We owe Montaillou, first and foremost, to a historical accident, the gathering of the remnants of the Albigensian heresy in the area of an inaccessible village, on some mountain peak of the Pyrenees.

We owe Montaillou to the diligence of the Inquisitor, Bishop Jacques Fournier (later Pope Benedict XII), who was inclined to thoroughly interrogate his victims - and meticulous in recording everything.

Ultimately, however, we owe Montaillou to the inspiration of Le Roy Ladurie, who sought to find among the lines of the inquisitorial register the "unmediated testimony of the peasant about himself," to directly encounter the villagers of old, flesh and blood.

With the same gesture, he paved the way for microhistory, a field where anthropology and history finally make a fitting pair.

(. . .) [Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]