The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe

by R.I. Moore

The great war on heresy obsessed medieval Europe in the centuries after the first millennium. R. I. Moore's vivid narrative focuses on the motives and anxieties of those who declared and conducted the war: what were the beliefs and practices they saw as heretical? How might such beliefs have arisen? And why were they such a threat?

In western Europe at AD 1000 heresy had barely been heard of. Yet within a few generations accusations had become commonplace and institutions were being set up to identify and suppress beliefs and practices seen as departures from true religion. Fears of heresy inspired passions that moulded European society for the rest of the middle ages and resulted in a series of persecutions that left an indelible mark on its history and culture. Popular accounts of events - most notably of the Albigensian Crusade led by Europe against itself - have assumed the threats posed by the heretical movements were only too real. Some scholars by contrast have tried to show that reports of heresy were exaggerated or even fabricated: but if they are correct why was the war on heresy launched at all? And why was it conducted with such pitiless ferocity?

To find the answers to these and other questions R. I. Moore returns to the evidence of the time. His investigation forms the basis for an account as profound as it is startlingly original.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Religion, Medieval History, Christianity, Academic

378 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Robert Ian Moore was a British historian who was Professor Emeritus of History at Newcastle University. He specialised in medieval history and wrote several influential works on the subject of heresy. Moore was a pioneer in the UK of the teaching of world history to undergraduate students, published numerous papers on comparative world history, and was series editor of the Blackwell History of the World.

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite history books annoy both sides in an ongoing argument, and that's what Moore can do here. He'll really piss of those who want medieval heretics to stand in as great martyrs to conscience who were cruelly mistreated by imperialistic, colonising, hegemonic etc etces. He'll also piss of those who see in heresy a genuine danger that needs to be resisted (though not, generally, persecuted).

His argument is, in short, that the 'heretics' of the high middle ages were by and large people who pushed the church's own reformist principles a little too far. The Papacy wanted priests to be better educated, celibate, less corrupt, and less abusive... the 'heretics' were often just people who thought and believed this, but were on the wrong side of other conflicts. They weren't really heretics at all; the problem was that they stood in the way of, for instance, the French king's desire to centralize or bring what we now know as France under his power. Or, later, you could be labelled a heretic for defending traditional, local forms of religion against these universalizing reforms.

Moore discusses dozens of cases, and shows how all of the prosecutions or inquisitions of heresy were the result of many small events: political struggles, yes, but also the increasing use of clerics all educated to see centralized government as a good; the habit of tarring those who disagreed with you about strictly temporal matters as heretics; the very odd belief that 'disagreeing with the pope' was an instance of heresy, even when the pope's opinion was, roughly, "I want that land"... on and on.

The question of how many Cathars there were before the Albigensian Crusade, Moore suggests, is like the question how many witches there were in Europe before the witch-hunts: the persecuted peoples were more or less invented by the persecuted. Those who died did not die for their beliefs; they were not Luther and his 'here I stand.' They were just unfortunates caught up in political squabbles and massive sociological change, eliminated because they had land or wealth that others wanted. There's no moral about holding fast to your beliefs. The moral of the story is, as ever, those with the armor will win.

The downside to his attention to detail is that the book is more or less a mess. Far too many chapters, far, far too many sections, and too much repetition. At the sentence level, though, Moore writes very well.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covers a colourful period (987 to 1307) in which as a highlight Pope Innocent III incited the sacking of Constantinople and the atrocities of the Albigensian Crusade, leaving the inquisition as his legacy. It is quite a lengthy and detailed book, each chapter chewing over its particular events with care before moving on, but I was never really inclined to speed read, because each chapter has an absorbing tale to tell, while Moore is actually assembling the evidence we need to demonstrate that what we think we know is wrong and he puts forward a genuinely fascinating and consistent alternative. He does not dwell on the lurid and brutal aspects of the story, which frankly I have found disturbing in other detailed accounts of the Albigensian Crusade and the inquisition. Indeed, his account can be quite witty at times. Still, he does remind us that this is a period when military power was on the rampage, with little protection or restraint, while the popular affectation of knightly honour was really covering a dependence on undisciplined mercenary armies, behaving like wolves towards the population wherever they operated. His focus is on religious faith and he unfolds quite a touching story of the clash between the beliefs and customs of a peasant society and the arrogance of an emerging economic elite. Interesting milestones are also noted in European history - the birth of academic freedom, the reasons women were excluded from priestly roles, the enclosure of public spaces such as cemetries. He closes with a quick overview of other books challenging what we know about the middle ages and that in itself is a delight for the Goodreads enthusiast to explore.

The account of the war on heresy in this book has denied or set aside, in whole or in part, almost everything that most readers (including many academic readers) thought they knew about it. [p332]

Catharism ... is supposed to be both the most formidable heresy of the middle ages ... and ... the principle reason for the establishment of the medieval inquisition. Here I have concluded, by contrast, that there was no European wide heretical movement. There were indeed to be found all over twelfth century Europe ... groups of ardent believers who often were or became heretics and who often resembled one another in their beliefs and practices. The reason ... was not, as ecclesiastical and lay rulers alike tended to believe, because they were all part of a single movement... It was that they were all reacting against the same changes in the Church and its growing wealth and power, and because they all found their inspiration in the Christian scriptures, especially the Gospels, the book of Acts and the epistles of St. Paul. [p333]

The war on heresy, including the establishment of the papal inquisition, was not primarily a response to the growth of heresy. It was, like the Albigensian Crusade, part of the formation of a new political and social order in Latin Europe, driven as much by the ambitions of secular as of ecclesiastical rulers and their advisers. [p334]

There has been a long tradition of separation between the study of secular and religious history. In one form or another it goes back to ancient Christian times, when Eusebius of Caearea wrote his Ecclesiastical History at the beginning of the fourth century. It is visible today in the existence in European and in North American universities of separate departments, often in different faculties, of History and of Religious or Church History, and of separate (though nowadays overlapping) academic journals to publish their research. [p338]

Church historians were correspondingly slow to adopt the critical techniques of mainstream history... because the advocacy of those techniques was intimately associated with religious scepticism, and with overt hostility to the social and political influence of the churches. In the later twentieth century, both groups of historians slowly began to outgrow the legacy of mutual suspicion... There are still many areas in which the contrasting approaches remain clearly visible. The study of medieval history is one of them. Paradoxically, so long as Schmidt’s story of the Cathars remained more or less in place,... secular historians were reassured by the fact that the registers and writings of the inquisitors had long been edited in accordance with the highest scholarly standards, though for the most part by scholars who shared the inquisitors’ assumptions. ... fundamental questions were not applied to preinquisitorial texts about heresy until 1975, when Robert-Henri Bautier... published his conclusions about the burning at Orleans. In transforming the clerks of Orleans from a coterie of obscure intellectuals dabbling on the fringes of mysticism and magic into the highly placed victims of the ruthlessly organised show trial described in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book, Bautier pointed the way to transforming the study of medieval history itself. [p340]

Hermits and holy men are generally seen as paving the way for the more systematic and comprehensive reforms that began to be put in place from around 1100, as bishops slowly acquired a new consciousness of their spiritual and pastoral responsibilities and the political and administrative skills to secure the cooperation of the laity in discharging them. Reform came very late to the lands between the Massif Central and the Pyranees. It was not until well into the twelfth century that rural parishes began to be organised, priests appointed and tithes collected from the laymen who had previously appropriated them, and the services and disciplines of the church, including the regular administration of the sacraments, to be enforced. The success of Henry and Peter of Bruys in the 1120s and ‘30s shows that the process was not universally welcomed. ... We can say with confidence that they were not theological dualists or subject to any such influence. On the contrary, what they offered was a simple community-based theology and worship .... there is every reason to suppose that in the eys of the villagers they appeared as champions of old and familiar ways against the newfangled and expensive ones being pressed by the arrogant young clerks from the city. In this context their insistence that church buildings – let alone elaborate furnishings and fittings for them – were unnecessary because God could be worshipped in a field, or anwhere else where a few faithful were assembled, is particularly revealing if we pause to reflect at whose expense the many hundred of churches that are the glory of European architecture in this period were raised. [p126]
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For four or five generations now, in the more prosperous parts of Europe, the systematic exploitation of agrarian wealth had become ever more harsh to the cultivators, while the increasing surplus that it generated supported the rapid growth of the towns and the conspicuous affluence of the privileged... The tensions arising from rapid economic growth and the consequent widening of social differences were manifested not only in widespread anticlerical unrest for which the language of religious reform provided expression but also in any revolts and rebellions, both in the towns and the countryside. They were for the most part easily and ruthlessly suppressed... Nevertheless, they were enough to prevent the mighty from always sleeping easily in their beds. [p150]
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The conceptual basis of the distinction between clergy and laity, perhaps in the long run the most important result of the papal reform, though by no means the unanimous intention of reformers, was also greatly clarified in the 1140s. The idea of ordination now came to depend on a ritual in which the individual was permanently endowed with the power of conferring the sacraments, rather than simply being appointed to carry out certain functions in the community. That such power could not be vested in women or laymen was not ancient or firmly established doctrine. It emerged in the first decade of the twelfth century.... Yet there are many references to women deacons in the records of the early church... Abelard also said, citing other distinguished masters in his support, that in celebrating the Mass the words of consecration themselves were sufficient, regardless of who said them. Such a view threatened both to leave the way open for women to act as ministers and to blur the developing distinction between clergy and laity. [p152]
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Bernard was not so much a hound of heaven as a blunderbuss that could be relied upon to explode with a loud bang when aimed and primed by others. [p147]
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The content and structure of Against the Petrobrusians, therefore, were determined by the requirements of Peter the Venerable’s defence of contemporary catholic teaching rather than by what Peter of Bruys actually taught or believed. For this reason caution is necessary and it becomes ever more so from the 1140s onwards in weighing statements in academic dissertations and by academically trained masters as evidence of the actual beliefs and practices of the heretics against whom they were ostensibly directed. [p148]
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Gilbert de la Poree, the most celebrated master of the day, ... was accused by two of his archdeacons, who got Bernard of Clairvaux to take up their case, as he had done against Peter Abelard at sense in 1141... These confrontations were inspired at one level by the great question of how far the issues of theology and the mysteries of the faith were to be subjected to the rumbustious and sceptical questioning of the dialectical method of the schools, as opposed to the authoritative exposition ex cathedra of the monastic tradition and of old-fashioned masters such as Anselm of Laon ... The result in 1141 had been calamitous for Abelard, the most daring and enormously popular exponent of the dialectic, who went to Sens anticipating an academic disputation, in which he had no equal, and found himself facing a trail in which Bernard had rigged the jury... The outcome of Gilbert’s trial was very different ... Gilbert was able to rally the cardinals to his defence... It was the last time a noted master was held to account in this way before a public assembly of clerks and laymen. Henceforth, ... it was effectively left to the masters themselves to regulate orthodoxy in their teaching and speculation. This was the beginning of the cherished European tradition of academic freedom. [p155]
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Eckbert, however, went further than any of his predecessors in using Augustine to build an account of teachings and practices based on the belief that the material world was the creation of an evil deity... In doing so, he confused two of the sects that Augustine had described: the Novatians, also known in Augustine’s time as Cathari, who were particularly obsessed with sexual purity and rejected marriage, and the dualist Manichees. Eckbert was followed by some of his medieval successors in conflating the two, but only in the nineteenth century did the equation come to be general and the name Cathars to be applied indiscriminately to anybody in the middle ages whose ascetic beliefs or practices were mentioned as evidence of heresy. [p170]
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Innocent’s pontificate was crowned by the great council, known as Lateran IV, which he summoned in 1215... In seventy canons the document issued with its authority drew together the reforming initiatives of the past century and a half to shape the church for the rest of the middle ages, consolidating and greatly extending the role of the clergy in every aspect of personal life and public affairs. The war on heresy was presented as the primary rationale for these measures... Like all sweeping and visionary measures of administrative reform, the implementation of the decrees would entail vastly increased responsibilities and opportunities for the administrators themselves. Lateran IV was a charter for the clericalisation of society. [pp264, 265]
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The ability of the papacy to control ecclesiastical appointments and through them to provide emoluments and promotion for its functionaries as well as advancement of its policies was greatly extended, though at a heavy cost in political resentment. Nevertheless, local clergy would always be more vulnerable, and often more sympathetic, to local interests and traditions, than seemed desirable from a Roman perspective. ... A solution to this problem, as indeed to many others, was supplied by one of the most dramatic developments in the church since the days of the papal revolution, the appearance of the friars (from the Latin frater, ‘brother’)... At Bologna in 1220 Dominic confirmed in a general chapter of his followers that preaching was the main business of their order. His insistence that the best available academic training in theology and disputation was an essential foundation for their task not only took Dominicans to the newly established universities of Paris and Bologna but quickly attracted recruits among the students and masters... The friars differed from the monks of the traditional orders not only in renouncing all property, living by begging (and for that reason being known as mendicants) and devoting themselves to activity in the world, but also in embracing not stability but mobility. They had no affiliation to a particular house and owed obedience not to an abbot or prior but to the superiors of their order and through them directly to the papacy, at whose disposal they always remained. [pp270, 271]
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The preachers won great influence ... because without property and far from their homes and families, austere in their lives and manifestly free of the ties and interests from which quarrels and conflicts arose, they could be entrusted with the desperately needed business of arbitration and reconciliation. They lost their position just as surely when it became apparent that they could not, or would not, exercise the powers that had been vested in them with the expected impartiality. [p287]
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Peter Martyr of Verona was probably the author, around 1235, of the earliest of a series of treatises on heresy produced by the Italian Dominicans...the longest and most comprehensive of these treatises, by Moneta of Cremona (c1240), is so thoroughly governed by the requirements of academic exposition of catholic orthodoxy that it is doubtful whether it addressed any real heresy at all. It was a classroom exercise, designed to equip its students systematically with rebuttals of every shade of heretical opinion that they might conceivably encounter, rather than those they actually would... The most influential of these treatises, by Rainier Sacchoni, wasted no time on minnows. ‘Once there were many sects of heretics but they have now been almost destroyed. Two of importance, however, are still to be found, the Cathars or Patarini and the Leoniste or Poor Men of Lyon.’[pp314, 315] ... Wherever they looked, the inquisitors found confirmation of their expectation that despite their acknowledged divisions the Cathars constituted a single enemy. [p318]
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For three quarters of a century by now students had been leaving their classrooms thoroughly exercised in the detection and rebuttal of this spectre. Small wonder if most of them had become persuaded that such beliefs were widely entertained in the real world beyond their classrooms. It was now fast becoming true that the more learned a man was in the traditional scholarship of his time, the more likely he was to believe in Cathars. By this time graduates predominated in responsible positions, pastoral as well as administrative, at almost every level in the church. [p277]
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‘The inquisition’ of popular legend did not exist at any time in the middle ages. Each inquisitor was personally appointed and operated independently, at first for particular occasions, later with general responsibility in a designated area. There was no formal coordination between inquisitions, no central office or registry. But the mobility of the friars fostered the exchange of ideas and experience among them, and they habitually read and used each other’s records and treatises (or, as we might say, case notes). The uniformity of their procedures fostered a uniformity of observation. The same questions, posed in the same prescribed words, often evoked the same answers. The common intellectual formation in the theology of the schools, with its growing emphasis on the reality of evil, nourished by the dedication of their order to the eradication of heresy and the cult of their martyred brethren, gave the Dominican inquisitors a formidable coherence of outlook and expectation soon matched by their Franciscan counterparts. In any case, it was natural if not inevitable that there should have been many real resemblances between the innumerable bodies of believers that formed and reformed throughout our period – for the most part, we must never forget, to be reintegrated in one way or another into the church. Since there is only a limited number of ways in which sects can operate, they tend to have a distinct family resemblance, stressing the story and teaching of the gospels and of St. Paul and favouring what they believed to be a literal adherence to their precepts, valuing simplicity of life and ritual, of which they needed to develop at least a minimum to express their community and mark the great transitions of life. [p318]

Heretics sought to imitate the lives and obey the teachings of the apostles, and a basis for everything they said and believed may be found in the New Testament.... The similarities among the heretics that catholic observers attributed to a common doctrine and organisation can at least as well be explained by common experience, and by a common history that began not in the mists of antiquity but in the upheavals of their own quite recent past. [pp318-319]

[Scribble Orca]

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/a...

Excellent analysis by Diarmaid Macculloch.

[Wing · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 300-page book on a complicated period over a quarter of a millennium is unlikely to be straightforward. Using primary sources Professor Moore demonstrates to the reader that there was never any "European-wide heretical movement" in the Middle Ages. Neoplatonism had a tendency to destabilize Christian theology. Meanwhile, lay piety had a tendency to challenge ecclesiastical authority when simony was practiced in one form or another. Heterodoxy and even heresy had been well tolerated for a long time. However, when the papacy, the empire, local aristocracies, and the middle class started to seriously compete for land and power, accusation of heresies became a convenient and deadly political tool. The myth of an organised heretical force such as the Cathars was thence developed. The story can be at times confusing but the account is exciting and indeed a page-turner.

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

My path to this book was somewhat circuitous. Recommended to a podcast ("The Rest is History") which, recommended this book about heresy and the Cathars. Yes, I read the blurb on the back cover which promised that this would turn upside down any ideas that I had about the Albigensian crusades, and the inquisition and the repression of the cathars in Southern France (but also in Italy and Bulgaria). R I Moore (Bob) seems to have an impeccable reputation as a historian so I'm inclined to take on trust most of what he claims. He clams for instance that heresy in the church was virtually non existent until about 1100 AD and the term Cathars was not used by the bon homies in the south of France. It was used in Lateran III (1178) and came to be used as a general term for Heretics of any sort (whatever their particular beliefs) but probably only came into common usage in the nineteenth century and more recently with all sorts of fantastic notions about holy grails and the paternity of Jesus.

Moore, also claims that there was no evidence of the heresy of belief in duality (simplistically, a good god and an evil god) in the Languadoc region prior to about 1100. He suggests that the concept emerged from the cathedral schools being established throughout Europe. "There had been no trace of theological dualism in the answers of the boni homines at Lombers or, more importantly, in the questions put to them.......The assumption that dualist heresy was widespread in the region by this time, and that it had originated in the Balkans, was buttressed in the second half of the twentieth century by the conclusion of a distinguished scholar, ably reinforced by another".....[Who were these scholars? They are not named by Moore... rivals of Moore perhaps ?] According to Moore "We certainly cannot exclude the possibility that the spectre [of dualism], by now regularly deployed as target practice in the classrooms of Paris, had been raised by the legate’s party itself"........ I got the impression from reading the book that these "classrooms" started with the completion of the great cathedrals after about 1100 AD but, on checking, I found that Charlemagne had issued a decree in 789 AD that schools be established in every monastery and Bishopric. So they had been around for a long time. Anyway, the fundamental ideas prevalent about the heresy derived from Augustine's description of the Manichean sect. (And he'd been a member for about ten years so, presumably, knew it well). And when the inquisitors went looking for this heresy....they found it. Surprise!! (The fact that it's a heresy was really decided by a vote ...not universal ...by a convention of Bishops who emerged with the Nicean Creed). Arianism...the basic notion being that the Son came into being through the will of the Father; the Son, therefore, had a beginning and was not of the same substance as the father. Hence, it was a form of dualism as well......the idea that Jesus was somehow made of the imperfect worldly material substance......or worse, was truly mortal....was fairly widely held.

Moore says "Augustine was the most influential, in the Latin tradition........His vivid descriptions of the Manichees, of their belief in two gods–one good, who presided over the realm of the spirit, and one evil, who ruled the material universe–and of their refusal to perpetuate the domain of the latter by eating meat or procreating, made this the most feared of all ancient heresies."

I'm left wondering if Moore really has it correct. Certainly, the heresy of Adoptionism (basically the dual nature of Christ) was around in Spain in the year 301 when the Council of Eliberis assembled at Granada (see https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/archdiocese-of-granada) The council included: St. Gregory, Bishop of Elliberis, who assisted at the councils of Sirmium and Rimini, and "was the constant antagonist of the Arian heresy". Obviously, he was not altogether successful because Beatus of Liebana (around 790 Ad) was still fighting against the heresy of adoptionism though most famous for the fantastic (horrific) illustrated books of the apocalypse (the text basically copied from other sources). And Felix, Bishop of Urgell in Lerida, Spain, was actually convicted of the heresy of Adoptionism in 792. The Muslim conquest almost certainly imported dualist ideas into Spain and was regarded, initially by the locals, as just another sect of Christianity. (I have heard the idea expressed that the repression and forced conversions from the donatism and manicheanism expressions of christianity in North Africa had served to open up the people there to the, later, forced conversion to the Muslim religion.......just another sect). So I would be surprised if the widespread ideas of duality had not penetrated the Languadoc region prior to 800 AD (either from Spain or from elsewhere) but were not regarded as unusual, or non christian. In fact, given that most of the ordinary folk were illiterate then they were fair game for any ideas that were spread around ...and arianism and manicheanism certainly had appealing elements. (Such as an explanation for evil in the world, and more acceptable explanations of the crucifixion and the eucharist.

Bottom line....my confidence in Bob Moore, whilst not quite shattered, is certainly shaken.

One of his other great themes is that the Inquisition was not a huge force but rather small groups of individuals who had been given special powers by the Pope. "‘The inquisition’ of popular legend did not exist at any time in the middle ages. Each inquisitor was personally appointed and operated independently, at first for particular occasions, later with general responsibility in a designated area......Their common intellectual formation in the theology of the [cathedral] schools, with its growing emphasis on the reality of evil........and the cult of their martyred brethren, gave the Dominican inquisitors a formidable coherence of outlook and expectation soon matched by their Franciscan counterparts." Though none of this came as a surprise to me. Maybe I had been conditioned by earlier readings (such as Montaillou and a Short History of the Cathars) to understand that the insidious power of the Inquisitors was due, in part, to the back-up they were able to demand from local authorities, their demands for people to inform on others, and their immunity from normal rules for evidence or proof. The 1184 papal bull, "Ad abolendam, said that ‘all counts, barons, governors and consuls of cities, and other places’ must undertake on oath to give the church every support and assistance in its endeavours, on pain of losing their lands and offices, being excommunicated and having their goods confiscated for the use of the church. The inquisition were assisted greatly by the fact that a high proportion of their victims were illiterate and didn't understand either their own doctrines accurately or the "rules" that were being applied by the inquisitors, or the correct doctrines of the catholic church. Their own beliefs were a jumble of part catholic, part, witchcraft and part biblical based beliefs. As Moore says "Those accused of spreading heresy in the early eleventh century had one thing, and only one thing, in common: they claimed to live the apostolic life........The only rational appraisal that the sources support is that in the first half of the eleventh century heresy among the common people did not present any coherent or concerted challenge either to the authority of the church or to the structure of society..........Anyone might pick up such ideas, in any number of ways. But those who did so would become heretics only, as Gerard of Cambrai demonstrated at Arras, if they refused to abandon them in the face of episcopal correction." In later years, it seems that even where people abandoned their ideas or had "correct" ideas, they were still condemned or had their property seized ...which made them paupers.

Idealists and enthusiasts had no need of papal mandates to make the connection regularly proclaimed by the reformers, that only those who led the apostolic life were fit to preach. From there it was a short step to claim that living the apostolic life was all the licence a preacher needed......Clement and Everard did not know Latin, his assumption here must be that they, or their leaders, had access to a translation of at least this much scripture into the vernacular. We shall see again that such translations did exist, particularly of the Acts of the Apostles, although churchmen increasingly disapproved of them.

I found it interesting that "The Jews of northern France at this time were prosperous, reflecting their essential role as connected to an international trading network and as specialists in the uses of money, indispensable to the opening up of new land to cultivation and the establishment and growth of markets that underlay the economic take-off of western Europe in the twelfth century.......Wherever the Jews went, they had schools.....In denying the incarnation and the resurrection of Christ, Judaism pointed directly at the areas in which Christian scholars were experiencing the greatest difficulties in working out a logical and compelling account of their own theology,"

Some "nuggets" from Moore which I found interesting follow:
"Against the Petrobrusians is our only source for the teaching of Peter of Bruys. It attributes five principal heresies to him: (i) ‘that children who have not reached the age of understanding cannot be saved by Christian baptism’ and cannot benefit from the faith of godparents on their behalf; (ii) ‘that there should be no churches or temples in any kind of building, and that those which already exist should be pulled down. Christians do not need holy places in which to pray, because when God is called he hears, whether in a tavern or a church, in the street or in a temple, before an altar or in a stable, and he listens to those who deserve it;’ (iii) ‘that holy crosses should be broken and burned, because the instrument on which Christ was so horribly tortured and so cruelly killed is not worthy of adoration;’ (iv) ‘that they deny the truth that the body and blood of Christ is offered daily and continuously in church through the sacrament’; and (v) ‘that they deride offerings by the faithful of sacrifices, prayers, alms, and other things for the dead, and say that nothing can help the dead in any way.".....Doesn't sound very different from the views of the Protestant church that I grew up in!
There was a "contradiction in the business of reform that long remained unresolved. It owed both spiritual respectability and intellectual coherence to a universal ideal derived from the neoplatonist spirituality of the late Carolingian schools, expressed in the apostolic life and given programmatic form and Europe-wide circulation by the Gregorian papacy and its agents. But for practical support in local conflicts it appealed to popular indignation arising from grievances.....So Henry and Peter of Bruys were formidable spokesmen for the little community. They possessed an articulate and consistent theology, characterised by stark individualism and an uncompromising rejection of large and abstract structures of authority in favour of those firmly rooted in the community itself. They denounced clerical vice and avarice, and repudiated most sources of clerical income and power. They denied the authority of the church fathers to interpret the scriptures and insisted on their own right to do so. They maintained that marriage was a matter for those concerned and not a sacrament of the church. They advocated the baptism of adults, not of infants, and confession in public before the community, not in private to priests.......They represented a challenge increasingly difficult for the reformers to ignore."

"If there was a moment when the war on heresy was formally declared, it was May 1163. A council of the church, meeting at Tours under the presidency of Pope Alexander III and the patronage of Henry II, king of England and duke of Aquitaine, declared that: In the district of Toulouse a damnable heresy has recently arisen, which, like a cancer gradually diffusing itself over the neighbouring places, has already infected vast numbers throughout Gascony and other provinces, and hiding itself like a serpent in its own folds, undermines the vineyard of the Lord........The clergy are to be proactive. It is no longer enough to wait for heretics to reveal themselves by preaching or evangelism."

"New measures against heresy and a new conviction of its universal, underground presence, set in train the events that led to the Albigensian Crusade, the establishment of the papal inquisition and the subjugation of the lands of the count of Toulouse to the French crown.......Faithful men who had not been touched by any rumours of heresy were made to promise to give us in writing the names of everyone they knew who had been or might in the future become members or accomplices of the heresy, and to leave out nobody........It must be doubtful whether they all did so simply on religious grounds. The chance to settle scores and undermine rivals is unlikely to have been missed in a community experiencing all the opportunities and all the stresses of rapid commercial growth.
....Some of those present steadfastly maintained that they had heard from some of the heretics that there are two gods, one good and one evil: the good god had created everything invisible and everything that could not be changed or corrupted, while the evil one created the sky, the earth, man, and other visible things."

"Innocent III had charm, dynamism and vision......but he presided over two of European history’s infamous atrocities......In 1204 Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the world, was besieged and looted by an army of crusaders initially raised to recover Jerusalem from the Muslims. In 1208 Innocent launched another crusade, ostensibly against the Albigensian heretics of the lands between the Rhône and the Garonne, whose relentless succession of sieges, lootings and burnings set a new level of savagery in wars between Christians.......Even for so clear-headed a man as Innocent III it was not easy to distinguish between heresy as a religious force and as a political one. These events framed the conditions in which the papacy acquired the habit of using every weapon in its spiritual armoury–crusading, privileges for its allies, excommunication and anathematisation as heretics for its enemies–in defence of its territorial interests......Whatever their relations, both pope and emperor faced another power that both despised, but which was potentially greater than either of them. The towns were now growing explosively in size and wealth, and ever more vigorously engaged in dominating and enlarging their contados.......The particular combination of grievance and alliance between different groups and interests, between those within the city and in the contado, between the factions in the city and the claims and claimants of rival cities, of wider lordship, of empire or papacy, was unique in every case, but all were drawn from the same list of ingredients......Thus within a few weeks of his accession Innocent gratified the ambition of every political agent and every would-be tyrant for a handy way to disqualify his opponents, before or after the event......The property of heretics was to be confiscated. They were to be declared infamous, incapable of holding office and denied access to the courts, and these penalties were to be extended even to their catholic descendants."

"On 24 June 1209 what Arnold Amalric called ‘the greatest Christian army ever’ mustered at Lyon, from every part of France, from Germany north and south, from Provence and Lombardy–20,000 horsemen and 200,000 others......they proceeded to Béziers, which on 21 July was sacked, plundered and destroyed by fire. The entire population was massacred......the lordship of Béziers and Carcassonne fell to Simon de Montfort, a minor lord from the Île de France with close ties to the Cistercian order......Simon’s reverse became a triumph when Pedro, having surrounded the greatly outnumbered crusaders in the village of Muret contrived to expose himself to an unexpected charge from the desperate defenders and was killed......Three or four hundred presumed heretics found in the town were taken to a meadow outside the walls where ‘our crusaders burned them alive with great joy’. The same rejoicing attended the burning of sixty more at Cassès a few days later."

"An exuberant variety of religious belief and practice existed more or less everywhere in Europe......Were it not for the screen of terrible suffering and lurid accusations through which we view all this in retrospect, the good men and their followers might not appear so very different from many other pious sectaries in the Europe of that time......Yet the witnesses deposed that, when William had asked him whether he believed in two gods, Pier replied that ‘he could in no way reach certainty about this.’ Striking as they are, his views hardly amount to a coherent body of doctrine......Rather, they warn that even the most ardent votaries of any faith do not necessarily understand or endorse what theologians, or historians, may regard as the obvious, necessary corollaries of what they say."

"There was no clear line between Cathars and catholics.......Conversely, scepticism of the powers and claims of the catholic clergy was widespread. The imperfections of their lives, relished in the telling and deeply resented, were openly, not to say exultantly, discussed and easily led to doubt of their teaching........The Dominican inquisitors were, as Dominic had insisted, products of the schools, where everything began with the elementary precept of Aristotle that a thing could not be both an and not a.......That is why the idea of conversion–or, from the other point of view, apostasy–is commonly associated with the language of treason and perfidy. This is another reason for caution in weighing the testimony of converts."

The traditional account [of heresy]has depended at crucial points not on the earliest or best informed sources but on texts constructed often long after the events.......it exposes the ‘dualist tradition’ and ‘the Cathars of the Languedoc’ as largely mythical, the question is sometimes asked, ‘How could so many good scholars have got it so wrong?’.
Some reservations but overall I liked the book. Five stars from me.

[Emmanuel Gustin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is indicative of the central thesis of this work: What gave heresy in the middle ages it shape and substance as we know it was "the war on heresy", a phenomenon more substantial and better organized than the heresy itself. Our current beliefs on the "Cathars" and other groups are very much shaped by the writings of those who made it their mission to fight these groups, but on closer inspection, little evidence underpins these accounts.

According to Moore, heresy in the middle ages never took the form of large organized movements (as it would after Luther) but was the fragmented result of religious diversity and the struggle to reform society and church. Some of these movements the Catholic church incorporated and recuperated, others it sought to eradicate. Political motivations were often decisive, with accusations of heresy being a convenient political weapon in a time when religious and secular power were interwoven.

His account is convincing and sometimes entertaining. By setting the scope of his work to encompass a wide area and a substantial time period, Moore gives himself little opportunity to explore in depth, even allowing for the paucity of records. More than once, just one or two sentences summarize what could probably have been a fascinating story. At times, therefore, this is a rather irritating book to read.

It's hard to prove a negative. At most, Moore shows that there is no solid evidence for a wider oganization of the heretical movements, and that it is unnecessary to assume the existence of one. In doing so he challenges popular beliefs. Maybe he overemphasizes it a bit, because it is hard to believe that nobody made an attempt to set up a non-local,larger scale organization, when this could obviously be beneficial to its members.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moore has a straight forward theory as to why the war on heresy happened where it happened (and not where it didn't) and why it did when it did. Some of the beliefs of the heretics were often clearly a response to social changes--particularly increasing social and economic differences. Attacks on the building of majestic cathedrals were understandable when they came from a population beaten down by the taxes that paid for them. Attacks on the clergy "implied an attack on local structures of power and patronage." On the other side, attacks on heresy often began as power plays by rival secular or religious leaders. This only increased when papal bulls called for confiscation of the property of heretics--to be divided between the church and the nobles, of course.

They were also often a response to the rebelliousness sensed under the heretical beliefs. In Italy between 1028 and 1179, Moore points out there were no accusations against lay people. He believes this was because the bishops were not afraid that the heretical ideas targeted elsewhere were a "potential source of popular unrest." The "exuberant variety of religious belief and practice" became a problem only whenever it seemed to be (or lead to) a questioning of authority. Long-standing local practices could easily be turned into "manifestations of universal conspiracies" when doing so could be a useful weapon.

[Adrian Rogers]

In The War on Heresy R.I. Moore has told an enthralling story, striking a good balance between recognized authentic history and the historical novel. He knows how to be engaged with his subject without at the same time 'taking sides', except where a particular standpoint is unavoidable on grounds of common humanity. He genuinely tries to see, and do justice to all points of view. Historical novelists on the other hand does not have to be unbiased, they can take sides, become emotionally involved with certain characters, make the distinction clear between hero and villain. A historian however must see that there are heroes and villains on all sides, that history is never black adn white, but any number of shades of grey. This Mr Moore has done brilliantly; taking his story from the Dark Ages through to the end of the High Middle Ages. It is hardly an enjoyable story, but it is both gripping and challenging, and I have no hesitation is recommending it wholeheartedly.

[April Munday · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an examination of the heresies and heresy trials of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the crusades against heresy. It is a slightly confusing book, as it is very difficult to keep track of all the people mentioned, and a lot of people are mentioned. The message is clear, however. Whatever you thought you knew about medieval heresies is probably not true.

[Adam Hare · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Thus the council had drawn together into one menacing spectre all the manifestations of dissent real and imaginary, so various in their origin, nature, expression and support, that the assembled prelates had encountered, had heard rumours of or were prepared to believe in.” —pg. 207

“Yet to ask how many of these heretics… there were before the Albigensian Crusade is rather like asking how many witches there were in Europe on the eve of the great witch craze… It assumes the objective, measurable existence of a category that was actually in the process of being created by interrogators themselves, and which in that process… meant different things to different people.” —pgs. 261–2

Good prose for an academic work, but would benefit from more structure, such as an introduction (or even making the afterword a foreword) and stronger chapter transitions. Moore jumps around time and region rapidly, often within the same paragraph, in service of his narrative. Unless you have a thorough grasp of the rather large region (roughly a quadrilateral with corners at Barcelona, York, Mainz, and Rome), cast of secular and ecclesiastical figures, and history of Christian heretical beliefs, it’s easy to get a little lost. The benefit of this approach is that often it flows quite well when you’re able to follow.

The book is mostly is a collection of anecdotes about the persecution of heretics in Europe from about 1100 to 1300 since, Moore says, “surviving texts, accurate or not, can never represent more than random stills from an endlessly complicated and rapidly moving film” (pg. 321). Moore’s central thesis is that these were not so much the organized, hierarchical movement that a term like “Cathars” implies, but rather smatterings of idiosyncratic groups, often with ill-defined or confused beliefs. As Umberto Eco’s William of Baskerville points out, the label of “heretic” was more important than specific beliefs and ecclesiastical chroniclers often ascribed to their opponents whichever early Christian heresies they were familiar with (or had an interest in refuting).

Moore alludes to this, but one thing I find interesting here is who gets labeled as a heretic vs. a reformer vs. a founder of a new monastic order. It seems to mostly be an accident of political expediencies—in the 14th century, apostolic poverty was called heretical because it threatened the material wealth the clergy had built; and, yet, Franciscans were permitted to follow a version of it. While Moore often points out the political advantages of calling your opponent a heretic, I would’ve liked to hear a bit more about reformers and dissenters who managed to stay within the bounds of orthodoxy.

Another detail of note is that “Cathars” who repented (and so were saved from the flames) were made to wear yellow crosses—just as Jews were required to wear “yellow badges” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_...) in much of medieval Europe and the Middle East, and in 1930s and ‘40s German-occupied territory. Given the importance of dress for designating social status in this time period and the general tendency to lump together Jews, Muslims, and heretics, such a requirement probably shouldn’t be surprising. I’m curious as to why yellow specifically was chosen, especially as yellow crosses appear in the heraldry of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Maybe it’s just that yellow dyes were relatively cheap and ubiquitous, and that the color used in the crusader state was meant to be gold or symbolize the fact that the land had been reclaimed from Muslims.

A final note I picked up is that the ubiquity of specifically burning has a sort of legalistic reasoning beyond its symbolic one, which is that it circumvents prohibitions on “spilling blood.”

[James R · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does not go far enough in questioning the status quo historical narrative surrounding this time period. Future historians will hopefully universally question this entire time period & dismiss all of the written records as unreliable, therefore needing to come to totally different conclusions about how we should look at history. I see the era as the birth of what is now known as Roman Catholicism, based on forgery & empire. In 2022, why should I trust any of the sources of this supposed time period? The author questions the Cathars, but he does assume other things to be true, but how do we know even those things aren't based on forgeries of the time period as well? The so-called "primary sources" are not reliable about anything. Most historical figures I think to be largely works of fiction.

This short period was the birth of so many important things: the sacramental system, Norman Conquest, schism of 1054, Gregorian Reforms, and the confessional. I question all of these historical events, and I believe none of them happened as they're thought to have occurred, if at all. The only way we know of these events is written records, and scholars now already know that most (if not all) of the historical record is forgery.

For decades now, scholars across subjects have been exposing that nearly all of history is a lie. It was used as propaganda, with forgeries & lies used to create whatever history was needed to prop up the current ruling class.

[Gail White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revelatory. Everything you thought you knew about heresy in the medieval age is wrong. Moore reveals that far from the usual narrative of secretive sects down in the Languedoc, middle Europe and Italy, most heresy was in fact a product of the church, local nobility and the squabbles between both over land, position and assets. Moore traces the roots of medieval heresy to a volte face by the Catholic Church on ecclesiastical marriage, simony and the challenges this raised amongst the clergy and local nobility. As a result of the infighting, local people set up their own sacraments and attendant staff to continue the simple rites of worship.... leading to heresy denunciations. Absolutely agog that the Cathars are basically a myth, as is the way the inquisition was run. Fascinating stuff. Definitely recommended.

[Nilo Sánchez Mayor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una obra de arduo trabajo por parte del autor, en la que a través de un gran número de ejemplos, muestra la herejía de los siglos XI-XII. Cada caso analizado lleva de la mano su correlación con los acontecimientos políticos y sociales, pudiendo entender los procesos heréticos en su conjunto. Cabe recordar que la heterodoxia es un término para hacer referencia a lo que se sale de "la norma", de lo "establecido". Con todo ello se observa cómo la Iglesia, en alianza con el poder político que ansiaba una cierta centralización, se internó en el entramado rural, combatiendo la cultura popular y estableciendo unas normas "ortodoxas".

[Evg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent book on the topic, but often difficult to read and follow the events and main actions that occurred. Hectic and all over the years of the time without linearity of the described events, which makes it very difficult to follow through. Further, I was very surprised to find out very little connection to the crusades during that same period with the main sides or players in them, as I find it difficult to believe they were isolated events with little connection or impact on one another. Even though, it is worth giving it a chance, as it does put light on the origin of this dark history and how it evolved over a large period of time.

[Margaret Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the second time I have read this book. The first time was when I needed historical background for my own book, a historical novel. It is very densely written and not an easy read, but gripping if you want to know about this bizarre time in European history. I wouldn't recommend it unless you feel you need to know....... I found it necessary to read it in as short a time as possible, otherwise there would be a risk of not finishing it. But I'm glad I have done, there were many strange insights.

[Sam Schulman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a complete reworking of Moore's classic little book "The Making of a Persecuting Society," which takes into account the seeming fact that one of the central victim-groups that his earlier book investigated, the Gnostic "Cathars" of southern France, turn out not ever to have existed.
Needless to say, a bit of the oomph is lacking in this version of the book, and I dropped it.

[Mark Howells · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly heavy going but it was entertaining enough in small chunks