Montaillou - The pledged Land of Error

Introduction

Historians often use case-studies of specific locales to draw conclusions about a broader district or populace. Thus, in Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's work, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, the author conducts an in-depth written check of the village of Montaillou. He subsequently values this study to extrapolate information on medieval life in the Pays d'Aillon region. Ladurie employs data garnered throughout the Inquisition's investigation into Montaillou's Cathar convictions to talk about the areas, economy, architecture and social relationships.

 

Historical Sources

Ladurie's major source is the Inquisition Register in writing by Jacques Fournier. Fournier was Bishop of Pamiers from 1318 to 1325. As such, he discovered allegations of heresy in Montaillou. During this investigation, Fournier noted interviews and other applicable information in the Register. The bishop scripted this article himself without aide from a scribe or secretary. Thus, Ladurie's principal source is wholly reliant on the facts of one man. (LeRoy, pp. 19-25)

Analysis

In Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error Le Roy Ladurie proceeds profoundly into the inhabits of the villagers of Montaillou, relying mainly on their own testimony as noted by the Inquisition under the main heading of Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers and, subsequent, Pope Benedict XII. The mindfully kept notes of the Inquisition supply an amazing finance of data about a little, poor village in the early fourteenth century. The methods of the Inquisition needed such comprehensive testimony, from witnesses as well as from the suspect, and went into so numerous localities of the people's everyday inhabits that when an Inquisitor for example Fournier was concerned with meticulous record-keeping the result could be an unrivaled source of data about else obscure village life. But Le Roy Ladurie's procedures, admirable in numerous respects, lift several grave questions.

This is decisively learned reading. Concerning itself chiefly with a cluster of minute villages in the farthest south of France, the book takes minutia of villagers' confessions to the Inquisition to display what life was like for them. Idiscovered it to be very well-written, lucid, and not difficult to digest.

Ladurie (Amazon misspells his title constantly as "Ladruie" -- either that or the publication cover misspells it) extrapolates some amazing things from these confessions. Ideas of time and space, how villagers considered of the dwelling and the family, notions of sexuality and communal status.. there's a alallotmentment here, extensively footnooted and extensively supported. As someone's said, this is decisively not lightweightweight reading.

Ladurie expends rather a bit of time talking about religion, which is ordered contemplating that Inquisition documents are his source material. Idid not detect a bias against either Catholicism or Catharism. Since his aim isn't really belief, although, but an allover view of life in a isolated, isolated 14th-century French/Spanish village, I wouldn't address this expressly a asset for the study of Catharism. It is, although, an very good asset for comprehending people in a isolated, isolated 14th-century French/Spanish village.

Le Roy Ladurie incorporates the testimony of the villagers into his narrative either with direct quotations from the transcripts or ...