The Noguerol Lens

Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance is an interesting approach to microhistory because it represents a change from the books we have read previously in this course. The first four books, Montaillou, Cheese and the Worms, Return of Martin Guerre, and Midwife’s Tale, all had peasants or commoners as their main subjects. Unlike these figures, Francisco Noguerol de Ulloa is a “lesser noble,” enjoying a certain level of wealth and privilege despite facing some hardships along the way. His position and connections were such that he had the audacity to write to Charles V advising him on his policies in Peru. Perhaps because of his status, or just because of his unchecked ambition and selfishness, I found him to be less relatable and admirable than the protagonists in our other histories. Even Arnaud du Tilh, the con artist who passed himself off as Martin Guerre, had some redeeming qualities that left us wondering if he might have had altruistic or laudable motives for his actions. Noguerol, on the other hand, showed few likable qualities. He abandoned Beatriz – a wife for whom he admittedly had no love – but as Chris Lemos pointed out in his blog post, this abandonment left her alone and with no options for having a family of her own. Beatriz was left virtually imprisoned in loneliness by her unfortunate marriage and her own piety. With no regard for the impact on Beatriz, Noguerol sailed for Peru in search of fortune and adventure. He found both, but along the way he vacillated between support of the crown and the rebellious factions, depending on which side seemed better poised to advance his ambitions; he treated the native population as chattel, imploring the king to “give Indians” (as slaves) to the conquistadors in reward for their services; he was granted an encomienda, and extracted exorbitant tribute from the native inhabitants. None of this was unusual, of course. Noguerol was behaving in exactly the same manner as his peers, and it’s important to avoid the “presentist” fallacy of imposing modern values on historical figures, but that does not make his actions any more palatable to the 21^st century reader.

This harsh analysis of Noguerol leads me to relate Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance to last week’s discussion about “historians who love too much.” Like Jill Lapore, writing about the unlikable Noah Webster, Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook take on Francisco Noguerol’s story as a lens on the human side of 16^th century imperialism. You don’t have to love Noguerol to see the value of his life as a means of understanding his times. This is the root of microhistory – gaining a broader perspective by looking through a smaller lens.

Sex, Corn, and six friends named Pierre

Critique of Ladurie’s Montaillou

Montaillou is a wonderfully detailed history, taking the reader inside the often dramatic lives of the residents of this tiny 14^th century village in the Pyrenees. In many ways it reads like a novel, albeit a novel in which the author was weirdly restricted to using about a half-dozen names, so that almost all the characters are named Pierre, Guillaume, Bernard, Jean, Raymond, or Arnaud, or the feminine versions of these names. Still, the stories are compelling (once you figure out who the author is talking about), and the details provided by this micro view of history would not be possible at a broader level.

Having mentioned the microanalysis Ladurie applied to this study, it is important to acknowledge that he did not allow himself to be entirely constrained by the microhistorical approach. At several points in the book the author ventures beyond the Montaillou microcosm to explore the external forces at play, as when discussing the idea that the “communal spirit, far from being a survival from pre-history, must have developed in upper Ariège between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries…” (pg. 106), and when offering a comparison of the Occitan and Mediterranean notions of fate (pgs. 132 & 288). Much as a more conventional history might include minute details to clarify some aspect of a broader story, a microhistory can “zoom out” to provide large-scale context for particular actions or events.

Montaillou illustrates some of the benefits of the microhistory approach, but it is not without its shortcomings. Like all authors, Ladurie is a man of his times, and when he was writing in the 1960s and 70s he was necessarily shaped by his environment. Conclusions he reached then might not be reached by someone writing this story in the 21^st century, and it is likely that an historian writing today might key into different topics for deeper exploration. For example, Ladurie writes about Arnaud de Verniolles, a boy between 10 and 12 years old, who was sexually abused at a boarding school (pg. 145). “[T]he harm was done,” Ladurie writes. “A latent tendency was awakened, and Arnaud de Verniolles was doomed to become a homosexual.” Not only would a modern author be lambasted for concluding that sexual abuse would “doom” a child to become a homosexual, but this story might well serve as a segue to zoom out, as described above, for a discussion about how common such an occurrence would be in 14^th century Europe.

Another concern with Montaillou has to do with translation. The primary sources Ladurie consulted for the book were originally spoken in Occitan, recorded in Latin, developed into a history in French, and then (in the version we read) translated again into English. Readers must keep this in mind, and recognize that this chain of translations can produce errors. For example, Montaillou includes dozens of references corn, cornfields, reaping corn, etc., but corn as we know it (maize, or maïs in French) is indigenous to the Americas and was not introduced to Europe until the Columbian Exchange of the 16^th century, so could not have existed in Montaillou in 1308. It is likely that the crop in question was actually wheat or some other grain, which, along with corn, can be generically translated as blé in French. This is obviously a minor and somewhat nitpicky point in terms of the larger story of Montaillou, but it highlights the fact that such errors occur, and if it could happen with corn, what else may have been translated incorrectly?

Overall, Montaillou is an excellent introduction to the concept of microhistory. It is well written, intimate, and provides a view of life in medieval Europe that would not be possible in a conventional historical survey. Most of all, it made me look forward to the other microhistories we will read in this course.