Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error

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Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error is an exceptional book, which dives into the lives of peasants of Montaillou in the 14th century. Montaillou is a village, presently French, and is situated in the south of the present day department of Ariege, in southern France. What sets this book apart from others written about the same subject is that it focuses mainly on the testaments of the peasants of the 14th century, before this book there was a small amount of information available which was a direct indications of the peasants. Ladurie does an astonishing job by providing the testimonies of the peasants and shepherds, and this in turn helps the reader to understand the lives of villagers in the 14th century. While providing an outlook in the lives of the villagers, Ladurie covers many aspects of the time, such as environment and authority, the great migrations, the shepherds mental outlook and also more personal aspects such as body language and sex, marriage and love and religion in practice. Out of the many aspects covered in this book I will mainly focus my attention on the concept of marriage and love and observe its role in the 14th century in a village such as Montaillou.

In the introduction of the book we learn a bit about the history of Montaillou, and then it informs the reader that the village was experiencing an inquisition since the village was swarming with Cathars. It was because of this that Jacques Fournier, who was the “Bishop of Pamiers in Ariege in the Comte de Foix (now southern France) from 1318 to 1325” (Ladurie vii). Fournier later became Pope of Avigon with the name of Benedict XII. Fournier orders an extensive inquisition against the...

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... of now and then and to see how things have changed and what things have remained the same. Also another intriguing topic was that of religion and its practices. This section displayed many different viewpoints and illuminated to me that in any period different beliefs on religion and its practice and different interpretations of them can be seen. As previously stated another aspect of this book that I appreciate is that it gave me an understanding of our studies of the Mediterranean and it was helpful to see real life examples and testimonies of individuals who lived through it.

Works Cited

1. Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1995.

2. Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. New York: Vintage, 1979.

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