1 The last two sentences quoted are in Occitan in the original.
1 The text actually says ‘good Christian’ (bon chrétien). In the language of those who appeared before Jacques Fournier’s tribunal, this meant goodman or parfait. One version of this myth, in the same context (iii. 138), makes a clear distinction between this good Christian or parfait and the people listening to him who were ‘ordinary believers’.
1 E. Leach, ‘Anthropological aspects of language: animal categories and verbal abuse’, in New Directions in the Study of Language, ed. E. Lenneberg, Cambridge, Mass., 1966.
1 Rétif de la Bretonne, La Vie de mon père, bk. II, ed. G. Rouger, Paris, 1970, p. 83; J. Meslier, Oeuvres, 3 vols., Paris, 1970.
2 See the chapter on ‘The magic of the medieval church’ in K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, London, 1971.
1 Duby (1973), p. 108.
2 A. Dupront (1972), p. 494, in M. François, La France et les Français.
3 In J. Le Goff (1968).
1 It seems, however, that the peasants did indulge, though briefly, in personal prayers. The bells summoned them to do so. The bells are good, said Guillaume Maurs, the Montaillou shepherd (ii.178), because they incite men to pray. The mention of bells in Montaillou in the period 1300–1320 suggests that they appeared here earlier than in other southern regions, where certain villages acquired them only in the second third of the fifteenth century (see Fliche, Histoire de l’Eglise, Paris, 1934– , vol. XIV, p. 732).
1 See ii. 100, for a woman seizing the opportunity to take communion herself when a priest is visiting a sick person’s bedside.
1 iii.9. A not very clear passage suggests that in one rural parish in Sabarthès about half the people went regularly to Mass on Sunday (ii.367).