THE FOLIO SOCIETY

In the early 14th century, the village of Montaillou - in what is now the French Pyrenees - was the last stronghold of the Cathar heresy. Jacques Fournier, the ambitious local bishop (and a future Pope), was determined to stamp it out. In his celebrated book, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie resurrects from Inquisition records a Chaucerian cast of characters, and brilliantly reconstructs a whole world of passion, gossip, intrigue, illicit couplings and betrayal.

Superstition was so rife that the local medium, or 'messenger of souls', would advise people to 'Keep your elbows well in, or you might knock a ghost over.' Attention to personal hygiene was minimal, and as an act of kinship or alliance, individuals would get friends, relatives or lovers to delouse them regularly. Herbal potions believed to be magical were the only available means of contraception. Village life was dominated by the Clergue family, led by the bailiff Bernard and his cynical - and notoriously lecherous - brother, the priest Pierre, who would often seduce women in the confessional, overcoming any resistance by threatening to denounce them to the Inquisition. More endearing were the tavern-keeper and door-to-door wine-seller Fabrisse Rives (also by blood one of the Clergue family), and the carefree shepherd, Pierre Maury, who 'kidnapped' his sister from an abusive husband but was himself tricked into wedlock by a religious elder determined to marry off his pregnant mistress.