The Albigensian Crusade

by Jonathan Sumption

In twelfth century Languedoc a subversive heresy of Eastern origin flourished to an extraordinary degree. The Albingenses believed that the world was created by an evil spirit, and that all worldly things - including the Church - were by nature sinful.Jonathan Sumption's acclaimed history examines the roots of the heresy, the uniquely rich culture of the region which nurtured it, and the crusade launched against it by the Church which resulted in one of the most savage of all medieval wars.'[Sumption] never fails to keep his narrative lively with the particular and the pertinent. He is excellent on the tactics and spirit of medieval warfare.' Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval History, France, Medieval, Religion, 13th Century

373 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

The son of a barrister, Jonathan Philip Chadwick Sumption attended Eton then Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours in history in 1970. After being called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1975, he became a Queen's Council in 1986 and a Bencher in 1991. He is joint head of Brick Court Chambers and was appointed to the UK Supreme Court in 2011. He has written numerous books on history and is a governor of the Royal Academy of Music.

Reviews

[Adam McPhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would've been five stars if not for the constant disparagement of the chansons de geste.

An absolutely wild war with every kind of medieval depravation you can think of. Siege warfare was coming into its own but no one had time for sieges but also no one stored enough food to withstand a siege for long.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dnf - next visit to SW France.

[Sleepy Boy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But as for me‚’ observed the jaundiced troubadour, ‘I have no doubt that if Christ is served … by burning towns and … butchering women and children, then Simon is even now seated in glory in Paradise.”

[Ton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Cathar region of France (roughly the region between the Pyrenees and the line Montpellier-Albi-Montauban) still has the Cathar cross on prominent display, but these days it’s more for the benefit of the tourists than because of heretical tendencies amongst the locals. The Cathars were followers of a cult deemed heretical by the Roman Catholic church; it was essentially a harmless sect, which had taken root in the region amongst all layers of the population, but it was also a sect which was very persistent in adhering to its crede. In the end they had to be persecuted, because the Catholic preachers and papal legates could not get a grip on them, nor make them see the error of their ways. We do not really know a lot about the Cathars’ religious theory, since most of it was either suppressed or mangled by the Inquisitions outsiders’ view. What does seem certain is that the Cathars’ core tenet was that the world was created by the devil (if God was all-powerful, why was there evil in the world? The Cathars reasoned because God had no power there), and therefore it was to be rejected at all costs. According to a heretic’s testimony before the Inquisition: God is perfect; nothing in the world is perfect; therefore nothing in the world was made by God. […] The one, the good God, made the invisible world, while the other, the evil God, made the visible one. All physical matter was tainted (this included basics like sustenance and sex, even between spouses), and the Cathars even renounced the Old Testament and the sacraments, and therefore had no need for a clergy or ministry consecrated by sacrament. They led a life of abstinence, and those who were singularly ascetic were admitted to the rank of ‘Perfects’ and offered the consolamentum. Cathar bishops were appointed, amongst others, to Agen, Toulouse and Carcassonne, but these were essentially leaders by example.

This book is about the wars that were fought in the region, wars that were ostensibly devoted to removing the heresy of the Cathars, but which very swiftly became wars of aggression and conquest. The reason for the crusade was the murder of a papal legate, by a man formerly in the employ of Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. It’s not certain that Raymond was involved in this murder, but he was quickly identified as the main culprit by the chief legate Arnald-Amaury, the abbot of Citeaux. Arnald-Amaury was appointed by Innocent III, the most powerful pope of the Middle Ages, as a legate to investigate the heresy and to weed it out; but whereas Innocent was by temperament a lawyer and a politician, Arnald-Amaury was far more jaded, and used whatever methods he could to realize his goals. This frequently brought him in trouble with Innocent, who appointed no less than seven legates to this region during the crusade of his pontificate.
Arnald-Amaury’s main asset was Simon de Montfort (father of the Simon de Montfort who challenged Henry III of England), a fanatical but able fortune-seeker enticed by the prospects of a holy war in the south of France. Simon used the crusade which was preached to carve out a territory of his own (and to burn numerous Cathars), but because of that, the crusade became a war of conquest. It’s main intended victim was Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, whom Arnald-Amaury would not trust if he could help it (he was reprimanded by Innocent on several occasions). Simon sought to displace Raymond, but in the end the pope would not have it, and neither would the local populace, who never lost a chance to defy Simon if they thought they could get away with it. Simon was eventually killed in the siege of Toulouse. The wars he fought were bitter and cruel; they were also controversial, as he became more and more autocratic, painting the crusade as a tool for his own drive to win himself a lordship. Arnald-Amaury aided him in this, because he realized he needed Simon to spearhead the crusade if it was ever to eradicate the Cathar heresy.
In the end Catharism was ended when the kings of France (Louis VIII, and his sons Louis IX and Alphonse of Poitiers) decided to take the county of Toulouse into their own hands (Alphonse was married to the last heir of the House of Toulouse), and because of the efforts of the Inquisition, which was founded to investigate claims of Cathar heresy.

This book covers all the main points in lots of detail. Sumption has an enticing style, and doesn’t bog the narrative down with lots of notes and scholarly debate. What remains is a clear picture of a rich region beset by a war of conquest masquerading as a crusade, and the effects it had for both the region and its identity. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the subject.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in November 2000.

Of all the facets of medieval culture which differ from their modern equivalents, the one which is the most difficult to understand is the most important. The Catholic church and western European culture were literally synonymous - with the name Christendom - and the church was totally dominant in every area of life. One of the most important rights that many people today take completely for granted - and I am aware that it is not one which everybody possesses - is freedom of religion, not just the freedom to practice whatever religion chosen, but to practise no religion at all. This right is so familiar to most of us that we hardly realise that we practise it. And yet, it would have been completely incomprehensible to a medieval peasant.

This means that the Albigensian Crusade, which seems to us to be a great crime, was at the time considered not only desirable but absolutely necessary. To be a heretic, defying the church, was to be denying the fundamental core of society, was to be attempting to destroy society completely. Heresy was an illness which had to be eradicated, whatever the cost.

Sumption's book is a fairly direct description, as much as one is possible, of the campaigns which make up the crusade. The qualification is due not just to the usual obscurity of medieval chronicle, but because the contemporary and near contemporary histories sometimes contradict each other irreconcilably; history as propaganda is not a new idea. It is difficult to go beyond this kind of straightforward account; descriptions of the beliefs of the Cathars are even more partisan. Orthodox writers tended to ascribe similar beliefs and practices to just about every group of heretics. About all that can be said with any certainty is that they were dualists (with God and the devil as fundamentally equal opponents) who tended to reject the real world as evil, which meant in practice extreme asceticism and the embracing of martyrdom and suicide by the famous Cathar adepts known as Perfects.

This is a different kind of history from that which makes up Montaillou, also about the Cathars; that is a reconstruction of medieval village life from the records of the Inquisition, which first began its terrible work in the wake of the Crusade. As far as the religious and political statements in these records are concerned, they cannot be trusted because they are shaped by what the orthodox expected to hear and because they were extracted by physical or psychological pressure. Clearly, though, when they talk of everyday things as familiar to the inquisitors as to their victims, they will be far more trustworthy.

The religious element to their lives did not mean that the motives of those who fought on either side of the war were pure. There was much that could be gained or lost materially, for the crusaders had been promised the lands of dispossessed heretics. The motivation of greed adds to the reasons why the modern viewpoint tends to sympathise with the Cathars rather than the crusaders. However, it is also a reason why the events of the Crusade are surprisingly obscure, because it motivated a lot of behind the scenes political manoeuvrings, particularly as the main driving force behind the military campaigns was the will of Pope Innocent III, who kept on trying to control what was happening around Toulouse from weeks' journey away.

Sumption's concentration on the overt military activity of the Crusade is understandable, but does make the book both rather dry and superficial. The medieval mind remains obscure, the personalities involved hardly come alive, by comparison with many of those who took part in the Crusades in the Holy Land. It is difficult to see how a different book could have been produced based on the available resources. Sumption is not to blame; he has at least shed light on what would be interesting to know.

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned that all I did learn in school was nearly wrong !

All Sumption books have a fine level of detail and precision and at the same time show the big picture.
This one on the Albigensian Crusade add layers of politics, money, cross interests, treasons to what is usually depicted as a crusade against heretics.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest on medieval times or crusades or simply history.

[tumulus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most books on medieval history are generally well-insulated against the ravages of time; Decline and Fall , for all its faults, is still a pretty serviceable (if incorrigibly boring) account of the late Roman empire. Excitingly, this is one of the exceptions.

Sumption published this account of the Albigensian Crusade in 1978. In the time since, the whole cottage industry of Albigensian-Crusade-scholarship has imploded and been engaged in brutal low-level civil warfare (which is ongoing) - I jest, but only just.

The existence of the Cathars, the heretical dualist-gnostic Christian sect that provoked the Crusade, as a sizable religious movement had largely been taken for granted in English-speaking scholarship and historians regurgitated, in more qualified and circumscribed statements, the polemics of the same Catholic clergy that incited the Crusade (and subsequent massacre) against the Cathars.
Catharism was largely reconstructed by piecing together various Catholic polemics and trying to forge a coherent ideology out of the few vague similarities between them. The genesis of Catharism was attributed, variously, to Byzantine philosophers, Greek itinerant preachers, Zoroastrian contamination from the Middle-East, Languedoc troubadours, amongst sundry others.

Things were different in France. Starting in the late 1970s, Monique Zerner started regularly publishing articles and books on the Cathars (Starting with La croisade albigeoise in 1978, and later in 1998, Inventer l'hérésie ?: discours polémiques et pouvoirs avant l'Inquisition, followed lastly by her magisterial L'histoire du catharisme en discussion in 2001). Zerner questioned the conspicuous lack of primary Cathar sources (especially given that mountains of obscure, heretical material have survived from medieval Western Europe), the general paucity of the archaeological record vis-à-vis Cathar institutions and a persistent habit of the Catholic Church to overblow, and sometimes falsify entirely, heretical institutions to use as casus belli for religious (read political) war.

Meanwhile, Robert Moore in England was doing similar, albeit more general work on medieval Christian heresy, he briefly touched on the Cathars in his article A la naissance d'une société persécutrice: les clercs, les Cathares et la formation de l'Europe in '93, which echoed some of Zerner's scepticism.

Hence by the late 90s, the seeds of dissent had already been sowed into the world of Cathar-scholarship (Cathariana?), with academics neatly divided into two camps, both alike in dignity. Until Moore in 2012 wrote a 400-page slog called The War on Heresy which has, as of the time of writing, tipped the balance strongly in favour of the Zerner school-of-thought. Presumably, a tome is forthcoming from the opposition, but with the evidence piling up against them, the jury is currently out on the feasibility of a comeback.

In light of these electrifying developments, Sumption apparently intends to revise this now-obsolete book - given that his oft-promised account of the Dreyfus affair is nowhere to be seen, I won't be waiting with bated breath but a part of me hopes that he gets around to it someday. While this isn't anywhere near as engaging as his work on The Hundred Years' War, it's still by far the most readable (sometimes even venturing into being enjoyable) account of the Albigensian Crusade.

[Jarvo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book when I was browsing the history section of a large bookshop, which means it must have been many years ago. At the time all I knew about the subject was that on the verge of capturing a major city a general was asked how they were going to distinguish their enemies (heretics) from their allies (loyal Catholics). His reply was succinct, and implacable in its cruelty: 'we will kill them all, and let God sort them out'. To someone bought up with the Vietnam war this resonated immediately. To save the village it was necessary to destroy it. What happens when you have to fight a war in a context where you can't distinguish your friends from your enemies?
The events of this book take place in South West France in the first half of the thirteenth century. A dualist heretical sect, the Cathars, are flourishing and the local powers that be are not seen to be doing enough to surpress them. There is a flash point - the murder of a papal legate - and the Pope orders a crusade to eradicate the heresy and punish those seen to sympathise with them. What is probably envisaged as a surgical campaign takes decades to bring to reach its final conclusion, with what seems like a eternal repetition of the same campaign which pits a group of northern French knights led by Simon de Montfort against the Duke of Toulouse who is always called Raymond. Other figures come and go, and allegiances shift because the crusaders do not truly understand local conditions. A war which is supposed to be about a principle (although one which we now struggle to grasp) becomes a war of self interest and imposing your world view on others. In other words it becomes very familiar.
The book is straight forward and very fluent narrative. It is striking for pointing out that it was by no means inevitable that the midi would become part of France, but otherwise confines its analysis to the period described by the book.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ce petit bijou sur la Croisade des albigeois a le même longueur et le même brio qu'un roman de la série des "rois maudits" de Maurice Druon. C'est une vraie régale pour quiconque qui adore les histoires des luttes dynastiques de la France moyenâgeuse.

[Zechy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. Wish there was more.

[Alex Helling · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Kill them all, God will know his own” is the quite possibly apocryphal phrase associated with the Albigensian Crusade, one of the more tragic episodes in Medieval history. Jonathan Sumption’s The Albigensian Crusade is a history of the crusade launched by the church in Rome against the cathar heretics in the Languedoc region of what is now France. It is a history of the heresy and Rome’s attempts to deal with it. Initially that meant relying on the local clergy, but quickly devolved into a brutal military suppression largely by crusaders from outside the region.

Prior to the crusade the Midi and Southern France had been a thriving region quite separate from the north of France where the French kings ruled. The climate, land, and language were different. Its culture was distinct and rich, the land of the troubadour, very different from the feudal north and closer to that of Italy focused on the cities. It was this culture that allowed the heresy to thrive in the decades before the crusades were launched to bring it to a halt. Sumption’s love of the place and the culture jumps off the page.

But while culture and the region may be the background the core elements are religion, politics, and conflict. This was an all out effort to eliminate an alternative world view. An effort that involved preaching and diplomacy, but also repression, violence, and large amounts of repression through a slow grinding multi-year campaign that devastated the previously rich region.

If you have read some of Sumption’s epic history of the Hundred Years’ War then you will already know he has a way of making the history of the middle ages come alive while sticking to the sources. While that is the case in many respects this earlier book is very different from those. Most obvious is in terms of size; The Albigensian Crusade is a shortish book. And as a result the style is somewhat different. It is light on its feet, fast and easy to read. With thirty years to cover, many of them with campaigns, sometimes more than one in a year, there is a lot of ground to cover. Necessarily then this is going to be a paired back narrative.

The downside of that is some events are quite sketchily laid out. This is of course a problem with all history from so far back (particularly pre-printing); we may simply not know the details to have a history that has all the gaps filled in. It is difficult to know if that is the case here given that Sumption focuses on the story and tells little about the sources. Indeed he barely footnotes, though there is a pretty detailed ‘select bibliography’ of both primary and secondary sources.

Sumption provides helpful maps, as well as plans of cities that are attacked. These are positioned in the relevant part of the book so there is much less need to be flicking back and forth to refer to them than if they were at the front or back - though I guess that makes it easier to lose them should you wish to refer back when some distance away from that event.

Well worth reading for anyone with an interest in medieval history. Unlike some of Sumption’s books this one is easy to get into and you don't need to be worried about taking ages to get through a great tome.

[Douglas Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's funny how some things never change. Playing fantasy role-playing games as a teenager got me into studying history. Now, reading a supplement for the Ars Magica system has led me to learn about a part of history I had only the vaguest knowledge of before.

The Cathars were one of the last great Gnostic movements in the Western Church. Rejecting the material world as the corrupt work of the Devil, Cathars were virulently anti-clergy and attracted numerous followers in Provance. Which, at the time, was a patchwork of independent counties and free cities that were far more tolerant of heresy than the French nobles of the north.

Sumpton does a great of juggling the complex web of nobles, churchmen, lay leaders, and all the rest involved in a conflict that quickly went from a religious crusade to a personal crusade by Simon du Montfort to defeat Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse and build a personal empire. Montfort is continually frustrated by the harsh rules of feudal warfare, such as troops only owing 40 days service. Time and again, Montfort would win great victories only to see rebellions break out when his armies went home.

This was a war of great savagery Starting with the massacre at Béziers in 1209, neither side gave much quarter. Promises were broken, Clerics were lynched and the crusaders simply made up accusations against Provençal nobles as an excuse to seize castles.

The book is dense but very readable. There are maps where maps are needed, although I would have liked the large area map at the back to have been at the front for easy reference. The most important thing, I learned a great deal from reading this amazing history.

[Rindis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written about two decades before starting his epic five-volume history of the Hundred Years War, Sumption's history of the fall of southern France follows along the same general lines.

In this case, the second chapter goes into a general long-term history of dualist theology. Like so many religious theories, it has a start in the Middle East, echoes elsewhere, and raised questions for Christianity. There's no one definitive theory, but it does tend to resolve around the idea of the material and the spiritual being two separate spheres, with only the latter being the creation of God. These ideas slowly spread west (especially after having been encountered in the Crusades), with communities growing up in northern Europe. Suppression and persecution followed, with many people fleeing to more hospitable lands, largely southern France.

The third chapter goes on talk about the Cathar Church as it existed there (from what little can be pieced together). From there, the book pretty much entirely drops down to the affairs of men, and the Languedoc of the first chapter. This is presented as a rich area, yet without real central authority. The Viking raids and other troubles of the past few centuries had largely bypassed the area. While northern Europe had, for the day, fairly centralized states forged in military necessity, southern France invested little real power in the higher rungs of what was really just the trappings of a feudal system.

Raymond V of Toulouse spent nearly half a century fighting the centrifugal actions of his domain, but to little avail. His son Raymond VI takes over in 1194 with ongoing crises in a slow boil. The Catholic Church, and especially Pope Innocent III who was concerned with matters there. Legates were sent to deal with the problem, but were of course viewed with suspicion by most of the inhabitants of the region, and one was killed at the start of 1208.

Just who decided to kill Pierre de Castlenau, how much official sanction, and from who, is impossible to say. But, the death set in motion a crusade aimed at stamping out heresy in the region. Since there was little help to be had on hand, an army was assembled at Lyon and swept, well, much before them. The immediate aftermath of the first campaign's success was to appoint someone to administer the lands seized from heretics, and Simon de Montfort (father of the—in English history—more famous leader in the Second Barons' War) steps in. As might be expected of the Montfort family, his concerns are military, secular, and involve maintaining and extending his power.

Since Raymond VI is not the technical target of the crusade, but much of his lands and rights are, there are endless petitions to the Pope about what is going on, and a slow but steady stream of legates are sent to oversee the situation, and try to balance the competing claims, which often fall afoul of Arnaud Amalric, who is bitterly opposed to Raymond VI. Meanwhile, more heretical areas fall to the crusade, until a series of revolts puts everything into doubt in 1216. Part of this is from changes in the cast of characters, with Innocent III dying in 1216, Simon in 1218, and Philip II of France in 1223. His son, Louis VIII steps in to finally bring the power of the northern monarchy to bear, with a final treaty protecting Raymond VII's position, but with his titles passing into the French royal family.

While technically a religious matter, and Innocent III had meant for a more scholarly approach to the matter, the threat of force rapidly turned into the use of force, and the religious problems became little more than a backdrop as messages take their time on the roads. This makes it well suited to Sumption's general style, which is not so well developed here as two decades later. Still, I found it good and informative, and it certainly one of the best volumes you're going to find in English. (I was surprised to see my new book was a 1999 edition before I realized it was the 30th printing.)

[Carl Muller · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me two weeks to read it due to the many detail in the book. Brilliant. Only a legal mind could have done that.
Credit to Jonathan Sumption for writing such a good book on such a bad part of our history. It is a shame that the Catholic church could have done so much damage to people that differed with them. From that I understand why they murdered so many people (Jews in mostly Europe, and also indigenous people in the countries where they send missionaries).
I also understand the origins of the holocaust. The Catholic church.

[Daniel B-G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't manage to finish this, not because it was bad, but because I was getting upset with the injustice. The provence region is one of the most deprived in modern France. At the opening of this book it was one of the wealthiest. The actions in this book are the pivot that shifts it from one to the other. It's appalling, and all down to greedy, intransigent crusaders.

[Dominic · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Kill them all, God will know his own" A brutal statement which sums up the Albigensian Crusade.

Sumpton does a fantastic job of describing how a once proud independent region in Southern France came to fall victim to a ruthless Crusade spanning decades, with countless Towns and Cities put to the sword.

[Adam Windsor · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eminently readable and informative account of the rise and subsequent suppression of the Cathar faith in Languedoc: the tenets of the faith, the conditions that allowed it to flourish there, and the careers of its principle champions and enemies through decades of war and inquisition.

[Diane James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valuable book for understanding the origin and spread of the Cathars in the Languedoc in 12th and 13th century France. The crusade was followed by the inquisition which obliterated the Cathars where the military campaigns failed. Very readable and engrossing history.

[Thomas McCloskey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as well developed as the 100 Year War series. I got the sense the author was just developing his strength that would show itself so well in his magnus opus. A good read, but I can't rate it higher. Also, my edition has a few editorial problems.

[LFD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid but told with some verve, and as clear as it is possible to be about such confusing, murky events. Also really brings alive the characters of the various popes, kings and warlords involved. less good (perhaps because less info exists) on the underlying factors

[Pastor Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

He takes what is likely a very confusing event in history and describes it in clarifying detail. I enjoyed it.

[Simon Charleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sumption is a great history writer and gives you the facts plain and simple with just enough commentary and context and doesn’t read the past through any fashionable lenses.

[Dylan Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat standard but well-written account of the crusade, tracing the years closely and providing some interesting background on the Languedoc.

[Gabriel Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two stars are provisional as I have only begun to read this.

Lord Sumption is a phenomenon, a Tory who served on the British supreme court and led a full public life while somehow managing to write an acclaimed and exhaustive five volume history of the Hundred Years War.

He is no novice or amateur of medieval history.

His membership in the British ruling class makes his work as a historian that much more interesting if you happen to be engrossed by the uses of history and the psychology of history. What is medieval history to G.K. Chesterton, or to the Pre-Raphaelites, or (shudder) to a member of the Douglas Murray herd?

The very first chapter announces some startling chauvinisms. Occitania was the greatest culture of Europe on the eve of this crusade, but it appears that it will serve as no more than a foil for this author whose sympathies lie entirely with the Northern psychosis, the 'saviors of the faith'.

Anjou, Champagne, Normandy and the Capetian dynasty are "centralized and authoritarian" regions, militarized, "hardened" by viking invasion (and presumably by viking infusion). The effete South is enfeebled by allodial land holdings, egalitarian habits, factionalism, presumptuous townships with indulgent charters. It is a region which is precocious in all those attributes which will eventually be cited by historians as contributing to the vigor of the Reformation. But for the moment, we have to disapprove of them because we need modern state formation, right? Simon de Monfort may have been severe on occasion, but he was "the right man at the time".

It does appear that I am about to read a neocon fable of ancient chivalry, by a man whose first published work, co authored with a supercilious Baronet remembered for complaining about the birth rates of the poor, was a treatise showing that "no convincing arguments for an equal society have ever been advanced" and that "no such society has ever been successfully created". And were one to be created, we will bomb it to ashes, they might have added.
There is much more to say about this, but having now finished the book I will limit myself to one further observation. Sumption's vocation is justice!. And he is a writer/historian. One thing is clear to me. The Albigensian crusade was a tremendous injustice. Sumption's history of it is another injustice. Invasions and wars are never pretty, but the Albigensian crusade expressed an obscenity beyond carnage and theft. It is not a mere matter of "woe to the vanquished" . The whole point of crusades is precisely that that they were highly juridical and institutional crimes which makes, say , a massacfre committed by Viking invaders look sanitary by contrast. The murder involved is not only that of human victims, but also mind murder: contortions of human intellect, religion, administration and LAW such as to render them bad jokes, and such as to cancel the grandeur of a civilization. I don't see how a (brilliant) jurist could have overlooked this. The explanation lies in a set of chauvinisms. That is something to reflect on.

[Overbooked ✎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

In a society which regarded religion as the foundation of secular life, their attitude is not surprising. A mediaeval community was defined as much by its religion as by its political allegiance or geographical cohesion. ‘Populus et christianitas una est‚’ declared a treaty concluded by the ninth-century emperor Charles the Bald. His maxim was applied far beyond the realms of imperial diplomacy. An unbeliever could not belong to a Christian society; he was an alien. And far graver than the unbeliever was the case of the heretic, who accepted the same revelation as his orthodox neighbour but gave it a different interpretation, distorting and corrupting it, leading simpler men away from their salvation. Heresy was a spreading poison and a community which tolerated it invited God to withdraw his protection.

[Elliot Gates · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an utterly shambolic crusade! I'd never heard of this event prior to picking up this book at a thrift store. The authors style flowed well and the story was easy to follow. Recommended for anyone's who into obscure history.

[Ryan Murdock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this short history of one of Europe’s most brutal episodes of medieval religious persecution before traveling to the Cathar regions of southwest France this past summer.

The persecution of the Cathars was a sordid tale of massacres, sieges, the sacking of towns and the ruining of lands at a time when what we think of as southern France wasn’t yet France at all. The Languedoc was a land apart, civil power was weak, and the feudal nobility who controlled their respective territories had little reason to cooperate with the arrogant demands of the Catholic church in Rome.

This was a world before printing. Full copies of the Bible were rare and alternate versions of scripture circulated freely. The Albigensian Crusades were triggered by a desire to control ideas — to ensure the version of Christianity endorsed by the pope in Rome would be the only version — and by a relentless greed for territory. The story of how it all played out will make you want to go there to see those ruined mountaintop fortresses for yourself.

[Jo O'Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent history of the decades-long crusade against the Cathars in southern France. Mostly forgotten today save for the (possibly) apocryphal phrase uttered by papal legate Arnaud Amaury when asked how the crusaders, about to storm a town, would be able to tell catholic from heretic?

"Kill them all, God will know His own."

Its density is both bane and boon and more maps would have been useful as the book hops from small town to small town and I was only ever half-sure of where I was at geographically. I'll definitely read more from the author - who nowadays is a judge on the UK's Supreme Court, finishing up the fifth and final volume of his history of the Hundred Years' War, and spends his free time in his French castle, because of course he does.

[Tredyffrin Township Libraries]

"“Repression can destroy a faith; it can also produce dangerous decay in the society that uses it.” These words hold meaningful truths for today’s society, yet they were written about the thirteenth century.

In 1208 there began a crusade against the Cathar and Waldensian heretics of Southern France. In an area known as Occitania, the Roman Catholic Church sought to eliminate dissent while the Northern French king sought to acquire land. While the resulting Albigensian Crusades were considered successful, it lead to many unintended consequences including the disillusionment that paved the way for the Reformation.

Author and Professor Joseph R. Strayer weaves many layers of historical insight to paint the picture of political thinking, papal and clerical back dealing and heroism by the Cathars that makes The Albigensian Crusades an intriguing historical read. This period in history had such significance as to give rise to the Inquisition and unite France in ways that had ripple effects through Napoleon and beyond. Because Strayer avoids an in-depth understanding of the Cathars and Waldensians, he unfortunately is almost indifferent to the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of peaceful citizens slaughtered and tortured. Despite this, The Albigensian Crusades is a must read for anyone interested in historical or modern day Southern France."