Montaillou

A bestseller in France, this book is a fascinating sociological study of medieval life in which the well-known French historian Le Roy Ladurie used the official court record (1318-1325) of Inquisition Register of Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers in Southern France in the early 14th c., and later Pope Benedict XII, who, determined to erradicate the last traces of the Albigensian heresy from the Pyrenean village of Montaillou, meticulously recorded the confessions of the village's shepherds and smallholders, wives and maids to reconstruct a detailed and vivid picture of everyday life in this little village.