Montaillou
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Montaillou (occitan Montalhon) is a commune in the Ariège department in southwestern France.
History
The town is best known for being the subject of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's pioneering work of microhistory, Montaillou, village occitan. It analyzes the town in great detail over a thirty-year period from 1294 to 1324. Then a village of some 250 people, the daily routines of the people are in the records of Jacques Fournier, later Pope Benedict XII.
Montaillou was one of the last bastions of the Albigensian belief also known as Catharism, considered heresy by the dominant Roman Catholic powers. The then local bishop, Fournier, launched an extensive inquisition involving dozens of lengthy interviews with the locals, all of which were faithfully recorded, such as the arrest of the entire village in 1308. When Fournier became Pope he brought the records with him and they remain in the Vatican Library.
- For details of the castle, see Château de Montaillou.
See also
