Occitania

The records from the Occitan-speaking lands of southwestern France offer a small sample of inventories available from several different regions in the area. The collection is particularly rich in inventories from rural households and includes several inventories that preserve elements of the Occitan vocabulary of material culture.

Across southeastern France, in the regions known as Languedoc, Gascony, Guyenne, and Aquitaine, the spoken languages were dialects of Occitan. As a result, there was a common language of material culture, whether written in Occitan or in a Latin that was heavily influenced by Occitan words. Over the course of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, most of the region of southeastern France was absorbed in fits and starts by the Kingdom of France. Roussillon, located along the Mediterranean coast, did not enter the French kingdom until 1659. Occitania figures prominently in histories of the Cathar heresy, which generated the Albigensian Crusade and was thought to have been widespread in the region. The region's late medieval archives, notably in Montpellier and Toulouse and other towns and cities, are particularly rich, and preserve an extensive set of household inventories.

At present, the bulk of collection consists of inventories published by Philippe Wolff and Abbé Gilbert Loubès in the twentieth century. Wolff's collection targeted rural households in the region around Toulouse; Loubès, in turn, features inventories from Gascony, with particular attention to tools and equipment. The collection is rounded out by inventories from Najac, Montpellier), and Cantal. The overall sample is relatively small and unrepresentative, and as a result users should take care not to generalize too freely from it.

The inventories from the Toulousain were edited by Philippe Wolff in 1966. The inventories from Guyenne were edited by Abbé Gilbert Loubès in 1969. Guilhem Ferrand kindly contributed the inventories from Najac; Lucie Laumonier the inventories from Montpellier; and Joséphine Moulier the inventory from Cantal. Editorial work and corrections were provided by Ryan Low, Eric Nemarich, Daniel Lord Smail, and Kathleen M.M. Smail.

The inventories presented here from the Toulousain (the region around Toulouse, France) were edited and published by Philippe Wolff in 1966, and have been OCRed and edited for publication by Eric Nemarich and Kathleen Smail. See Philippe Wolff, “Inventaires villageois du Toulousain (XIVe-XVe siècles),” Bulletin philologique et historique, 1966, 481–544. To explore this subset, perform a search for records whose names include the word "Wolff," or select one of the village names linked below to view the records associated with it.

The eighteen inventories in this subset range in time from 1358 to 1427. They represent one of the most substantial sets of published inventories of peasants and countryfolk from later medieval Europe. The subset includes several artisans and one woman, and the households range from poor to well-to-do. The Wolff edition includes an extensive glossary, not reproduced here. A nineteenth inventory, not reproduced here, is a preliminary draft of one of the inventories in the collection.

Wolff's original notes have been included in the record description. Since Wolff did not transcribe the lines of text describing parcels of land or houses, these entries have been identified as the author's paraphrase. A number of editorial alternations have been made, including the dropping of item numbers and the rendering of original marginal notes as notes.

We are grateful to the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques for their kind permission to re-publish this important collection.

This subset, from the region of Gascony, includews post-mortem inventories from the town of Vic-Fezensac (Gers) and its environs. These include inventories of a member of the nobility, a number of artisans, and even two cagots - a despised class of outcasts - one of whom was the descendant of lepers. Unlike other inventories from late medieval Europe, these only rarely include mentions of clothing, and there is a complete absence of any mention of coin or money. The fourteen inventories range in time from 1413 to 1461.

These inventories provide important details concerning local society and language. A number of objects - especially utensils and tools - appear both in Latin and in the Gascon dialect. A dozen inventories name the decedent’s heirs, which include a total of twenty-seven children. Bernard Dussans, from the village of Séailles, named one son and eight daughters, only two of whom were of age, as his heirs.

Abbé Gilbert Loubès edited these inventories in 1969, drawing upon notarial registers from the series I in the Archives départementales du Gers. They are published in Gilbert Loubès, “Inventaires de mobilier et outillage gascons au XVe siècle,” Bulletin philologique et historique 1969, 583-627. The edition also includes an extensive glossary, not re-published here.

We are grateful to the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques for their kind permission to re-publish this important collection.

The inventories from Najac were contributed by Guilhem Ferrand. Najac is a town located in Rouergue, a province that corresponds roughly to the present-day department of Aveyron. At the end of the middle ages, it was under the authority of the king of France. Dominated by an imposing fortress in the French style, the town constituted a key element in the military protection of Rouergue, and boasted a sizable population, with an estimated 2200 hearths in 1328. The inventories found in the extant notarial registers offer just a tiny sample of the original body but are nonetheless extremely valuable. The notaries of Najac, to judge by the extant records, were unusual insofar as they kept their records not in Latin but instead in Occitan.