Socialist History Seminar Monday 3rd November 5.30pm, in person, Room 301 Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London, WC1E 7HU
Recording
Keith Flett
The authorities came looking for heretics, they found class struggle
Elaine Graham Leigh ‘But we have horns’: Finding a Revolution in Medieval Carcassonne
In August 1303, the people of the southern French town of Carcassonne rose up in revolt. The rebellion against King and Inquisition saw the prison stormed, the town elite driven out and their houses sacked, and the inquisitors humiliated. For eighteen months, Carcassonne was a town where the French royal writ did not run.
The revolt is often dismissed by historians as being about heresy rather than class conflict. Against this, Elaine Graham-Leigh will make the case for seeing it as an important rebellion of the lower classes of the town against feudal power and the apogee of eighty years of resistance to the occupation of Languedoc by the French. Analysing how the French crown used the persecution of minorities to buttress its authority, she will also consider how the revolt can aid our understanding of the origins of modern oppression.
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