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The Return of Martin Guerre

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Natalie Zemon Davis was a history professor at Princeton University when two French screenwriters, Jean-Claude Carriere and Daniel Vigne, asked her to act as a consultant on a film version of the infamous 16th century case of Martin Guerre. This project served as the impetus for Davis to research and write this immensely readable account of the Guerre event, a case of impersonation that caused an uproar in parts of France for years to come. The film version Davis consulted on starred Gerard Depardieu as the fake Martin Guerre, and a later American version, entitled "Somersby," placed events during the American Civil War and starred Richard Gere and Jodie Foster.

Any way you look at the situation, the Martin Guerre case is just plain strange. Davis traces the case back to the year 1527, when the Daguerre family left their Basque homeland in France and moved to the village of Artigat in the Languedoc region. The Daguerre family changed their name to Guerre in an effort to fit into the local community. The Guerre's quickly rose in prominence, although son Martin tended to enjoy acrobatics and swordplay in lieu of hard work.

Martin soon married Bertrande de Rols, the daughter of a prominent local family. After some initial problems conceiving children, attributed to a dangerous curse by many in the community, Martin and Bertrande finally had a son. But things did not go well for Martin; his father accused Martin of stealing some grain, an accusation that, coupled with Martin's desire to avoid family squabbles over inheritance issues, resulted in Martin's sudden departure from his family and home. With Martin gone off to various adventures in Spain and parts unknown, Bertrande was in quite a spot. Hope was on the way, however, when a man shows up claiming to be the missing Martin. This man quickly ingratiated himself into the household, claiming Martin's son and wife as well as the inheritance of his deceased father. Eventually, problems emerged between this new Martin and his uncle Pierre Guerre. The result was two trials and the eventual exposure of the new Martin as a fraud.

Davis's historical treatment of this case is a prime example of "microhistory," or a branch of the larger movement in historical study known as the New History. Whereas the Old History focused on the deeds of high-class elites, the New History studied the lower classes, oftentimes employing analytical methods borrowed from sociology and psychology. Microhistory seeks to analyze a specific event or person in history to shed light on the larger aspects of their environment. In the case of Martin Guerre, Davis exposes the greater themes of peasant life in 16th century France, the French legal system, the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, and the role of women in that period.

Two men left written accounts of the Martin Guerre incident: one, Guillaume Le Sueur, is a little known figure and therefore does not receive much attention from Davis. Instead, the focus is on the other author, Jean de Coras, one of the trial judges in the Guerre case and a famous French legal scholar. Davis attempts to psychologically penetrate the mind of Coras, giving the reader copious background information on Coras and his accomplishments. What emerges is a portrait of a really remarkable and likeable fellow, a man who sympathized with the fake Martin Guerre because of the mental ability this "Martin" showed during his interrogations.

"The Return of Martin Guerre" often reads like an engaging story rather than a dry as dust history. You get to know these people, especially Jean de Coras, and you come to like them. Simultaneously, it is sometimes difficult to accept this book as solid history. While Davis scrutinized endless reams of archival records and other source materials, some of her conclusions and observations stray from the evidence, especially some of the psychological insights. But that is the value of this book: by reading it, a student of history begins to understand the larger conflicts between historical schools of methodology. For those who could care less about historical debate, the author's book is a cracking good yarn full of lies, dangerous liaisons, and courtroom antics.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and that is nowhere more apparent than in the case of Martin Guerre. After reading this book, be sure to check out the film version starring Gerard Depardieu; it is a great version of the story, and Depardieu never looked so thin!

Natalie Zemon Davis book The Return Of Martin Guerre is a finely detailed, readable and well-researched account of the famous Martin Guerre and his impostor, Arnauld du Tilh. But even more than simply outlining the facts of the story, Davis also uses her research to enlighten us on the roles of different family members in 16th Century rural French life, the politics of family life and peasant life in general, and the role of the growing shift from Catholicism to Protestantism among the elite as well as the peasant classes. In relation to family and marriage life, Davis uses Bertrande de Rols, Martin Guerres wife, as an example of a strong, virtuous woman with familial duty and an obstinate nature. Davis uses this characterization to explain how de Rols was not a weak-minded woman who was so easily duped by her missing husbands impostor, but was rather a woman who was in love and used her strength in order to fascillitate her new relationship with Arnauld du Tilh: Either by explicit or tacit agreement, she helped him become her husband. Bertrande de Rols, according to Davis, is an example of the more broad-minded and less misogynist peasant society of the village of Artigat in 16th Century France. Through Bertrande de Rols, learn about how surprisingly fair the law was towards women: The testaments in the area around Artigat rarely benefit one child but instead provide dowries for the daughters....(If there are only daughters, the property is divided equally among them) (11) Natalie Zemon Davis The Return Of Martin Guerre is also a deeper historical chronicle of changes in the shift from French Catholicism to the new religion of Protestantism. She uses the new Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rols entire relationship to characterize the relaxing religious laws that were seeping into courtrooms and the higher classes as well as the fields and the peasant classes. Davis argues that the new religion might have been of interest to the new Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rols because it supported their illicit relationship more than Catholicism. (48) When doubt about the new Martin Guerres real identity began to unsettle the village of Artigat, Davis writes that the local supporters of the new protestant religion would have tended to believe the new Martin Guerre, whereas the Catholics sided with the accusations of false identity from his uncle, Pierre Guerre. Changes in religious affiliation, however, are no clearer than in the case of the Jean de Coras, the reporter and judge with respect to the accusations brought under the new Martin Guerre. Jean de Coras was proven to have had Protestant ties, and was eventually killed for them. (100) However, he was also a very learned, educated, and passionate man with an upstanding career in law and, after the case of Martin Guerre, the literary world. The idea that someone of so high a rank embraced the new religion shows that its influence at the time cannot be ignored. The film version, because it is told through images rather than words and documents is much more a dramatic story that leaves us wondering about the true identity of Martin Guerre until the very end. The film is a more diluted, less fleshy chronicle of the same story told by Natalie Zemon Davis in her book and in terms of the new religion, the role of women in married life, and peasant life in general, the movie is much less informative than the book. The film is a love story between Arnauld du Tilh and Bertrande de Rols and less a backdrop against which one can place the dramatic changes in religion taking place during the late 16th Century. Bertrande de Rols is less of a strong feminine figure and more of an ingenue and her role as a weak-minded housewife is almost believable. The religious aspects of the book are almost left out entirely, except for a Catholic priest who is depicted as a gambler and later accuses Arnauld du Tilh of being possessed by the devil. In respect to peasant life, however, the art direction in the film and the costumes match the descriptions by Davis in her book. The working tools, the gray household, and the older (though clean) dresses accurately support the terms of a womans dowry outlined by Davis (17) It is interesteing to know that Natalie Zemon Davis' book was actually a forum for her to supply the exhaustive research and theories that were left out of the film, on which she worked previously to writing the book. Her work as a historian spans across media and is always interesting and refreshing.

Natalie Zemon Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre is the account of one of France's most infamous trials. In the 16th Century, a young man returned to his native home town after his long disappearence. Although his looks were slightly different, people accepted this man with open arms. He took the place of the old Martin Guerre, returning to his family and to his wife. But it is only later, when the real Martin Guerre returned and after some of the men in Guerre's family had become suspicious about the new Martin Guerre, that the other man was showned to be an impostor.

Written with intelligence and prose that is compelling yet never too simplistic, The Return of Martin Guerre is a fantastic historical account that should please historians and history lovers alike.

In the first pages, Davis tells us that some of her research is more heresay than anything else, since she tried to fill in the gaps where an answer could not be found. Maybe that's why the book reads more like a story than an actual factual account.

Davis recreates the whole town and the ways of life of 15th century France with care and skill. Every single character that peoples the book is fully dimensional and interesting. Her presentation of these people and of the facts is always impartial, which is surprising coming from someone who states that she's also using some of her own opinions and thoughts to fill in the gaps.

The Return of Martin Guerre is a great read that is full of facts, but where the information is never overwhelming. This is how every historical treatise should be like.

I looked for this book thinking that it was a fictional work. I was somewhat surprised to find that the book chronicles an actual event in 16th-century France. During that time, a peasant man leaves his family and property, disappearing without a trace. Years later the man returns, but some believe him to be an impostor. Is the story fact or legend?

The author originally gathered research on this story to help construct a movie script for a French film, but as her research progessed, she began to wonder why Martin Guerre left his home and family. Where did he go? And what happened to his wife, family, and the people from his village when he left?

Unlike some of the previous reviewers, I very much enjoyed "The Return of Martin Guerre." It is a short book that can be quickly read in just a few short hours. Now for the pros and the cons: On the positive side, I thought the book read like a good mystery novel. I was very interested in the author's research and findings and the way in which they were presented. Her descriptions of the people and customs (especially their laws and religious beliefs) are very good, and crucial to a proper understanding of the story. On the negative side, the author tells you how the story ends in the introduction. Sure, I know this is history, but many readers who are unfamiliar with the story may be disappointed to learn the end result after only a few pages. Also I thought Davis spent a little too much time describing the written accounts of the two men who saw (and were involved with) the trial. Overall, an interesting book about a very unusual case involving the disappearance of Martin Guerre.

At first, Natalie Davis collaborated with the director Daniel Vigne on his film, but she became dissatisfied by how many elements of the story never made it into the movie. Her book adds specific details she thought central to the story; such as, the Guerre's Basque roots, Bertrande first meeting Arnaud du Tilh at an inn outside of the village, and Bertrande's reasons for collaborating with the imposter. Davis' story affords her audience a rare glimpse into the world of peasant life in sixteenth century France. Historically, there are only a few times when the everyday lives of the lower social classes receive comment in history or literature. Students of the humanities have only a few primary source books to examine. The Domesday Book is a collection of census records from eleventh century England. The Canterbury Tales are a fourteenth century collection of tales describing the lives of religious pilgrims in England, authored by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Decameron is also a fourteenth century collection of stories, this time from Italy, written by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Davis' story focuses on Bertrande de Rols and her place in sixteenth century society, especially as a wife. Bertrande was married to Martin Guerre who was a young peasant of Basque heritage. Both Bertrande and Martin were in their early teens during a time when marriage customs for peasants was changing in Europe. For several years, these two very young kids have trouble consummating their marriage. Davis speculates that Bertrande may have been happy with this circumstance since it gave her a chance to enjoy adolescence and be free of the drudgery of motherhood and all the duties that went with it. This becomes evident by the fact that she refuses to annul her marriage at her parent's insistence. A few years go by before Bertrande conceives and gives birth to a son - her first foray into adulthood. Davis explains how Bertrande, like other peasant women, became even more aware of the male dominated world in which she lived. This is evident by the particle "de" in her name, which was a custom in the area where she lived depicting the social and legal connection female peasants had to the men in their families. She was subordinate to her father, her husband, and finally her widowed mother and her uncle turned stepfather. Frances and Joseph Geis illuminate in detail the customs of family and marriage during this time in history. During the Middle Ages, most peasants did not have formal marriage vows conducted in church. Instead, they vowed to each other to live as common law husband and wife. Formality was not necessary since peasants did not own property; they worked the lands of the nobility as tenant farmers. Marital mores change in the sixteenth century due to the peasant's ability to own land, which in turn causes parents to insist on having more control over their children's marital choices.

In 1548, Martin runs away from his village of Artigat, France to join the army, leaving his twenty-two year old wife Bertrande and a young son. His abandonment severely reduces Bertrande's social standing in the village. She is no longer a full-fledged wife, nor is she a widow who had property rights. Without a body to prove Martin is dead, she cannot divorce him; thus, she is stuck with her plight. She has to move back in with her mother. In addition, she faces ridicule from peers at every turn. Davis believes that all of these circumstances add up to Bertrande becoming an unhappy person. After eight years of living in quiet desperation, it is no wonder that she would finally find fulfillment of her hopes and dreams of a better life when the imposter Arnaud du Tilh nicknamed "Pansette," shows up in the village in 1548, in the guise of Martin Guerre. Of course, Bertrande would be predisposed to want to believe that her husband had returned to her, which would allow her to regain a better social status in the village. It also meant that Bertrande would be able to have her own household with her husband who inherited land from his recently deceased father. Davis correctly speculates that even if Bertrande soon realizes Pansette is not her husband, she still finds in him a congenial companion and falls in love with him. They also have a daughter together. Davis finds it very plausible that Bertrande would become a willing collaborator, in order to protect her newfound freedom and social standing. The couple's marital bliss unravels the day Pansette argues with his uncle, Pierre Guerre, over his desire to sell off some of the land. This causes Pierre to become suspicious of the identity of his nephew, since it is an old Basque custom never to sell ancestral land, leading him to sue Pansette as an impostor in a court of law. The feud divides the village and finally places a rift between Pansette and Bertrande. Bertrande had originally testified that Pansette was the original Martin. However, before the start of a subsequent court hearing she caves into the enormous pressure from her widowed mother who married Pierre, to change her testimony. Fearing she could lose her good name and social standing in the family and village, she changes her testimony and accuses Pansette of being an imposter.

Davis comes under heavy criticism from Robert Finlay surrounding the suppositions that she makes about Bertrand's emotions, motivations, and her complicity in the deception perpetrated by Pansette. In Finlay's, article The Refashioning of Martin Guerre he accuses Davis of reading too much into the court record left by Coras. "This Bertrande de Rols seems to be far more a product of invention than of historical reconstruction." Davis, responding to Finlay's criticism of her research methods, more than adequately defends herself in her journal article On the Lame. In it she describes her meticulous research of the court records, social roles and cultural customs of sixteenth century France. "For Davis ... peasant women, are people with sexual as well as economic drives and with cultural traditions and resources which have escaped the eyes of most orthodox historians."

The social historian Natalie Davis was tireless in her efforts to comb the local archives, judicial records, and in conducting interviews of present day inhabitants of the village Artigat to record the folklore of the "famous case" from their village. Davis has brought to light this micro history of sixteenth century peasant life in France in an easy to understand and compelling film and narrative. What makes the story so interesting to modern day viewers and readers is how relevant the story and the people in it are to our own times. This story is about a history of everyday people rather than royalty and generals, history's usual subjects. The story is replete with mystery and plot twists. It also examines the psychological areas of passion and deceit, while questioning personality formation and the self. In tying all of these sub plots together, Davis presents to her modern day audience a chance to examine and to compare their own identities and questions of self.

I read this book for a graduate class in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history and, psychology.

What is real? How do we really judge other people? How do we know what we know? How do perceptions influence social interactions? These are the kinds of reflective questions this book causes you to think about.

Set in 16th century France, this case of mistaken identity, where one person assumes the identity of another, is intentionally ambiguous in drawing the reader in to make some personal judgments independent of the author. This masterful technique requires an active reader.

Chapter 10 describes one of the judges in the case after it was appealed. He went on to write a book on the matter. Jean de Coras was a Christian scholar, a writer, lawyer, romantic, and communicator. Fortunately for us the author included this excerpt on him, as he was a character who made a mark that has survived over time.

Overall this is a book that will make you consider yourself and how you treat other people. It's a healthy form of reflection that is designed to help you consider things you might otherwise overlook.

This companion volume to the film (it was written as that, expressly) can be read and enjoyed by someone who's never seen that film. That would be me, as it happens.

A 16th Century peasant named Martin Guerre abandons his wife and child, and disappears from his home area completely for many years. When a man arrives in their village claiming to be the long absent Martin, and knowing details about his life there, his family decides that the physical differences they see must be due to the time that's passed. After all, the Martin who went away was no more than a youth. Eventually, though, Martin's uncle makes up his mind that this man is an imposter. Bertrande de Rols, Martin's wife, finds herself in an awkward position because the suit is filed in her name. Yet she has lived with "Martin" for several years since his return, and has borne him more children. Can she really have been so mistaken? Was she aware from the beginning, but chose to participate in the deception? Or is this man truly Martin Guerre, despite what his uncle and others now say? Into the midst of the legal proceedings walks a man with a wooden leg. A man who says that he is the true Martin Guerre, come home at last after hearing that an imposter has taken his place. Taken his wife, and his inheritance.

That's the story. The author makes no attempt at suspense, assuming that most of her readers know it already. The book's purpose is not to tell Martin Guerre's tale; rather, it's to illuminate it. With careful research into the customs of the time and place, and equally carefully analysis of accounts published not long after the events took place, the author makes sense out of the characters and their behavior in a way that isn't possible without such background. The roles of women and men in their society, the way economic and legal systems functioned, and the tension between Roman Catholicism and ascendant Protestantism all play their parts in motivating Martin, Bertrande, and the story's other actors. A fascinating piece of work, especially in its final chapters with their explanation of how publishing operated during the time when contemporary (or at least relatively contemporary) accounts of Martin Guerre's case were created.

The Return of Martin Guerre is not a regular history book. It is extremely short and extremely readable: a tale of intrigue; muddled and contradictory motivations; ethnic assimilation, sexual deficiencies; witch craft; and the stolen identity of a peasant by another on the backdrop of the Protestant reformation in France, Natalie Z. Davis's account of this utterly weird case of sixteenth century fraud proves the old dictum that historians never tire of explaining to incredulous novelists and an unfortunately indifferent public: truth is stranger than fiction.

The life of Martin Guerre would have left nearly no evidence of any existence, and have been of little use for any historian, were it not for the fact that he abandoned his young wife and son when he was in his early twenties for motivations that the modern historian can only guess at. Wanting adventure and release from a matrimonial bond that had been established for him at an extremely young age by his wife's and his own parents, young Guerre made his way into the service Spanish nobility and then fought in the Spanish wars in modern Flanders and Holland, where he would loose a leg. This, in and of itself, is unremarkable. There were likely many gimps made by their service in Armies of Spain in the sixteenth century. The utter weirdness of this situation only begins with the entrance of Arnaud du Tilh.

From a modern standpoint, it is difficult to imagine that anyone who knew Martin Guerre would have mistaken Arnaud du Tilh for him for any great length of time. Martin was tall and slender whereas Arnaud was short and stocky; Martin was athletic whereas Arnaud was a lazybones; Martin was difficult and irascible where Arnaud was generally likable; Martin was a native speaker of Basque whereas Arnaud's first tongue was French. The only thing that Arnaud and Martin really had in common was that neither was happy enough in the life they were born into to remain where they were. The question becomes then, how could Arnaud possibly hope to, and very successfully, appropriate the identity of Martin Guerre?

Davis gives many reasonable explanations. First, this was an age before photography and therefore only flawed memory could serve the purpose of knowing what Martin looked like among peasants too poor to have considered portraiture. Second, the Basque tradition which Martin Guerre grew up placed a powerful emphasis on the importance of family and seeing him return would have been, even after a less than honorable exit nearly a decade before, a nearly unadulterated joy. Finally, Davis points out what is the truly amazing about Arnaud is that he had, "a memory an actor would envy (35)." Though this mechanism alone, Davis believes, Arnaud is able to tap into a myriad number of stories which he is able to consciously able to craft into a believable mask of Martin Guerre--one that would, seemingly, fool Martin Guerre's friends, family, and his wife for several years. Even more amazingly, when much of his family was certain that Arnaud was not actually Martin, he would nearly deceive several magistrates.

The fraud only did not go unpunished because the real Martin Guerre reappeared on the scene in the nick of time, and with not much in the way of explanation, with less of memory for the events of his life than Arnaud had. It was this fact that compelled Davis's two primary sources on the case of Martin Guerre to try to understand just what it was that they had witnessed. As Davis points out, this was a case where absolutely nothing was as it seemed. This is what drew both Jean Coras, the judge who nearly freed Arnaud to return to Martin Guerre's wife, to write his magisterial Arrest Memorable and Guillaume Le Sueur Admiranda historia de Pseudo Martino. Both works show a powerful respect for the fact that Arnaud was able to pull off such an incredible act of fraud for so long, but neither could come to terms with how a peasant was capable of doing this. Ultimately this is what drew Davis to the case and will likely be what continues to draw readers to her book.

The Return of Martin Guerre is an impresseve collection of historical data based on an event that occured in the 16th century. The story itself is interesting and it is in itself interesting to look at how people lived in a different time period. The fact that this book is not fiction, nor historical fiction, but rather a true story, makes this book much more enjoyable and fascinating.

Some true stories that come about throughout our history are more bizarre than fictional creations and this is one of those stories. I thought that Davis created a historical document that reads more like a novel than a text book. The characters were all properly explained and depicted and the settings used throughout the book seemed to be properly represented.

Davis was able to make a compilation of boring facts amount to an interesting story. She keeps it short and sweet, gets to the point and makes it as exciting as possible. I was thoroughly impressed with a book that I initially thought I would not enjoy. If you are looking to read about a historical event that has not been done to death, The Return of Martin Guerre is a bit off the beaten path and a nice change of pace.

Natalie Zemon Davis, along with the likes of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Carlo Ginzburg, both of whom she explicitly acknowledges in "The Return of Martin Guerre," has carved out a relatively new niche in the academic history. Instead of writing about the movers and shakers, the kings or emperors, or large-scale religious change, she writes here specifically focused on a few families in mid-sixteenth century France. The reputations made by the people that exist within the covers were not the result of high birth or diplomatic achievement. The only reason the name "Martin Guerre" has any resonance to our ears is because his story is perhaps the most incredible since that of Odysseus. Except Guerre's has the virtue of being historical fact. Without any of the historiographic jargon that we may have come cynically to expect, Davis has wonderfully harnessed most of the elements that allow the causal reader to fully appreciate the story of Martin Guerre.

Not long after moving from the Basque village of Hendaye to Artigat with his father Sanxi and his uncle Pierre, Martin Guerre, aged 13, marries a certain Bertrande de Rols. After a period of restlessness and sexual impotence, they conceive a child (also named Sanxi); soon afterwards, he gets into a dispute with his father and runs away, never to return. From this point on, there are intermittent lengthy discussions of property transfer in France at the time, specifically detailing how Basque tradition stipulates that the property moves from Bertrande to Pierre (since Sanxi the elder had already died).

In another world, Arnaud du Tilh (aka "Pansette," or "The Belly," for his well-defined paunch), eager to remove himself from the monotony of the seigniory of Sajas, joins Henri II's army. In one of the weaker and more speculative parts of the book, Davis here guesses that Arnaud and Martin might have both met somewhere while in the service of Henri II (in whose service the real Martin might have lost a leg), traded intimate life stories and history to such an extent that Arnaud could then arrive in Artigat, proclaim himself the long-lost Martin Guerre, and insert himself into lives of Pierre Guerre and Bertrande, who quickly learns of du Tilh's imposture, but outwardly fervently maintains that he is really Martin Guerre. Pierre, however, decides to form an inquest into Pansette's identity, suspecting something is out of place.

The inquest turns into a trial where witnesses - Martin's friends, family, doctors, neighbors - cannot agree on his identity. In fact, Pansette is such a good impersonator that about one-third of them say he is Martin, another third say he isn't, and the remaining refuse to comment, being too baffled or fearing retribution from a member of the village. He is found guilty, but appeals to an illustrious court in Toulouse, where the author of one of the first accounts of the story, Jean de Coras, sits as a judge. After careful consideration, he overturns the ruling of the lower court, and announces Pansette innocent. At that moment, a man with a wooden leg enters the courtroom claiming to be Martin Guerre. One by one, everyone begins to recognize "the newcomer" (as Pansette calls him), and within a matter of hours Martin, who has been gone for a several years, regains his reputation, family, and friends inside the courtroom. Coras sees the error of his previous judgment and sentences Pansette to, first, an "amende honorable" (a traditional French assignation of culpability) and then death by hanging (a punishment deeply tied to avarice in the medieval imagination).

Davis ends again on a speculative note, suggesting that perhaps Coras found sympathy with Pansette because of their common sympathy for Reformation ideas (Coras was and remained fairly liberal for the time). Given the time period, there were countless accusations slung back and forth of faithlessness and apostasy. However, the book is much too short and this part in particular too underdeveloped to seriously support this idea.

Interesting, too, is what Davis never explicitly takes much time to discuss, but nevertheless lurks beneath the surface: ideas of identity, gender, property acquisition, incipient capitalism, and belonging in sixteenth-century France. So, while a causal reader can enjoy it for its unique historical cache, those whose interest is more academic have a lot to unpack, too. For those interested in enjoying the latter approach, I recommend a reading in tandem with Valentine Groebner's "Who Are You?: Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe," which takes the time to fill out some of the undercurrents in Davis' thought which she only alluded to.