Source Use in Ladurie's Montaillou

Montaillou is a fascinating depiction of the way of life in a fourteenth-century L’languedocien village. I found his use of the Fournier inquisition registers fascinating. As Ladurie explains, the sources are dictations of essentially a conversation between inquisitor and suspected heretics that produced long responses. The fascinating aspect is the unexpected information that Ladurie was able to obtain through what must have been very close reading of the material. It would seem that inquisitorial papers would be rife with information on religious practices and beliefs. The goal of the inquisitor is to understand what the suspected heretic believed, so such questions seem in order. Indeed, Ladurie produces multiple chapters on these issues. In addition, one might expect the relationships that come out in the book (for instance between Bélibaste and Pierre Maury) since the inquisitor would be interested in finding other heretics, so social relations were important to him as well and would likely find their way into his papers.

Ladurie in addition to discussing these topics in depth, reads much further into the sources. He used them to draw out information on birth rates, coupling strategies (legitimate and illegitimate), gender roles, and leisure activities. Mining this wealth of information from his sources is a testament to how close and careful reading of our sources can produce unexpected results. Ladurie draws out the information on the mundane aspects of life that might go overlooked (on simply not present) in much of the other sources available from the Medieval era, especially in a village like Monataillou. It is a welcome deviation from the norm. The recounting of stories and conversations used to pass the evening while around the kitchen fire or the afternoon around elm tree in the village center, and the adventures and business decisions of the shepherds moving from Montaillou to Catalonia and back are the everyday aspects of life that are frequently lost.

There were times when I wonder if Ladurie overextended what the sources were capable of sharing. He states that history was completely unknown in the village (282). I wonder if the inquisitorial papers produced enough context that might provide a large enough sample size that would permit such a statement. In another moment, he argued that women only half-heartedly accepted Catharism (258). The context of the inquisition makes me wonder if the women might have taken advantage of their social position below the males as a strategy to alleviate themselves of an amount of guilt during the interviews. Perhaps, there is not enough evidence in the sources to go that deep, but I find it hard to believe and the women in the village generally were as passive of actors as he frequently makes them out to be (especially in issues of religion).

Nevertheless, I found Ladurie’s use of his source base to be exceptional.