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Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages
Cathars in Question
Cathars have long been regarded as posing the most organised challenge to orthodox Catholicism in the medieval West, even as a -counter-Church- to orthodoxy in southern France and northern Italy. Their beliefs, understood to be inspired by Balkan dualism, are often seen as the most radical among medieval heresies. However, recent work has fiercely challenged this paradigm, arguing instead that -Catharism- is a construct, mis-named and mis-represented by generations of scholars, and its supposedly radical views were a fantastical projection of the fears of orthodox commentators. This volume brings together a wide range of views from some of the most distinguished international scholars in the field, in order to address the debate directly while also opening up new areas for research. Focussing on dualism and anti-materialist beliefs in southern France, Italy and the Balkans, it considers a number of crucial issues. These include: what constitutes popular belief; how (and to what extent) societies of the past were based on the persecution of dissidents; and whether heresy can be seen as an invention of orthodoxy. At the same time, the essays shed new light on some key aspects of the political, cultural, religious and economic relationships between the Balkans and more western regions of Europe in the Middle Ages. Antonio Sennis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at University College London Contributors: John H. Arnold, Peter Biller, Caterina Bruschi, David d'Avray, Jorg Feuchter, Bernard Hamilton, R.I. Moore, Mark Gregory Pegg, Rebecca Rist, Lucy J. Sackville, Antonio Sennis, Claire Taylor, Julien Thery-Astruc, Yuri Stoyanov
341 pages, Paperback
Published July 18, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 15, 2016
This book is a series of papers presented at University College London and the Warburg Institute in 2013 under the title "Catharism: Balkan Heresy or Construct of a Persecuting Society?" The participants were ostensibly addressing two related questions.
First, was there an organized, dualistic Christian group operating in southern France and/or northern Italy in the 11th to 13th centuries possibly with Bulgarian (Bogomil) roots?
And second, is there any justification for attaching the name "Cathar" to this group?
Those who answered no to both questions held that the only evidence for an organized movement came from the reports of inquisitors and were therefore suspect, and that the name Cathar was plucked from St. Augustine's anti-Manichee writings by Bernard of Clairvaux (in response to a question from an inquisitor) and was never used in the area. These writers claim that what the people in the area were really resisting was growing papal and royal power. Charges of heresy allowed both crusade and inquisition to root out that resistance.
Writers on both sides seem to agree that the use of "Cathar" is questionable. The inquisitors mostly use "heretic" in their questions and reports of answers. The heretics might have called themselves "The Good men/people/Christians" -- that is, identifying themselves as the true Christians in contrast to what they saw as a corrupted church hierarchy. Some writers suggest that Cathar might still be useful as a convenient label for the particular bunch of heretics in that time and place (or those times and places), at least until more is known about who they were, where they came from, and what they believed. So much for the name question.
The discussion about whether there was a heretical movement at all and how it originated was much more complex and wide-ranging. And it became much more a debate about contrasting models of historiography (method) than about history (content). Some writers did detailed analyses of a single document or writer. Others scanned great bodies of both primary and secondary sources. Documents called crucial by one writer were dismissed as forgeries by another. Authors critiqued one another's translations from Latin (or Occitan or whatever). [Knowing some Latin is not absolutely crucial to reading this book, but it helps a lot. French, Italian, German, and Bulgarian are less needed.] All in all, this discussion generated a lot of smoke and not a lot of light.
My interest in reading this book was based in both histories and historical novels about the Cathars. (My college minor was Medieval History.) I hoped to learn something about what really happened. What I learned could have come from a Magic 8 ball: "Reply hazy, try again." Also, I shouldn't trust anything already in print--not even taking primary sources at face value.
For what it's worth, I was disappointed in the very limited interest in seeking an origin for whatever was happening in Italy and France (basically confined to one article whose sources were ignored by everyone else). In a book on Christian dualism, there was no mention of the beginning of the story being told in light of the Gnostic scriptures discovered at Nag Hammadi. But I suppose that when one is debating whether there is anything to study, it seems silly to ask how it got there (if it is there).
First, was there an organized, dualistic Christian group operating in southern France and/or northern Italy in the 11th to 13th centuries possibly with Bulgarian (Bogomil) roots?
And second, is there any justification for attaching the name "Cathar" to this group?
Those who answered no to both questions held that the only evidence for an organized movement came from the reports of inquisitors and were therefore suspect, and that the name Cathar was plucked from St. Augustine's anti-Manichee writings by Bernard of Clairvaux (in response to a question from an inquisitor) and was never used in the area. These writers claim that what the people in the area were really resisting was growing papal and royal power. Charges of heresy allowed both crusade and inquisition to root out that resistance.
Writers on both sides seem to agree that the use of "Cathar" is questionable. The inquisitors mostly use "heretic" in their questions and reports of answers. The heretics might have called themselves "The Good men/people/Christians" -- that is, identifying themselves as the true Christians in contrast to what they saw as a corrupted church hierarchy. Some writers suggest that Cathar might still be useful as a convenient label for the particular bunch of heretics in that time and place (or those times and places), at least until more is known about who they were, where they came from, and what they believed. So much for the name question.
The discussion about whether there was a heretical movement at all and how it originated was much more complex and wide-ranging. And it became much more a debate about contrasting models of historiography (method) than about history (content). Some writers did detailed analyses of a single document or writer. Others scanned great bodies of both primary and secondary sources. Documents called crucial by one writer were dismissed as forgeries by another. Authors critiqued one another's translations from Latin (or Occitan or whatever). [Knowing some Latin is not absolutely crucial to reading this book, but it helps a lot. French, Italian, German, and Bulgarian are less needed.] All in all, this discussion generated a lot of smoke and not a lot of light.
My interest in reading this book was based in both histories and historical novels about the Cathars. (My college minor was Medieval History.) I hoped to learn something about what really happened. What I learned could have come from a Magic 8 ball: "Reply hazy, try again." Also, I shouldn't trust anything already in print--not even taking primary sources at face value.
For what it's worth, I was disappointed in the very limited interest in seeking an origin for whatever was happening in Italy and France (basically confined to one article whose sources were ignored by everyone else). In a book on Christian dualism, there was no mention of the beginning of the story being told in light of the Gnostic scriptures discovered at Nag Hammadi. But I suppose that when one is debating whether there is anything to study, it seems silly to ask how it got there (if it is there).
February 10, 2017
I read the e-edition from Net Gallery.
A collection of scholarly essays from the 2013 conference "Catharism: Balkan Heresy or Construct of a Persecuting Society". A scholarly tome for the student of religious heresies and the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.
A collection of scholarly essays from the 2013 conference "Catharism: Balkan Heresy or Construct of a Persecuting Society". A scholarly tome for the student of religious heresies and the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.
April 14, 2024
If there were a book version of a scholastic WrestleMania, this book might be it.
Cathars in Question (galley received as part of early review program), the fourth volume in the Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages series, represents a series of essays associated with a 2013 conference on the Cathars.
The traditional story has been that the Cathars were the western Mediterreanean flowering of Bogomil-influenced dualist theology which developed in the twelfth century and flourished in the thirteenth century until violently suppressed by the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade. “Cathar” meant “the pure,” and they were also known as the Albigensians.
The way the editor introduces Cathars in Question would lead a person to believe the entire existence and concept of the “Cathars” is under significant argument and dispute, and the various scholars who wrote essays are the main disputants between the “traditionalists” who affirm all of the above and the “skeptics”. Yet the penultimate essay, written by one of the said “skeptics,” does the best job of laying out the land and the nature of the dispute: the existence of the Cathars as a coherent group with some kind of ecclesiastical infrastructure, a dualist theology, and significant influence in the Languedoc of France and parts of northern Italy by the middle of the thirteenth century is not under question. What is under dispute is whether the evidence is sufficient to say such was true of the “good men” and others written about in the twelfth century, or whether the inquisitors were making more of something than actually existed. In this “skeptical” view, there might be some dissenters, but the issues of dissent were as political as they might be religious, a southern French extension of the spiritual vs. secular power struggles of the High Middle Ages.
As a generally disinterested outsider, it was interesting to consider the various arguments and how they were argued, although I would have definitely appreciated the insights from the penultimate essay far earlier. Admittedly I did set forth something like the traditional story in the Historical Overview of A Study of Denominations, and apparently was a bit too early in dating (no one would put them at the beginning of the twelfth century, apparently), but nothing in that story is terribly different if they come a bit later.
The earliest and last essays seem to come from the main “skeptic” vs. “traditionalist” advocates; essays in-between tend to cover all sorts of other related grounds, many of them quite interesting. The essay considering Bogomil literature and the prevalence of Old Testament pseudepigraphal documents was fascinating: why, indeed, are so many of the Old Testament pseudepigraphal stories preserved in Old Slavonic, and often only in Old Slavonic? Historical discussions about what it meant to be a “good man” or “good woman” were also interesting, and how what had been a kind of term for gentry ended up getting somewhat associated with the heresy, and perhaps not for the best of reasons. It was ironic to learn how “Cathars” themselves seemed to describe each other as “good Christians,” and not as “Cathars” or as “good men/women.”
When it was all said and done, it seemed to me the “skeptics” relied more on bombastic rhetoric and substance, and their concerns overstated. “Traditionalists” may not be accurate on everything but had far more documentation and substance to underlie their claims. While perhaps what is later called “Catharism” may not be as fully developed in Languedoc, etc., in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, since all agree there is such a group with such an organization by the second half of the thirteenth century, a little bit of Occam’s razor would suggest it is not treasonous to the primary sources to infer dualist theology, Bogomil influence, and some level of ecclesiastical structure before 1250. Sure, inquisitors have their purposes and ideologies when they report on what they are up against; but assuming they have overstated their case entirely seems unwarranted. I ultimately found myself in agreement with the final essayist and his lament: it seems that research in the Waldensians was far better managed with critical insights into primary sources in ways which the “skeptics” vs. “traditionalists” polemic and argumentation has made nearly impossible for Catharism.
But, yes, in the pages of this book is a full on scholastic wrestling match. Fun times.
Cathars in Question (galley received as part of early review program), the fourth volume in the Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages series, represents a series of essays associated with a 2013 conference on the Cathars.
The traditional story has been that the Cathars were the western Mediterreanean flowering of Bogomil-influenced dualist theology which developed in the twelfth century and flourished in the thirteenth century until violently suppressed by the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade. “Cathar” meant “the pure,” and they were also known as the Albigensians.
The way the editor introduces Cathars in Question would lead a person to believe the entire existence and concept of the “Cathars” is under significant argument and dispute, and the various scholars who wrote essays are the main disputants between the “traditionalists” who affirm all of the above and the “skeptics”. Yet the penultimate essay, written by one of the said “skeptics,” does the best job of laying out the land and the nature of the dispute: the existence of the Cathars as a coherent group with some kind of ecclesiastical infrastructure, a dualist theology, and significant influence in the Languedoc of France and parts of northern Italy by the middle of the thirteenth century is not under question. What is under dispute is whether the evidence is sufficient to say such was true of the “good men” and others written about in the twelfth century, or whether the inquisitors were making more of something than actually existed. In this “skeptical” view, there might be some dissenters, but the issues of dissent were as political as they might be religious, a southern French extension of the spiritual vs. secular power struggles of the High Middle Ages.
As a generally disinterested outsider, it was interesting to consider the various arguments and how they were argued, although I would have definitely appreciated the insights from the penultimate essay far earlier. Admittedly I did set forth something like the traditional story in the Historical Overview of A Study of Denominations, and apparently was a bit too early in dating (no one would put them at the beginning of the twelfth century, apparently), but nothing in that story is terribly different if they come a bit later.
The earliest and last essays seem to come from the main “skeptic” vs. “traditionalist” advocates; essays in-between tend to cover all sorts of other related grounds, many of them quite interesting. The essay considering Bogomil literature and the prevalence of Old Testament pseudepigraphal documents was fascinating: why, indeed, are so many of the Old Testament pseudepigraphal stories preserved in Old Slavonic, and often only in Old Slavonic? Historical discussions about what it meant to be a “good man” or “good woman” were also interesting, and how what had been a kind of term for gentry ended up getting somewhat associated with the heresy, and perhaps not for the best of reasons. It was ironic to learn how “Cathars” themselves seemed to describe each other as “good Christians,” and not as “Cathars” or as “good men/women.”
When it was all said and done, it seemed to me the “skeptics” relied more on bombastic rhetoric and substance, and their concerns overstated. “Traditionalists” may not be accurate on everything but had far more documentation and substance to underlie their claims. While perhaps what is later called “Catharism” may not be as fully developed in Languedoc, etc., in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, since all agree there is such a group with such an organization by the second half of the thirteenth century, a little bit of Occam’s razor would suggest it is not treasonous to the primary sources to infer dualist theology, Bogomil influence, and some level of ecclesiastical structure before 1250. Sure, inquisitors have their purposes and ideologies when they report on what they are up against; but assuming they have overstated their case entirely seems unwarranted. I ultimately found myself in agreement with the final essayist and his lament: it seems that research in the Waldensians was far better managed with critical insights into primary sources in ways which the “skeptics” vs. “traditionalists” polemic and argumentation has made nearly impossible for Catharism.
But, yes, in the pages of this book is a full on scholastic wrestling match. Fun times.
October 10, 2018
A vehemently passionate collection of scholarly articles from the 2013 conference in London, “Catharism: Balkan Heresy or Construct of a Persecuting Society?" The variation of disagreement abounds, but overall the questions asked are helpful and Biller’s conclusion well worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews