucky that there is a list of members of Montaillou's main families at the back of the book, since so many of them are called Guillaume, Raymond, Guillemette and Raymonde that it is hard to remember which is which. There are also lots of men called Arnaud, Bernard, Jean, Pierre and Pons, and many women called Alazais, Esclarmonde, Mengarde, Rixende and Sybille.
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LibraryThing member NickBrooke
"Montaillou" is an exploration of life in a French mediaeval village in the Languedoc, made possible through the copious interview transcripts kept by the Inquisition, which were preserved by purest chance (the chief inquisitor went on to become an Avignon Pope, so this product of his early career
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was moved to the Papal Library). By quizzing the inhabitants about their daily lives and opinions, the inquisitors sought to discover how heretical notions were propagated in this backward region. Utterly fascinating. Show Less
LibraryThing member hroethgar
Balanced, careful perspective of the Cathar paeriod in what would become the south of France; it's inspired me with a desire to spend time in the area.
LibraryThing member AlCracka
Apparently some Inquisitor back in the 14th century performed exceptionally detailed interrogations on an entire town; the author used those records to piece together a new look at exactly what life was like in that town. So it's not so much about the Inquisition as it is about every day life.
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Interesting, huh? GR reviews indicate it's not a thrilling read, but it's a pretty cool idea. Show Less
LibraryThing member PollyMoore3
I had read this a very long time ago, and was delighted to find a secondhand copy. I enjoyed it much more on a second reading. Ladurie writes a scholarly social history based on the oral evidence given long ago to Bishop Fournier's Inquisition into the persistence of Catharism in his diocese. But
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he leaves us with the impression that we have been reading a historical novel about the lady Beatrice de Planissoles, her lover the powerful and duplicitous village priest Pierre Clergue, the carefree shepherd Pierre Maury, and the mysterious green and blue clad "parfaits" or goodmen, who move secretly from house to house spreading their austere doctrines. Show Less
LibraryThing member booktsunami
One thing drives me crazy with LibraryThing and that is the way one loses everything is you don't consciously save what you've written. So I've just lost about half an hour's work writing a review and have to do it again. Why can't they have an auto-save?
I actually read this book about 35 years
One thing that rather impressed me was that the Cathars....especially their Perfects...were held in especially high esteem for the blameless lives they led ....in contrast to the catholic priests who generally seemed a rather venal, immoral, and grasping lot. The village of Montaillou seemed to be the tail end of the genocide of the Cathars of southern France. A genocidal crusade instigated by Pope Innocent which morphed into a political takeover by the French King. Interesting how it was possible to inspire the "faithful" to the up arms when they were rewarded with the lands and goods of the heretics.
There seems to be little in this crusade that reflects the teaching of Christ: to love one another, if one sticks you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Nothing there about burning whole families at the stake or slaughtering the entire inhabitants of a city on the grounds that the lord will recognise his own.
Some things that I remember were the mother reassuring her little daughter who asked "how will we bear the pain (of being burned alive......who thought up this horrific practice?) and the mother replied that Jesus would take the pain upon himself. Nice idea ...but a bit late when the faggots have been lit to find that it wasn't true.
One other thing struck me from the book and that was the fiercely independent Shepherd who spent half the year roaming the mountain tops with just his sheep for company; his view was that all religion was rubbish.....and he'd come to this view without the help of instructors or books. (I think he was illiterate).
The villagers had a pastiche of beliefs...some including the magical powers of fingernails and hair that had grown after a person died. The local (Catholic) priest seemed to have spent with most of the women in the village...but, in a way, was as much a victim himself of the environment. They were being judged by educated and literate inquisitors ...according to the beliefs of the church at that time...a rather unfair skewing of the odds against them I would think. And the inquisitors used every trick in the book......using testimony of one person to incriminate another person. And the simple villagers didn't even know enough to know what were the correct catholic beliefs to profess...they had a pastiche of beliefs about the good god and satan. (I suspect that Jesus's beliefs may not have been all that different ...and certainly there were all sorts of Christianity professed in the period up until around 400 AD when the books of the Christian bible were given recognition and the earlier Council of Nicea had determined the creed). The Creed might easily have gone the way of the dualists and Catharism become the "Correct" form of Christianity.
I have no hesitation in giving this book 5 stars (though I recall it was fairly hard reading at the time...maybe because of the fact that it was a translation). It made a big enough impact on me that I can write this review some 35 years later.
I actually read this book about 35 years
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ago and wanted to refer to it when I was writing another review of "A short history of the Cathars". However, when i did the search, I realised it was not listed in my LibraryThing collection so I must have donated it to charity some time ago. Anyway, the book made enough of an impression on me 35 years ago that I am writing this review from that long ago memory. It is a history of a short period in the life of this little mountain village, in the Pyrenees, that was torn apart by the Catholic inquisition ...determined to wipe out the vestiges of Albigensinism. The poor illiterate inhabitants of the village never seemed quite sure what they believed and had rather mixed up beliefs from both the Cathars and Catholics. And Le Roy Laurie has used the records of the inquisition to prise out the details of their sexual lives as much as their religious beliefs.One thing that rather impressed me was that the Cathars....especially their Perfects...were held in especially high esteem for the blameless lives they led ....in contrast to the catholic priests who generally seemed a rather venal, immoral, and grasping lot. The village of Montaillou seemed to be the tail end of the genocide of the Cathars of southern France. A genocidal crusade instigated by Pope Innocent which morphed into a political takeover by the French King. Interesting how it was possible to inspire the "faithful" to the up arms when they were rewarded with the lands and goods of the heretics.
There seems to be little in this crusade that reflects the teaching of Christ: to love one another, if one sticks you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Nothing there about burning whole families at the stake or slaughtering the entire inhabitants of a city on the grounds that the lord will recognise his own.
Some things that I remember were the mother reassuring her little daughter who asked "how will we bear the pain (of being burned alive......who thought up this horrific practice?) and the mother replied that Jesus would take the pain upon himself. Nice idea ...but a bit late when the faggots have been lit to find that it wasn't true.
One other thing struck me from the book and that was the fiercely independent Shepherd who spent half the year roaming the mountain tops with just his sheep for company; his view was that all religion was rubbish.....and he'd come to this view without the help of instructors or books. (I think he was illiterate).
The villagers had a pastiche of beliefs...some including the magical powers of fingernails and hair that had grown after a person died. The local (Catholic) priest seemed to have spent with most of the women in the village...but, in a way, was as much a victim himself of the environment. They were being judged by educated and literate inquisitors ...according to the beliefs of the church at that time...a rather unfair skewing of the odds against them I would think. And the inquisitors used every trick in the book......using testimony of one person to incriminate another person. And the simple villagers didn't even know enough to know what were the correct catholic beliefs to profess...they had a pastiche of beliefs about the good god and satan. (I suspect that Jesus's beliefs may not have been all that different ...and certainly there were all sorts of Christianity professed in the period up until around 400 AD when the books of the Christian bible were given recognition and the earlier Council of Nicea had determined the creed). The Creed might easily have gone the way of the dualists and Catharism become the "Correct" form of Christianity.
I have no hesitation in giving this book 5 stars (though I recall it was fairly hard reading at the time...maybe because of the fact that it was a translation). It made a big enough impact on me that I can write this review some 35 years later.
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Subjects
Language
Original language
French