Martin Guerre - Contemporary Accounts and Interpretations

Contemporary Accounts and Interpretations

Two contemporary accounts of the case were written: Histoire Admirable by Guillaume Le Sueur and the better known Arrest Memorable by Jean de Coras, one of the trial judges in Toulouse.

In 1983, Princeton University history professor Natalie Zemon Davis published a detailed exploration of the case in her book The Return of Martin Guerre. She argued that Bertrande had silently or explicitly agreed to the fraud because she needed a husband in that society, and she was treated well by Arnaud. Davis noted as evidence for this theory the improbability of a woman's mistaking a stranger for her husband, Bertrande's support for Arnaud until (and even partially during) the trial, and their shared story of intimacy, likely prepared in advance.

The historian Robert Finlay has criticized Davis' conclusions, arguing that Bertrande was duped (as most of her contemporaries believed, including the trial judges) after her husband's long absence. He thought that Davis attempted to fit a modern societal model (of an independent woman making her own choices) onto the historical account. He points to the improbability of Bertrande's charging her own accomplice with fraud, as she would run the risk of having to defend herself against charges of adultery or false accusation.

Davis responded to Finlay's arguments in her article "On the Lame" in the same issue of The American Historical Review in June 1988.