International Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2009 - Space/l'Espace
Abstract

This paper examines memories and meanings of space amongst displaced people after the Albigensian crusade in thirteenth-century France. Historians have long analysed the effects of this crusade on the political and spiritual autonomy of the region, whilst locating the crusade in the context of the ‘loss’ of Occitania or the consolidation of the Capetian royal domain. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which the inhabitants of the region expressed and gave meaning to the consequences of war and its aftermath. This paper seeks to explore how people who were displaced as a result of the crusade articulated their experiences of loss and trauma. In doing so, I argue that those who found themselves in refugee-like situations during this tumultuous period of thirteenth-century French history created spatial memories of home, family, property and place through various forms of testimonial narrative. In these narratives, space was a multivalent concept which provided a powerful means of witnessing, commemorating, judging and laying claim to a fractured recent past.