Emmanuel Legeard

This is an absolutely remarkable book, which demystifies the folkloric nonsense of the lamentable local histories which preceded it by connecting the history of Berry to the most resounding events of the great history involving Julius Caesar, Vercingetorix, Clovis, Joan of Arc, François I king of France, Louis XIV, or Colbert, Controller-General of Finances under the French king Louis XIV, and the Revolutionaries of 1789.

A work of medieval anthropological history in the same vein as Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou, and written with style, Emmanuel Legeard's "Germigny-l'Exempt" shows how a French village evolved from a Gallo-Roman villa to one of the most powerful strongholds in Europe, became the cradle of the Bourbon's power and eventually received an extraordinary church, just to fall back into oblivion at the beginning of the Renaissance period. An amazing book, that deserves to be translated.