Picture the scene. It is some time in the late twelfth century, and we are in the French Pyrenees. In the spa town of Ax-les-Thermes, Arnold Weaver, a doctor and sometime notary from nearby Lordat, is in the square. He is approached by an older man, who looks to be in his fifties. It is his father-in-law Peter, another notary. There is tension in the air. ‘Arnold,’ Peter says, ‘you are not on good terms with me, or with your wife Guillemette, my daughter. You are harsh and cruel [to her], and you're doing this against Scripture, which teaches that a man should be peaceful, gentle and agreeable.’ Arnold will have none of this: ‘It's usually your daughter's fault,’ he tells Peter. ‘She is bad-tempered and a gossip.’ Peter seems to have no answer, and the conversation takes a surprising lurch. ‘Arnold,’ Peter interjects, ‘it says this in the Gospel of St John, “In the beginning was the word” …’. The subsequent exchange on the interpretation of scripture and the quality of each other's Latin is entertaining, but Guillemette does not come up again, and so we shall leave them as they walk on out of the town.

This brief story, which began Arnold's testimony before bishop-inquisitor Jacques Fournier in December 1321, offers a glimpse into the workings of a fourteenth-century marriage. The exchange reveals that, in Peter's mind at least, a married couple should be on good terms, live peaceably and that a husband should be gentle and kind.