Montaillou was a very small and insignificant village in the sheep rearing region of the Ariege in southern France during the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries. It is distinguished by being one of the last pockets of Catharism in the area. The Bishop of Pamiers - Jacques Fournier - later to be Archbishop of Albi and then finally Pope Benedict XII, examined accused heretics by means of a minutely careful interrogation of them about their daily lives, and thus provided us with an intimate record of their daily lives.

Eventually the inquisition arrested eveyone in the village except for minors, so that it could be decided whether on not they were of a heretical persuasion. The documents of these examinations reveal, as well as vivid individual portraits, the religious scene, the sexual mores, the transhumance of sheep into what is now present day Spain and the influence of the home or 'domus' on the people's daily lives. The historian, Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie* has used the Montaillou Inquisition records kept in the Vatican, to produce a sociological description, and further to that an entertaining picture of the time.

*'Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error' by Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie.