Women in a Medieval Heretical Sect: Agnes and Huguette the Waldensians (review)

On Tuesday, May 1, 1320, Raymond de la Côte and Agnes Franco were, after nine months of interrogation and imprisonment by the bishop-inquisitor of Pamiers, Jacques Fournier, burnt as heretical Waldensians. Sixteen months later on Thursday, August 2, 1321, Huguette de la Côte and her husband, Jean of Vienne, were, after two years of questioning and confinement by the same inquisition, also burnt as Waldensian heretics. The testimonies of these four Waldensians, these Poor of Lyon, survive with 110 other confessions from Jacques Fournier's inquisition into heretical depravity in some small Pyrenean villages (most famously Montaillou) in MS lat. 4030 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Jean Duvernoy edited this manuscript in three volumes in 1965 (with corrections in 1972). Shulamith Shahar, using Duvernoy's edition, translates (in an appendix) and discusses (in six chapters) the testimonies of Agnes Franco and Huguette de la Côte.

These two women were believers in the Poor of Lyon and not Waldensian Sisters themselves, although Huguette de la Côte was, rather intriguingly, labelled a "perfect of the heretics" in the heading of her interrogation. They both came from modest backgrounds: Agnes Franco was a poor elderly widow (of around 60) who had been Raymond de la Côte's wet-nurse; while Huguette de la Côte was a young woman (of around 30) whose father was a baker and whose husband, Jean of Vienne, was a carpenter. Agnes Franco became a believer through the influence of Raymond de la Côte, who was a Waldensian Brother and a deacon of the sect, but she never seems to have developed a deep understanding of the beliefs and habits of the Poor of Lyon, except their prohibition on taking oaths. Huguette de la Côte came to believe in the Poor of Lyon because of the Waldensian Brother Gerard of Arles and was quite passionate and thoughtful about why she "wished to live and die in the faith" of the heretics. Both women, on occasion, also went and prayed in Catholic churches and saw no contradiction in blending their heretical ideas with more orthodox ones. All that is known about Agnes Franco and Huguette de la Côte comes from what they confessed to Jacques Fournier's inquisition into heretical depravity.

Shahar opens with a summary of the history of the Poor of Lyon from the original preaching of Vaudès of Lyon in the late twelfth century to the surviving Waldensians becoming Protestants in the sixteenth. Her observations about inquisitorial questioning, scribal transcription, and translation of testimonies, as well as the dangers and delights of inquisition registers for modern scholars, is subtle and useful. What she has to say about the lack of a "feminine voice" as opposed to a "Waldensian voice" in the confessions of Agnes Franco and Huguette de la Côte is interesting if not completely convincing. Crucially, and somewhat ironically, Shahar's discussion is weakest when she actually focuses upon women and heresy in medieval society. A curiously meandering narrative about Jungian archetypes, feminine elements in culture, and women as an internal "other," leaves the reader less than prepared for the translated testimonies of Agnes Franco and Huguette de la Côte. Despite the occasionally hazy quality of Shahar's analysis, where historical specificity succumbs to a kind of ahistorical generalization, she nevertheless provides a concise introduction to, and a very good translation of, two fascinating medieval women.