Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, by French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, is a landmark work of social history first published in 1974. Le Roy Ladurie reconstructs the lives, relationships, and theological worldview of everyday people in the small village of Montaillou in the Pyrenees mountains at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The narratives are sourced primarily from a document known as the the Fournier Register: a collection of interrogations of common people as the Inquisition sought to root out the last strongholds of a popular heretical tendency long referred to as ‘Catharism.’
We’re joined by friend and scholar Joe Albernaz to talk about the enduring legacy of the Cathars, heretical and weird cosmologies, the nature of history, interrogation as a narrative mode, and the origins of modernity.
Joe’s writings can be found here.
He is also on Twitter: https://twitter.com/albernaj
For more information about the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, check out:
This article by historian Elaine Graham-Leigh, and
This english translation of the Fournier Register
Unseen Book Club
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