Word: montaillou
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Dates: during 1978-1978
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...MONTAILLOU: THE PROMISED LAND OF ERROR...
...this is no novel. The village is real, a town called Montaillou, clinging to a mountainside in the Pyrenees in what is now southern France. The time is the beginning of the 14th century. The priest is Pierre Clergue, a clergyman who might have made Boccaccio blush. In French Historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's brillant reconstruction, the reader learns how the villagers thought, ate, hated and loved-and even what they said to one another in public and in private. Such rare detail has made this lively volume a surprise bestseller in Europe...
That we know any of Montaillou's indiscretions is the work of a tireless Inquisitor: Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers. A learned, tough-minded Cistercian monk, Bishop Fournier took charge of the local Inquisition. Montaillou's heretics -spiritual heirs of the Albigensians who had been so bloodily crushed the century before-became his target. In the process he left a thick record of testimony from the accused and witnesses...
...Montaillou had once seemed an ordinary mountain town, each family clustered around a house that gave it not only shelter but identity. There was little class distinction and considerable sharing of resources. The villagers were united in fierce anticlericalism, and with reason. The regional ruler, the Count de Foix, had defended his fief from exorbitant church taxes. But when the aristocrat died, the bishops of Pamiers imposed ever more onerous tithes. The new church exactions doubtless influenced many villagers to consider the teachings of the Cathar parfaits (perfect ones, the heresy's elect...