Pierre Clergue is the priest in the title. He's an authentic character: he was the priest in the medieval village of Montaillou in the French Pyrenees in the fourteenth century. However, he has very little of the priest about him. He's more like a mafia man. He doesn't do anything physically nasty himself, you understand, apart from chase women. He can pretend to be pious and a good catholic. But he has henchmen, who will cut out tongues and even commit murder on his behalf when someone gets in his way. He and his brother Bernard, the bailiff, rule the village, pocketing money from the villagers' tithes and appropriating their property when the Inquisition arrests them for heresy. For nearly everyone in the village is a heretic, a Cathar, a follower of the religious sect which flourished throughout southern France in medieval times. But eventually, the fingers of the church point at Clergue himself. Who has betrayed him? One of his many women perhaps or a bitter villager? And will he be able to use his skills as a manipulator of people, a charmer of important officials, to wriggle out of the Inquisition's grasp? Most of the novel's characters are also authentic, as is the action.The characters' lives, what they said, what they did, were recorded for ever in Latin in the documents of the Inquisitional Court which interrogated them. The Bishop of the court in Pamiers, Jacques Fournier, took the records with him to the Vatican when he later became Pope Benedict XIIth. Even more intriguing is the fact that the current mayor of Montaillou is Jean Clergue and there are many more Clergues in the village cemetery. Our priest's church is there too. A largely true story of ordinary people. A refreshing change from Kings, Queens and other toffs.
