# The Return of Martin Guerre
## Natalie Zemon Davis

- "Clandestine marriage"
- Marriage in canon law defined by consent of partners and their consent alone - ven w/o priests or witnesses present
- Church disapproved but still technically allowed
- Can allow one to think of marriage as something in their (Bertrande & Arnaud) hands to create, rather than an external structure imposed upon them by parents/society/priest
- However under Catholicism still adulterers / would be excommunicated immediately
- Hope from protestantism
    - They could tell story/be answerable to god alone and not families/community
    - Marriage no longer a sacrament, divorce/remarriage more permissable
    - Also a sort of "rebirth" or "conversion" for previously-vice-ridden Arnaud

- Self-fashioning vs lying
    - Self-fashioning - molding speech, manners, gestures, conversation to help advance socially
    - When did self-fashioning stop and lying begin?
    - Bertrande also self-fashions
    - Written about by de Montaigne - maybe Of cripples?

- Judge in Toulouse - Jean de Coras
    - highly educated, prodigy of law, very in love with wife
- Account of trial - "Arrest Memorable"
    - Depiction of trial + Annotation
- Tendency to favor keeping marriages/families together when in doubt (law - societal stability over truth?)
    - e.g., did not press Bertrande too hard even though her testimony was very suspicious, court believes that she was tricked
- 1557 treatise on clandestine marriages - against them completely, unlike Catholic church
    - Protestant view - marriage requiring not priest, but approval of *parents* (as proxy for God)
- sudden return of martin guerre seemed like a protestant-y act of providence/god's grace
    - when all the bureaucracy of the courts have failed (and the judicial system being derived from canon law courts of catholicism/vatican)
    - in the end we are still fallible, can only rely on providence
- Larger protestant argument, maybe
    - Under protestantism
        - Marriage of children wouldn't happen
        - Bertrande would be given divorce much more readily in absence of husband
        - And would have quickly discovered adultery? (how?)
- Though a legal text, Arrest Memorable calls into question the power of law to ascertain truth and dispense justice
    - Still shows some doubts Coras had about the case, almost giving Arnaud some credit
- Text (with less than dispassionate commentary) exaggerates Arnaud's memory, makes Bertrande more innocent, adds more crimes to Arnaud
    - Emphasize text as a moral story, but with a strangely heroic villain
    - No hero at all
    - Martin not portrayed in great light, nor any indication that marriage will be happy
    - First edition doesn't even include confession, but was added later

- Michel de Montaigne "Of the Lame" essay (of cripples)
- About why witches should not be burned
- References Martin Guerre, not just superficially
- difficulty of knowing truth and how uncertain human reason is
- "Truth and falsehood have both alike countenances....we beholde them with one same eye"
- Considers that by Coras' account, not enough evidence to make a judgment (maybe only read first version without confession)
- Especially for death penalty, needs luminous, sharp clarity of evidence
- Rebukes Coras for decision, however, Coras himself kept a lot of ambiguity in Arrest Memorable

- Finally, a question for historians/history books like this one - what is truth, and how can we be sure?