Montaillou (book)

Montaillou examines the lives and beliefs of the population of Montaillou, a small village in the Pyrenees with only around 250 inhabitants, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is largely based on the Fournier Register, a set of records from the Inquisition which investigated and attempted to suppress the spread of Catharism in the Ariège region from 1318 to 1325, during the reigns of Philip V "the Tall" and Charles IV "the Fair". The work is in two parts. The first explores the physical world of the inhabitants of Montaillou, telling the stories of Pierre and Bernard Clergue, two of the most powerful men in Montaillou, and the shepherd Pierre Maury. The second explores the beliefs of the residents of Montaillou: what Annales historians called their mentalité. ==Historiography==

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie is most associated with the Annales School in French historiography, and in the English-speaking world he is one of the best-known Annales historians. Montaillou has been described as a work of history from below and as a landmark in this genre. In its use of records of interrogations as its primary source, it has also been seen as having links with oral history. It was also influenced by the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the pioneer of structural anthropology. The book is unusual for its use of a single source, the inquisition register, for so much of the work. It has been considered a precursor to microhistory. ==Reception==

Montaillou was much more successful than either Ladurie or his publishers had anticipated, selling more than 250,000 copies and being translated into multiple languages. It received praise from professional historians and the general public alike. When the book was published, it was widely described as a masterpiece of social history. Reviewers considered that Montaillou was "by far one of the finest historical works of the decade", and one of the most remarkable works of French history ever. However, despite its influence, Ladurie's history has been criticised by many reviewers. Ladurie's use of the Fournier Register has been challenged as being insufficiently critical. Reviewer Cynthia Hay has written about the challenges of using oral evidence, especially oral evidence given many years after the event in question, as a source, despite Ladurie's rejection of the idea that the evidence might not be reliable. Pieter Lagrou argues that "what [the Fournier Register] revealed was trauma and survival strategies when facing persecution, not the of the peasant mentality." David Herlihy has also criticised the translations of the Register given in Montaillou, which he said were often paraphrased, sometimes misleadingly, rather than direct translations. Susan Stuard criticises Ladurie's treatment of women in Montaillou, accusing him of uncritically accepting medieval conceptions of gender. ==References==