1 Because of the exodus of young men, many of whom left the village to become long-term bachelor shepherds, it is possible that the remaining residents of Montaillou were mostly women. The preponderance of widows, due to the fact that men died earlier, could only have accentuated this trend.
1 The Fournier Register is particularly valuable in that it is largely concerned with downward social mobility, whereas most documents of the ancien régime treat chiefly of upward mobility.
1 Not to be confused with Bernard’s wife, of the same name.
1 Transhumance was concerned with large flocks of at least several hundred head of sheep. This was what distinguished stock-raising as practised by the Pyrenean farmers of Ax and elsewhere, who employed the migrant shepherds of Montaillou, from minor stock production based on small flocks, as in Montaillou and other regions where traditional mixed farming was practised.
2 iii.120. When they were young the Maury boys already had a professional bent towards the shepherd’s life. But poverty and the confiscation by the Inquisition of their parents’ possessions inclined some of them, especially Jean, even more towards a pastoral existence (i.444).
1 The migration of the shepherds between the Aude lowlands and the mountains of Ariège helps to explain the way Catharism was to be found scattered about the highlands and lowlands of this part of Occitania.
1 ii.75. Pierre Maury kept some crumbs of this collection for twenty-two years! The mother of Guillaume Austatz of Ornolac had a similar collection of crusts which had been blessed; she kept them in a hole in her house (i.204).
2 The melioramentum (‘amelioration’) was a simple rite required of Cathar sympathizers, which consisted in kneeling down as a parfait went by and asking him his blessing and absolution.
1 ‘Believers’ who were not parfaits were allowed to eat meat.
2 ii.387: Guillaume Maurs admired Pierre Maury very much, and wanted him to rule over the other shepherds.