In 1360 Countess Delphine de Puimichel died in Provence, and in 1363 her supporters appeared before a papal commission in Apt to provide eye-witness testimonies of her miraculous feats in an attempt to get her canonised. Nicole Archambeau is clear from the outset that Souls under Siege is not about Delphine, but what the witnesses revealed about "plague, war and confession in a swiftly changing world" (1). They certainly had stories to tell, because they had survived the first two outbreaks of the Black Death in 1347-48 and 1361, the two worst health catastrophes of the last millennium, a series of mercenary invasions, and political instability in the region following the death of the king of Naples. Archambeau draws on sixty-eight witness statements, made by a roughly equal mix of men and women from a wide range of backgrounds: noble lords and future cardinals to lowly servants.

An unusual feature of the material is the way in which the inquest was organised. The notary responsible for the inquest and interview procedures, Nicolau Laurens, had been collecting material about Delphine for some years, and organised the questioning around ninety-eight articles relating to all aspects of Delphine's saintly credentials. So, rather than simply making a statement or responding to a narrow range of articles in script-like fashion, every witness had the option to comment (or not) on all the articles. Such open-ended articles, and the freedom to respond to all of them, are rare in such inquests and they enabled the witnesses to speak about what was important to them, rather than more narrowly about what the commissioners considered to be important. The purpose of the book is to use "witness stories of plague, war and confession to reflect on larger events from their perspective [...] and to explore the resonances of witness testimony for the history of this transformative moment" (17).

Archambeau is at pains not to impose the assumptions and priorities of the modern historian onto these testimonies and, in letting the witnesses speak for themselves, concludes that they were more interested in the state of their souls and their spiritual welfare. "For them, violence was too often a sin with as strong a spiritual impact as a physical one" (18). They sought consolation through their holy woman - Delphine - thereby implicitly criticising the political and religious institutions that had failed them, and they sought to heal the spiritual sickness embodied in disease and war through love, consolation, and the certainty that they were doing all they could to salve their souls.

The result is a fascinating and absorbing book which presents a wealth of details. For example, the testimonies provide explicit confirmation that some people who caught plague did indeed recover. A priest from Marseille was facing death through fever and tumor in early June but, following a vision of Delphine, his fever subsided in five days, the tumor disappeared within a fortnight and he was then able to walk again. Likewise, Anthonet, the son of Lord Rigo, was languishing with fever and buboes, did not eat for seven days, and eventually lost speech and vision, but from the brink of death he revived miraculously after his mother made a vow to serve at Delphine's tomb.

We learn how truces between warring monarchs created more instability and violence than periods of campaigning warfare, because the mercenaries on whom they depended were released from their contracts and let loose down the Rhone valley seeking booty, food, payment not to attack a locality or, indeed, payment from some feuding local lord to attack another one. The scale of this problem was new in the mid-fourteenth century, because of the incessant and changing nature of warfare. Monarchs relied increasingly on professional mercenaries but had little control over them during the sporadic episodes of peace. Local people lived in fear of their raiding and violence, and their lords could do little against such hardened and brutal mercenaries. These Great Companies, which Archambeau estimates at around 50,000 men roaming around Provence in 1361, carried plague, created massive challenges for proper sanitation, disrupted food supplies, wintered in monasteries, and captured key towns such as Pont St. Esprit and Carpentras.

The colour and splash of individual witnesses enliven the analysis throughout. In 1358 mercenaries had attacked and seized control of the town of Cucuron, so in May Lord Ferrier of the same was expected to regain the town by force and sought inspiration from Delphine. She warned him not to become embroiled in the battle as violence was dangerous to his mortal soul, but he could not follow her advice because his honour required him to lead his people into the attack. Delphine promised to intercede on his behalf, so when not one but two of his horses broke down while charging on the town, Robert took this as a divine portent and an honourable excuse to withdraw from the fray: as Archambeau observes, "this is a rare presentation of a knight's awareness of danger and fear, strikingly different to what is seen in the chronicles of the time" (86-89).

While it is widely understood that medieval Christians lived in fear of dying in a state of sin, one of the most powerful facets to emerge from the testimonies is their belief in the power of confession to remove its "poisonous, deadly baggage" (166). Yet there were ways and means to increase the effectiveness of penance, and light is cast onto the anxieties generated when human frailties prevented complete confession, such as memory loss, speech impediments, and genuine uncertainty about what behaviour qualified as sinful. For example, Lady Maria D'Evenos began suffering from eating disorders in 1346 and by 1353 was seriously ill, and probably prone to delirium, when as a last resort she was taken to see Delphine. Maria's condition was causing loss of memory and an inability to express her sins, thus preventing a full deathbed confession and condemning her to extended time in purgatory or worse. Yet the meeting cleared her mind and anxieties, she suddenly recalled every sin committed from the age of seven, expressed them clearly with the requisite compunction and contribution, and, best of all, went on to regain a hearty appetite and make a full recovery (139-41).

The book is based on an exceptional source permitting rare insights into how ordinary people addressed their fears of two pandemics, endemic warfare and the instability caused by lawlessness. It deserves, and thankfully has found, an exceptional historian to render it justice. This scholarly book wears its deep scholarship so lightly, and is written so sympathetically and intelligently, that it will be readily accessible and absorbing to a wider historical and even general readership.

Mark Bailey