Will I love Montaillou?

This is one of my favourite history books.

It is a detailed social history of a single village in the Pyrenees, set between the years 1294 and 1324. It describes the lives of the shepherd community during the suppression of the Cathars, going into great detail about the parishioners' lives. 

By the time I had finished the book, I regretted having to say goodbye to the families whose lives I had gazed into. The book provides insights into their daily lives: love, marriage, religious practices, social relationships, and morality.

I found it a fascinating and informative read.

It is virtually impossible to write or even investigate medieval southern France, especially the famous Cathar Period without delving into this classic work.

Still available in different translations, Le Roy Ladurie takes us into the life of a 14th-century French mountain village and its people in a way no one else has ever attempted. Based upon meticulous church records of contemporary individual interviews and interrogations with alleged heretics in one small village by Church Inquisitors, the author gives us a look into the lives of common people of that time that has never been equaled.

I found myself returning to… show more.

Montaillou, which was published while I was in graduate school, provided a new, highly personalized way to study medieval social history: not with quantitative data but through a nuanced examination of court records that offer a mirror into the everyday lives of obscure villagers. When I first read the “Miracles of Saint Louis” I realized this source for late thirteenth century Paris was nearly as rich as Le Roy Ladurie’s inquisitorial record concerning Montaillou. Had Montaillou not been written, I might not have seen the potential in the “Miracles of Saint Louis,” and thus I might not have written Surviving… show more.

This unique book is based on the written records from the early 1300s – more than 700 years ago – of the Cathar heretics living in the village of Montaillou in southern France. Determined to stamp out hereticism, the Inquisition in the person of the Bishop of Pamiers spent considerable time in Montaillou, writing down a huge amount of incidental information about the way people really lived at the time in such places, what their worldviews entailed, how they behaved and why. Le Roy Ladurie peppers his analysis of this community with masses of direct quotes from its residents. I… show more.