The history of Montaillou

Thanks to a series of unlikely circumstances the very small village of Montaillou in southern France is one of our best guides to how ordinary people lived in Medieval Europe.

Today’s Montaillou viewed from the northeast. The ruin of the chateau still visible on the hill above the village. 

France has the most history of any nation on earth. History being the analysis of written records, having the most history simply means having the most written records. Currently the United States most probably produces the most written records. But France has consistently produced the most writings, from the early Middle Ages right up into the 19th century (China might have been a contender during some of that time, I do not know enough of Chinese history to have a strong opinion on that).

France is so rich in history that other countries shamelessly mine it for their own profit. Like when American producers, using American actors, made an American film called The last duel, about a very real trial by combat taking place in late 14th century France and documented by superior French records and thus preserved for anyone to make a film about.

French history, like most history, is mostly about kings and queens, knights and nobles. But French history is so very rich that even ordinary people turn up in them from time to time. This becomes apparent in later centuries but in extraordinary circumstances this is true even for the Middle Ages. There is especially one historical document that gives unparalleled insights into the lives of common men and women in Medieval Europe.

Tragedy in Occitania

Occitania, a region that encompasses something like the southern third of today's France, had been nominally French since the days of Charlemagne in the 8th century. But the counts of Occitania were independent-minded and powerful, especially the very powerful Count of Toulouse. The kings of France, far north in Paris, were not very happy about this state of affairs. Finally, in the 13th century, they got an excuse to set things right.

The excuse in question was called Catharism. Catharism was a Christian movement first recorded in the 12th century with roots in Gnosticism. Its theological basis is too complicated to describe here (and, to be honest, too complicated for me), the important things here are that:
1. The Cathars were outside of the Catholic fold, automatically making them into enemies of the Catholic Church.
2. The Cathars were especially popular in parts of southern France.

This gave the king of France an excuse to intervene in Occitania. The counts of southern France, especially the Count of Toulouse, were accused of aiding the Cathars. When in 1208, the Count of Toulouse, was not quick enough to denounce the murder of a papal legate the King of France used this to generate a papal bull declaring a crusade against the County of Toulouse and all other parts of Occitania that harbored Cathars.

The Albigensian Crusade (named after the city of Albi which was said to be the Cathars main stronghold) took place between 1209 and 1229. For Occitania to be on the receiving end of a crusade was a bitter irony since Occitania in many ways had led the way in the original crusades to the Holy Land: The very first declaration of a crusade was made by pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, in Occitania, and the First Crusade, which captured Jerusalem, was led by Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse.

The Albigensian crusade was very much a French civil war. During twenty years time armies from northern France streamed south to besiege and plunder the towns and cities of the south. In the end much of Occitania was devastated, thousands of alleged Cathars were burnt at the stake and, most importantly to the royal instigators of the crusade, almost all of the southern French upper gentry were replaced with dependable noblemen from the north of France (the Count of Toulouse actually survived by signing a peace accord with the king, but not without marrying off his daughter to a northern count who would, some years later, inherit the County of Toulouse). The Albigensian crusade was by no means the end of the rebelliousness of southern France, but for the time being it was definitely under the thumb of the kings in Paris.

The story of a story

In 1317 a man named Jacques Fournier became bishop of Pamiers, a minor diocese on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. Pamiers was in the County of Foix which is in the south-central part of Occitania.

This was almost a hundred years after the end of the Albigensian crusade and the south of France was mostly peaceful, although not free from Cathars. This was the time of the Inquisition, an institution that was actually founded specifically to root out Cathars from Occitania. Even after the Albigensian crusade Catharism still had strong, albeit waning, support in southern France. In bishop Fournier the Inquisition had a strong new ally.

By 1317 the Cathars were marginalized and their priest-monks, called bonhommes, literally good men (or maybe goodfellas), primarily roamed the hill country of the northern Pyrenees. Up in the hills people cared less about the opinions of the lords and bishops down in the valleys. And if conditions got too hot it was easy enough to sneak over the border to Catalonia where the French counts and bishops had very limited influence.

Bishop Fournier decided that this had to stop and set up a special court of the Inquisition to root out the Catharism in his diocese. This court was active between 1318 and 1325. Hundreds of people were interrogated by it, most of the interrogations were done by bishop Fournier himself. In the end a few people were burnt at the stake, considerably more people were acquitted and even more people were made to wear a yellow double cross on their clothes, marking them out as former heretics.

Jacques Fournier was not alone in his pursuit of Cathars during this time. But he just might have been the most scrupulous. Present at all interrogations was a scribe who took notes of everything said. These notes were then re-written as real text on real (and expensive) parchment. It seems bishop Fournier might have used this expensive document as a way to advertise his theological conscientiousness. Because bishop Fournier was an ambitious man.

By writing down the statements of his victims, Jacques Fournier had created a unique document. But this document still had slim chances of surviving into modernity. It took something more. Jacques Fournier ended his spell as bishop of Pamiers in 1326 after which he was shuffled sideways to be bishop of neighboring Mirepoix. But only a year later he was made a cardinal and in 1334 he was, to widespread surprise, elevated to the papacy as pope Benedict XII.

At every stage of his career the tome with his interrogations of Cathars in Pamiers followed him. And upon his ascendancy to the papacy the document was finally laid to rest in the Vatican Library as the Fournier Register. There it lay forgotten until the 1970s when French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie discovered it, read it and wrote a book about it.

Montaillou, an Occitan Village from 1294 to 1324

The subject of Le Roy Ladurie's book is Montaillou (the link is to French Wikipedia's article about Montaillou which is far superior to English Wikipedia's article on the same subject), a small village on the very edge of the Pyrenees. Today Montaillou is a very minor village with only 17 permanent residents. In the early 14th century it was somewhat more flourishing with 200-250 inhabitants.

The reason Le Roy Ladurie writes about the village of Montaillou is that a large proportion of Jacques Fournier's interrogation subjects were from this particular village. Montaillou seems to have been a majority Cathar village at the beginning of the 14th century and during bishop Fournier's investigations most of the adult population of Montaillou was pulled in for questioning (and thus immortalized in the Fournier Register).

Le Roy Ladurie takes advantage of this fact to paint a vivid picture of the village of Montaillou and its inhabitants with all their quirks and imperfections. Since the villagers were eager to save themselves they did their utmost to reveal every little detail of their neighbors' lives. And bishop Fournier was eager to note down every single bit of information to prove his thoroughness.

The who's who of Montaillou

Montaillou might have been peripheral to the extreme but it still had all the trappings of a Medieval French village. There was a church with a priest and there was a chateau with a lord. More or less.

One thing to note about life in Montaillou is that the barriers between social classes seem much smaller than we usually think when we think about the Middle Ages. There was a castle, occupied by Béatrice de Planisoles, a widowed noblewoman, but Béatrice was only a tiny notch above the peasants of the village. And even that notch was flimsy as when one of the peasants tried to rape her. He failed but does not seem to have suffered any punishment for his transgression.

The undisputed leader of the village was not the lord, but rather the priest, Pierre Clergue. His leadership was only partly based on the priesthood. Mostly it seemed to be due to great personal charisma. Pierre Clergue was also a local son, he belonged to the Clergue family, the wealthiest of the peasant families in the village. His younger brother was Bernard Clergue, the village bayle, a sort of mayor who was responsible for tax collection. Fascinatingly enough the current mayor of Montaillou is named Jean Clergue. I have not been able to determine if he is related to his namesakes 700 years prior but it must at least be considered a possibility.

Pierre Clergue was the Catholic priest of the village but he was also a Cathar sympathizer. His good connections within the church hierarchy probably saved the village from a much earlier crackdown. For this he should not be glorified. He seems to also have settled personal scores by simply handing over certain villagers to the authorities. Since most of the village was to some degree Cathar this must have been an easy way to get rid of people he did not like. This might have been one reason for his outsize influence in the village.

But Pierre Clergue can not have ruled by fear alone. In their testimonies the villagers seem to have a genuine sympathy for him. And his brother Bernard clearly worshiped him. Pierre Clergue was also a womanizer of some repute. He seems to have had sexual relationships with a significant portion of the female population of Montaillou, including with Béatrice, the noblewoman, with whom he had an affair over several years.

Living la vida vieja

One unexpected revelation from Montaillou is the loose sexual morals of Medieval French village life. The priest Pierre was not denounced for his philandering. On the contrary it seemed to have enhanced his reputation. Maybe this is due to the fact that he did what everyone did only more successfully. The reports from Montaillou are literally filled with sex. The villagers might of course have emphasized this aspect of their existence if they believed this was what the bishop wanted to hear. But there can also be no doubting that the sacrament of marriage was not held in such high esteem.

More specifically there seems to have been something of a norm that if you slept under the same roof you could also sleep together. And since there were usually multiple adult persons living in each house this gave ample room for sexual liaisons. For example it seems to have been more or less a given that the adult males of a household had sexual access to the maids of said household. A woman's position was much weaker but it was not uncommon that women, even married women, had sexual relations with men from outside their household, meaning that they had some liberty to choose as well.

Another illuminating insight from Montaillou is that the villagers were not particularly poor. Traditionally, this period, the early 14th century, is regarded as very poor indeed characterized by overpopulation and low wages. Something that would not be corrected until the Black Death killed off a good proportion of the population in the middle of the century. Montaillou might be an outlier but its inhabitants do not seem to be on the brink of starvation.

The villagers of Montaillou farmed for subsistence, primary crops were wheat and turnips. Wine was (and is) impossible to grow at this elevation. But the major economic asset was sheep, which all households had a flock of. Wool was the main export, the other being human beings in the form of maids and servants for the city of Pamiers.

One of the main characters in the Fournier Register and a sort of protagonist in Le Roy Ladurie's book is Pierre Maury, a shepherd with extensive connections to the Cathars. Being a shepherd allowed Pierre Maury to travel across the mountains and keep in contact with exiled Cathars on the Catalonian side of the Pyrenees. He was a messenger of sorts, allowing the Cathar exiles to stay in contact with their relatives on the French side of the border.

But Pierre Maury is more interesting from another point of view. He was something of a self-made man. Born into a poor family he started working as a shepherd at a very young age. In the beginning he tended the flocks of other peasants, peasants who had no suitable boys themselves or for other reasons could not tend their own sheep. He must have been a very good shepherd for he was continuously offered new employment and he was able to put money aside, buy a flock of his own and finally to marry and acquire his own homestead. This proves that social mobility was a thing even during the High Middle Ages.

One final and rather obscure observation from Montaillou is the utter lack of fantasy in given names. Males in Montaillou had, almost without exception, one of four names: Pierre, Raymond, Arnaud and Bernard. Women's names had slightly more variation, but not very much. For a late observer this veers on the absurd and also makes it difficult to follow the action, for example the unmarried peasant Raymond Belot lived with his sister Raymonde who tended the household. When Raymonde married she had to move out and Raymond needed another housekeeper, a position that was immediately filled by his cousin: Raymonde.

Learning from history

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's book is a great source of detail on life in the Middle Ages. While the details in themselves are interesting, even more interesting is the picture of the human beings that appears out of these details. It is very hard to come close to people who lived 700 years ago, but it actually feels like you know some of the people of Montaillou. That is an achievement of sorts.

While there are plenty of written records from the 14th century, at least from France, the film adaptation of the trial by combat mentioned in the introduction being a case in point, there is an utter lack of documentation from the point of view of the peasants and other people on the lower rungs of society. The people of Montaillou were almost universally illiterate. And even if they had been able to write they did not have the ability, or willingness, to write on parchment, the only writing material available in the Middle Ages able to survive into modernity.

Clearly, we should be thankful for the work of the inquisition and the bishop of Pamiers. The villagers of Montaillou most probably did not approve of it. Especially not people like Pierre Clergue and Pierre Maury, both of whom seemed to have died in captivity. But the actions of Jacques Fournier have immortalized these otherwise very mortal men and women. In a way, they sacrificed their lives for our learning.

More than anything, the people of Montaillou convey the impression that people of the Middle Ages were not that dissimilar to us. While their material situation was vastly different from ours, their social interactions and hence much of what occupied their minds was quite a lot like us. They loved and they hated, they had their infatuations and their jealousies, their amicable friendships and their petty differences. They were very much humans. Something that is not usually conveyed in traditional history books.

When I started writing this article my only source was Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's book Montaillou. Le Roy Ladurie's source material, the Fournier Register written in Latin, was unavailable to me. After some more studies I have now discovered that there is a project at San Jose State University of translating the interrogations of the Fournier Register into English. It seems this work is not going particularly fast, and it might have stalled completely, but there are at least a few interrogation protocols available. Wikipedia also has a helpful category page listing the 13 inhabitants of Montaillou that have been dignified with their own Wikipedia pages.