Diseño del Programa de intervención psicológica para la cesación

Maury in some ways mirrors Pierre Clergue, but only, perhaps, as the Kingdom of the Father mirrors the inverse paradise of Satan. His love is ardent but singular, and he lives a hard life in the mountains above Montaillou, frugal despite his great wealth of sheep. His main institutional connection is to the cabanes, as we have said, the seasonal camps of shepherds established for cooperation (but certainly not collectivization) in tasks such as herding and cheesemaking. His “domestic” world is thus inescapably male, mobile, and somewhat cosmopolitan, with Cathars from the Ariège mixing with Catalans and Berber, with whom he seems to have shared a sense of destiny.238 _That

destiny was to keep going around the mountains with the sheep. The Pyrenees are both hot, cold, and steep, and this makes it remarkable that Pierre Maury stuck to this life despite other options gleaned through his social connections and, presumably, enabled by his wealth in walking meat and milk. We will not dwell as much on LeRoy

Ladurie’s depiction of the cabanes as we did the domus/ostal; rather it is the ideas and outlook of Pierre Maury which we will add to our mis-en-scène for a more analytical discussion later. LeRoy Ladurie wonders whether Pierre Clergue manages to turn his dualism into a Nietzscheism by saying that, since all sex is sinful, there is no sin (were it not for the small matter of five-hundred years, he might have had Dostoyevsky in mind

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in intoning that ‘all is possible and all is permitted’239_{). As we saw with Hegel, the ‘all’}

here is bound by historical, that is to say social, conditions. But LeRoy Ladurie also uses Pierre Maury as a representative of a ‘pastoral philosophy, or more simply a philosophy of Montaillou’.240 _{As one Pierre errs, the other clings to his path, and each}

sheds a light for us on the same world.

In the first instance, the philosophy of Montaillou is the philosophy of destiny which appears to have characterized at least a part of the mentalité of the heretic herders whose mode of life LeRoy Ladurie is reflecting on. What we find in the declarations of

destiny from Pierre Maury – and Pierre Clergue, a member of Montaillou’s preeminent lineage – are, at least superficially, first-person reports on what were considered the

fixed points which characterized the montaillonais mode of life as a fundamental mode

enjoying a certain persistence and particularity. In one sense, it is very clear that Pierre Maury could have chosen a less risky way of living (in face of the Inquisition) or a more settled life (which promised greater material wealth and comfort). He was offered these options explicitly by those who felt kindly towards him.241 _{In a second sense, however,}

the tenacity with which Maury resisted these possibilities tells us something about the forces which kept life in Montaillou, the Ariège, and the broader Pyrenees in place, and which made certain alternatives, in at least a local way, impossible. At one level, Maury’s philosophy of destiny functions as his explanation to his friends for why he will continue in his mode of life, though it is true that “I must follow my destiny” can be understood as the refusal to explain.

However, considered at the level of LeRoy Ladurie’s own reflection in his composition of Montaillou, Maury’s “philosophy” has been selected to appear with broader

239 _{LeRoy Ladurie 1975: 227} 240 _{LeRoy Ladurie 1975: 190} 241 _{LeRoy Ladurie 1975: 190-195}

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explanatory and representational purposes in mind. It does not function merely to explain the particular actions and choices of Pierre Maury, but rather to demonstrate something more generally about the state of the montalonais world. To understand Maury’s philosophy of destiny fully – his mentalité, though this is a term connoting a more collective sociology of Montaillou242 _{– involves appreciating the extent to which,}

when it appears, it appears without content. His statements of it furnish only gaps where, as we have seen, his avowals of faith in himself are almost refusals to explain. Here we reach the limits of both a man’s comprehension of his own life and the limits of the explicit content of a text. LeRoy Ladurie does not ask whether his interlocutors accept, or even understand, the quasi-explanations Maury offers for rejecting their suggestions, so there is no attempt to generalize with any precision to a mentalité which has an autonomous role as an explanans. Our sense of this mentalité only emerges as a single, open coordinate, wholly useless and mysterious on its own. The reader of

Montaillou is thus pushed towards a grander reading of Maury’s philosophy in so far as it, and Maury himself, is only a feature in LeRoy Ladurie’s cartography. Understanding the man makes us look to his world. As we have begun to see, the cartography of this world comprises descriptions of the terroir and the houses, lineages, and routes of transhumance which gave it a broad shape; and then there are the other individuals of

Montaillou, about whom we learn their sexual preferences (and burdens), the frequency of their bathing, whether they slept clothed or not, how they swore, insulted each other, prayed, or died; and again: their relationships with outsiders, the status of women and children, the power of local elites, and the distribution of wealth.

What is all this getting at? What does it amount to? Somehow, the necessity – the force

– of Pierre Maury’s destiny fits into his world. What we need to keep exploring here is the modal dimension (i.e. of possibilities) in LeRoy Ladurie’s text: those aspects which

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reveal the constraints and limits of the monde montalionais; the role of possibilities in our understanding of what occurs in that world; and finally the idea that through

Montaillou we are to understand this world as a world of possibilities, and the

concomitant idea that this is the primary function of various elements in the text which, ostensibly, convey reality directly. Elucidating this modal dimension is the task of, in a second sense, a philosophy or theory of Montaillou. However, making this dimension visible requires considerable theoretical preparation. In order to approach the text from the perspective I want to encourage, we need to test our thinking about possibilities in a laboratory where we can escape, for a while, the complexities of a single text.

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PART THREE: ANALYSIS OF SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS