| Summary: | This is an interdisciplinary article which brings an anthropological perspective to the problem of the social basis of southern French Catharism. The exceptionally detailed inquistorial records concerning the Pyrennean village of Montaillou make it an ideal case study of a community torn, like much of the rest of southern France, between Catharism and Catholicism, heresy and orthodoxy. Using a sociological model developed by Mary Douglas, the article attempts to demonstrate that heretical beliefs are not simply the power claims of particular groups but rather themselves the expression of confused social relations during a period of accelerated social change.
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