1 The couples in question here are: Pons Clergue and Mengarde (four boys, two girls: Guillaume, Bernard, Pierre, Raymond, Esclarmonde, Guillemette); a couple whose head, unreferred to elsewhere, was called Bar (three sons and two daughters : Pierre, Raymond, Guillaume, Mengarde, Guillemette; see i.418); Bernard Rives and Alazaïs (one son, two daughters: Pons, Raymonde and Guillemette, who married one of the Clergues); Pons Azéma and Alazaïs (one son: Raymond); Pierre Azéma and Guillemette (one son: Raymond); Bernard Clergue (the bayle’s namesake) and Gauzia (one boy, one girl: Raymond, Esclarmonde); Bernard Clergue, bayle of Montaillou, and Raymonde (no children); Belot senior (Christian name unknown) and Guillemette (four sons, two daughters: Raymond, Guillaume, Bernard, Arnaud, Raymonde and, according to i.371, Alazaïs); Guillaume Benet and Guillemette (two sons, four daughters: Raymond, Bernard, Alazaïs, Montagne; and, according to i.400, Gaillarde and Esclarmonde); Raymond Bailie and X (four sons; Pierre, Jacques, Raymond, Arnaud); Vital Bailie and Esclarmonde (one son: Jacques); Pierre Maurs and Mengarde (four sons and one daughter: Arnaud, Guillaume, Raymond, Pierre, Guillemette); Raymond Maurs and Guillemette (two sons: Pierre and Bernard); Bernard Maurs and Guillemette (two sons: Raymond and Pierre); the four Marty brothers, the names of whose mother and father are unknown: Guillaume, Arnaud, Bernard and Jean; X Testanière and Alazaïs (one son and one daughter: Prades and Vuissane); Raymond Maury and Alazaïs (six sons and two daughters: Guillaume, Pierre, Jean, Arnaud, Raymond, Bernard, Guillemette and Raymonde); Jean Guilhabert and Allemande (one son and three daughters: Guillaume, Alazaïs, Sybille and Guillemette, according to i.403, ii.256 and ii.482 and 484). I have left out the very old groups, like those of Pons and Guillaume Clergue, which were already decimated by death, not only among infants and children but also among adults and elderly people. I have also left out very young couples only a small part of whose procreative life fell within the last years of the Fournier Register; moreover, these were greatly disturbed by the Inquisition. Finally, I have left out the wives who were widowed early and took refuge in Catalonia. It goes without saying that the records we are dealing with have only a very indirect and unintended demographic value.
1 There is virtually no information on natal and pre-natal practices in Montaillou. Recovery from childbed seems to have been accompanied by a ceremony in the local shrine to Mary (i.223). Noble families had long been using cradles (i.221).
2 iii.278. All Rousse Gonaud’s career was set in pro-heretical circles.
1 i.370. See also Agnes Francou, nurse to the Waldensian Raymond de la Coste. She suckled him after his mother’s death, and then spent the rest of her life with him (i.125).
2 i.225, 243, 244, 245.
1 ii.35. See also i.220, for Raymond Roussel’s opinion. The Waldensians of Pamiers also thought a foetus had a soul (i.88).
2 The single reference is to a spontaneous abortion, genuine or imaginary (i.519).
1 iii. 144. In fact, Prades Tavernier, a villager by origin, not a bourgeois like the Authiés, was influenced by the pressure of Catholic behaviour, and administered the consolamentum to a baby in just the same way as a Roman priest would administer baptism in the same circumstances.
1 I think I have said enough to counter the point of view expounded by Madame B. Vourzay, who writes that ‘children were of little account’ for the people of Montaillou. (Vourzay (1969), p. 91). It is true, as she rightly says, that grown-ups in upper Ariège were afraid that children might betray them to the Inquisition. But in my view this did not affect the general feeling towards children.
2 There is little mention of the death of infants in Montaillou itself, though such losses must have been frequent.
3 There is not enough information available for us to go into the question of the attitude of grandparents. But, to take a few examples, Béatrice de Planissoles was an attentive grandmother (i.249) and a dead grandmother came back as a ghost to embrace her grandchildren in bed (i.135). The Fournier Register tells us nothing about grandfathers: men were much less likely to live long enough to become grandparents. But see iii.305 for the interest taken by Raymond Authié (namesake of the parfait) in a suggestion of marriage concerning his granddaughter, Guillemette Cortil.
1 i.410; ii.444–5, 470. This rigorous ‘youth’ lasted up to the age of twenty or twenty-five (ii.122).