A Fool and His Money: Life in a Partitioned Town in Fourteenth-Century France

A historian traces the political and social divisions in a medieval French town during the Hundred Years War through the story of a pot of gold found in a drain--a mystery unearthed by the author in the city archives.

Utilizing primary sources and skillful interpretation, Wroe, the American editor for the Economist, brings to life the medieval French town of Rodez in this engrossing cultural history that takes place during the Hundred Years War. Located in Languedoc (now southwestern France), Rodez was divided into halves with different governing bodies: the more spiritual "City," where the cathedral was located and the people were loyal to the English Crown; and the "Bourg," site of the commercial district and a fiefdom of the Kingdom of France. Although Bourg and City were separated by walls, their inhabitants occasionally interacted. Translating from court documents, Wroe details events taking place in 1369 or 1370, when a workman from the City discovered a pot of gold in a Bourg drain and sparked a legal battle over ownership of the gold between a Bourg man and his father-in-law. Although Wroe was unable to discover the outcome of the case, she successfully illuminates the texture of medieval life in the town.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wroe, a writer for the Economist and author of Lives, Lies, and the Iran Contra Affair (LJ 9/1/91), offers a highly personal but soundly researched historical reconstruction, based on local court records, of an event that occurred in the small town of Rodez in southwestern France in the mid-14th century. Wroe uses the legal disputes arising from the discovery of a pot of gold in a sewer drainpipe to reveal the economic, social, political, and religious culture of the town during a phase of the Hundred Years War. Priests, nobles, ordinary laborers, lawyers, and businesspeople play a role in this imaginatively written mystery, which is a valuable contribution to French local history, family history, and the art of historical writing. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.
Bennett D. Hill, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.