Los cataros. La herejia perfecta

by Stephen O´Shea

Jongleurs performing troubadour poetry in fields and groves frequently dominate our images of Medieval Southern France. While the 12th century reveled in songs of deferred pleasure and adulterous fulfillment, the 13th, as Stephen O'Shea makes clear, took a marked turn toward the violent and intolerant. The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars chronicles the Roman Catholic Church's crusade against--and ultimate annihilation of--the Albigenses, or Cathars, a group of heretical Christians who thrived in what is now the Languedoc region of Southern France. The Cathars held revolutionary beliefs that threatened the authority of the church. The world, they maintained, was not created by a benevolent God. Rather, it was the creation of a force of darkness, immanent in all things. They considered worldly authority a fraud, and authority based on some divine sanction, such as claimed by the church, outright hypocrisy. Innocent III, resolved to eradicate the Cathar threat to church authority, recruited the military powers of France, eager to expand their territory to the south. Together, they systematically exterminated the Cathars and their supporters in a series of crusades between 1209 and 1229. The Dominican-led Inquisition that ensued built upon this momentum of intolerance and tormented Europe for centuries to come.

A journalist and translator, Stephen O'Shea relocated to Southern France for two years in order to complete his research. He writes clearly and with evident passion for his subject. Intended for the general reader, The Perfect Heresy includes historical background and explanations without interrupting the narrative flow; there is also an annotated bibliography to facilitate further reading. O'Shea's examination of the Cathars sheds important new light on Medieval France as well as on the timelessness of religious intolerance. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack

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

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ye gods and little fishes, what a ghastly thing the Catholic Church is. Reading this book about the treatment meted out to the unquestionably heretical Cathars, or "the Perfect" as they called themselves, makes me feel sorry for the "saints" and "holy" men involved in the brutal and complete suppression of this dualistic religion.

Hell, in which they seem to have believed unquestioningly, must resound with their cries and pleas for mercy and understanding.

The political threat of the anti-clerical, anti-authoritarian Cathars could not be tolerated. The Church would have been suicidal to ignore the appeal of the Manichaean world-view in a priest-ridden, anarchic world just clawing its way out of a devastating few centuries of almost simultaneous economic and population collapses beginning in the sixth century. Imagine, after quite a looong time of answering to your overlord and only vaguely to the local priest, having to *ask* the *Church* for permission to get married! The very idea! That the Church, where one went for spiritual uplift, should suddenly interest itself in who you sleep with!

It was one of many means the Church used to make itself the replacement for the vanished Roman Empire. It caused a bitter backlash. It was viewed as unChristian (Heaven, after all, is the Church's stated model for life, and in Heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, right?). And along come these religious guys, doing the work of the world along side you, saying scrumptious things like the entire physical world is a snare of the Devil, so what's a "Holy Mother Church" doing trying to tell you what to do in it, instead of telling you how to get out of it?

I would've loved the Cathars. They said that all the Heaven and woo-woo stuff was codswallop, and the best you should do in this world is Not Hurt Nobody Nohow. As you, o creature of flesh, learn more and more and more to follow that rule, you *step off the cycle of rebirth* and cease to be flesh.

In fact, I *do* love the Cathars.

So anyway, their commonsensical view of the teachings of Jesus caused no end of angst in Rome, and the Holy Office of the Inquisition was invented to cause these right-thinking Perfect as much pain and suffering as possible.

It worked, for as we continue to see today, viciousness and evil routinely triumph over good (at least in the short run...though 800 years to the 21st century don't seem so short to me, but then I'm only a Devil-created human, ain't I?). It was painful to read this book because I knew how it would end, it was painful to read because I felt such compassion for the Perfect, and it was just damn good and depressing to be reminded of the horrors humans visit upon each other in the name of their big-bully imaginary friend in the sky.

If this is what "God" really wants, I say screw her. Fortunately, I don't for one single instant believe such a "God" actually exists. The Divine might not be susceptible to our limited reasoning power, but active evil such as the Crusades, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation play no part in its wishes.

The author pens a creditable sentence, and tells the well-known tale with such true compassion that it's as though he feels the flames and screams the screams. I'd recommend it to the anti-Christian/Catholic contingent, the spiritually honest Christians, and the stout of heart. Not for True Believers or those seeking peace.

[K.J. Charles]

The grim, grim story of the Cathars, a dualist sect who believed the material world was evil. They were against the established church and monarchies because worldly pomp, didn't believe in oaths or sacraments unless they were given by people who actually demonstrably lived up to their principles, didn't believe in tithing, were against violence, generally believed in something like equality for women and lower classes. Basically the kind of religion you can get behind. As far as can be told they just...didn't do any harm. Except, of course, to the Church, by making people question why they should give much of their money and labour to support a bunch of greedy corrupt bastards when you could attain heaven by simply living a good life of service, prayer and self restraint.

So they had to go, and by happy chance, the French monarchy was bang alongside any excuse to put down the independent and headstrong Languedoc nobility. A crusade was called for, and was every bit as vile, greedy, spectacularly violent and flat out evil as, oooh, all the other crusades. Good lord, the cruelty and misery that the Catholic church has wrought.

It's actually quite hard to read this book because you want the story to come out differently so very much, and there were points when it could have. A handful of people not dying, a handful of others dying earlier, and Europe might have been a very different place. Plus, there's very little to cheer about, although we do dwell with enormous pleasure and some detail on the splatting of one particularly evil bastard.

Well written and clearly told. I'd have liked a bit more on the life of the Cathars before we get into the protracted death, but inevitably most of the sources are from the Church and the Inquisition, so.

[Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

•Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324, 1975 (tr. Barbara Bray)
•Stephen O'Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Life and Death of the Cathars, 2000

Driving up into Languedoc from the coast, you see the landscape change from the rolling fields and purple vineyards of Provence into something yellower and more scrubby – ochre grasses, little bushes, the occasional stately middle-finger of a cypress. Into the Pyrenees, almost every wooded slope is topped with a picturesque ruined chateau. Vous êtes en pays Cathare, the tourist signs inform you.

Which in itself is a bit weird. There is nowhere in Britain, as far as I know, advertising itself as Lollard Country; when I drive into northern Italy, there are no signs saying ‘Welcome to Lombardy, Land of the Arnoldists’. But Catharism has become a tourist attraction. The Cathars are hailed as an inspiration by various neo-Gnostic groups, praised for their pioneering vegetarianism, their feminism, their antiestablishment free-thinking, their nature-loving eco-friendliness, take your pick.

It's a strange fate for a movement that was an almost unbroken record of suffering and repression for over a century. The Catholic Church had identified it as a clear heresy back in the 1140s, and a twenty-year Crusade was duly waged against the Cathars of Languedoc from 1209–1229 – after which it lingered in scattered remote parts of the Pyrenees until the Inquisition burned the last few believers in the early 1300s. By the mid-fourteenth century it was all over.

Why was it such a problem? A Mediterranean faith, probably originally coming from Byzantium, Catharism held that there are two gods, one good and one evil, and that most of what we see in the world is a creation of evil; human souls are reincarnated after death until they reach a ‘perfect’ state. Obviously this wouldn't sit well with the Church establishment, but it still seems rather strange to think of them launching a Crusade – an actual Crusade, with crusading knights, like what they sent to Jerusalem! – against ostensibly Christian Europeans in the south of France.

The key to understanding this is to wander round Languedoc and appreciate that the whole area, in the thirteenth century, was not France but rather a massive patchwork of little semi-independent feudal territories (of which Andorra has somehow survived to the present day; to imagine early-medieval Languedoc, start by picturing a network of Andorras). Even at the height of Catharism, Cathar believers were probably never a majority, and they certainly weren't by the time of the Crusade against them. The sieges and battles of the Albigensian Crusade were never about Christian armies fighting Cathar armies: they were about French armies fighting Occitanian armies. The crucial before/after difference of the Crusade is not the existence or otherwise of Catharism. It's the fact that before the Crusade, the area was owned by the Counts of Toulouse, the Trencavel viscounts, the Aragonese king, and so on; after the Crusade, it was all owned by France.

This political dimension was clear from what happened after the battles. Statutes introduced by Simon de Montford (the legendarily ruthless early leader of the Crusade), for instance, banned Occitanian noblewomen from marrying local men; instead, they had to give their hands, and their tempting dowries, to Frenchmen. Which is not to say that religion was not a factor; in fact, it may be that the cruelty of the Crusade can only be explained with some reference to religious fanaticism. The tone was set early on with the infamous sack of Béziers, which Stephen O'Shea characterises as ‘the Guernica of the Middle Ages’. It was here that crusaders asked their commander (Arnaud Amalric, the Abbot of Cîteaux) what they were supposed to do, since they couldn't tell who was a heretic and who was a Catholic, prompting the abbot's famous response, Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius ‘Kill them all; God will know his own’. Twenty thousand people were massacred. It was just the first of many disproportionate and unpleasant acts that would characterise the whole conflict.

The Crusade was officially called off in 1229, but fighting rumbled on until for another decade and a half until the Cathar fortress of Montségur, at the top of a dramatic Pyrenean peak, was finally taken after an eleven-month siege. (Having hiked up Montségur myself, fair play to anyone that did it in full armour carrying siege engines.) But the story of Catharism has an interesting postscript, which O'Shea covers in a brief final chapter and which is dealt with more fully by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in his classic 1975 microhistory Montaillou. Montaillou is a tiny village in the mountains, where it seems that Catharism lingered on into the 1300s; we know this because the entire village was eventually rounded up and questioned by the Bishop of Pamiers, working in conjunction with the Inquisition in Carcassonne.

The Bishop, Jacques Fournier, kept exquisitely detailed records of his interrogations – Ladurie describes him as ‘a sort of compulsive Maigret’ – and in the hands of a careful historian these allow for an astonishing recreation of rural village life in the early Middle Ages, not just in terms of the locals' religious beliefs but their living habits, sex lives, gossip and almost everything else. Compared to O'Shea, who writes in a free journalistic style (though his endnotes are satisfyingly thorough), Ladurie gives the impression of having one finger always on the primary sources in front of him; his work is built around direct quotation. Though his painstaking detail can occasionally feel punishing, he comes across as definitive. (Which raises interesting questions on the few occasions when the two books under review disagree; for instance, O'Shea rather recklessly talks about the Cathars' ‘protofeminism’, whereas Ladurie says explicitly that Cathar beliefs were not good for women and often misogynistic.)

Eventually Fournier had the last few Cathar intransigents burned at the stake, before he left the mountains and went on to bigger and better things (ultimately becoming Pope Benedict XII, promotion working rather more dramatically in those days). Catharism too has gone on in ways that could hardly have been expected, and it's curious to reflect on what exactly it means to the legions of people that identify as ‘neo-Cathars’ or contribute to sites like www.catharisme.eu. ‘Today Catharism is no more than a dead star,’ Ladurie writes, ‘whose cold but fascinating light reaches us now after an eclipse of more than half a millennium.’ But since he wrote those words in 1975, the dead star seems to be shining brighter than ever.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gives a great account of the persecution and genocide of the Cathars in Languedoc in 13th century France. It is very readable history, the author has a lovely humour in his writing style and although the book obviously covers some horrific violence that occurred this is dealt with in a factual style that does not disturb the reader. A very satisfying read.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of the Cathars whose Christian religious views were clearly more humane and anti-clerical than those of Rome.
The Cathars originated from an anti-materialist reform movement within the Bogomil churches of Dalmatia and Bulgaria calling for a return to the Christian message of perfection, poverty and preaching, combined with a rejection of the physical to the point of starvation. The reforms were a reaction against the often scandalous and dissolute lifestyles of the Catholic clergy in southern France. Their theology, neo-Gnostic in many ways, was basically dualist. Several of their practices, especially their belief in the inherent evil of the physical world, conflicted with the doctrines of the Incarnation of Christ and sacraments, initiated accusations of Gnosticism and brought them the ire of the Catholic establishment. They became known as the Albigensians, because there were many adherents in the city of Albi and the surrounding area in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Between 1022 and 1163, the Cathars were condemned by eight local church councils, the last of which, held at Tours, declared that all Cathars should be put into prison and have their property confiscated. The Third Lateran Council of 1179 repeated the condemnation. Innocent III's diplomatic attempts to roll back Catharism in a peacefull way were met with little success. After the murder of his legate Pierre de Castelnau, in 1208, Innocent III declared a crusade against the Cathars. He offered the lands of the Cathar heretics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms.

From 1209 to 1215, the Crusaders experienced great success, capturing Cathar lands and perpetrating acts of extreme violence, often against civilians. They murdered all inhabitants of a city after they refused to send the Cathars out of the city to a sure death. The entire population was slaughtered and the city burned to the ground. It was reported that Amalric(the leader in this charge), when asked how to distinguish Cathars from Catholics, responded, "Kill them all! God will know his own."
From 1215 to 1225, a series of revolts caused many of the lands to be lost. A renewed crusade resulted in the recapturing of the territory and effectively drove Catharism underground by 1244. The Albigensian Crusade also had a role in the creation and institutionalization of both the Dominican Order and the Medieval Inquisition. The Dominicans promulgated the message of the Church to combat alleged heresies by preaching the Church's teachings in towns and villages, while the Inquisition investigated heresies. Because of these efforts, by the middle of the 14th century, any discernible traces of the Cathar movement had been eradicated.

And yet the religions has captured the imagination of many modern people and the quest for their history and background has given us an interesting viewpoint of the regulated church that did not take kindly to any faith that threatened their power basis. As the original crusades were also grounded in returning power to the Church this was the take-down of a competing Christian religion and in a few centuries would rip Europe in pieces when such a schism was no longer contained by a mere crusade.

The Cathar story is a fascinating story with many characters who wanted power, searched for a power base, tried not to lose power. Mostly it was a large political arena in which the common paid the price for property and power. Its shows that a faith can kill more effectively than any modern weapon can, with the exception that faith discriminates against those who think differently.

A fascinating piece of history that is the beginning of that other disease released upon the world by the name of the Inquisition. Which killed a whole religion and was taken to Spain next where their eyes fell upon the Jews who were a nice targets for the treasuries of the powerful and church.

However the Cathar religion and their attitude towards the world was perhaps too modern for the medieval taste. They actually share their insight and "power"with the females which was then and even today a matter of discussion. Like I said the book is an fascinating insight of the medieval world and yet mirrors our own somehow in its worst ideas.

['Aussie Rick' · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my library I have three books that cover the Crusade to destroy the Cathars in Southern France. This is one of the first I read and I found it be very enjoyable. In around 264 pages the author, Stephen O'Shea, gives you a decent overview of the life and death of these so-called `heretics'. The author also supplies numerous notes and a decent bibliography along with a guide to recommended reading. There are a number of small black & white illustrations within the narrative but it would have been nice to see a few colour photographs of the locations visited by the author during the preparation of this book.

The story of the Crusade against the Cathars is truly horrifying in some places. The atrocities carried out by men of God against a peaceful population all in the name of religion is outstanding. During the Albigensian Crusade in 1209 Catholic Knights stormed the village of Beziers. Before breaching the walls they asked their spiritual leader, Arnold Amaury, how could they distinguish Catholic occupants from the heretics. His reply was "Kill them all, God will know his own."

That one line sums up this terrifying period of French history. The continual battles, sieges and murders where followed by the Inquisition where friend betrayed friend, family betrayed family, all just to survive under the `just' rule of the Catholic Church. We read about that famous French Knight, Simon de Montfort and we find out that in reality he wasn't all that nice! We read about ordinary people, the true heroes of this story, just trying to survive and elk out a living during extraordinary times.

The narrative flowed along and you found yourself drawn into the story with the occasional tourist guide information. This is a great introduction to this period and it should appeal to all that enjoy good historical writing. I would also recommended Jonathan Sumption's `The Albigensian Crusade' and Zoe Oldenbourg's `The Massacre at Montsegur'.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cathar's; their dualist belief system was such a threat to the Catholic church that the church launched an all out assault for a hundred years to stamp them out, thus giving birth to the inquisition. Pope Innocent III, the same pope that granted legitimacy to St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic, paves the way for hundreds of years of future brutal repression by endowing Simon de Montfort with the task to make war on anyone who harbors Cathars at the same time increasing his own fortune & lands. Stephen O'Shea recounts this history in The Perfect Heresy, a compelling story filled with medieval warfare, atrocities, courage and ultimate despair as the last Cathar leader is burned. This is a book I would recommend to anyone with little to no knowledge of the Cathar's who would like a general overview of their history; you don't need to be a professor to read the Perfect Heresy; absolutely absorbing & quenches any inquisitive mind. An enjoyable read!

[Geoff Boxell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst working at the University of Waikato I made great use of their library for my own nefarious purposes: I was running an Executive Management programme, not anything at that time to do with history (that came later). Doing research on Simon de Montford and the Second Barons' War I came up on his ancestor of the same name - the man who did the most to crush the Cathars. Fascinated I felt compelled to read more about the Albigensian Crusade.
This book is much more lightly written than the text books and academic papers I had access to at Uni. It may lack a lot of the details, especially about the Cathar belief system, but it does give a decent broad brush coverage of their history. It also, at the end, shews how Catharism, as a concept, has been kidnapped by many others since, others whose actual beliefs have little or nothing to do with actual Catharism.
The truth is the Albigensian Crusade was as much about the Northern French making a land grab as it was about crushing heretics. The Cathars were strong in number, and tolerated, in the southern land of Languedoc, which had a language and culture more in line with Aragon than it did with the France. The whole being complicated by varying allegiances.
I am a Christian, but nothing, in my view, could ever justify what the Church of Rome instigated, condoned, and encouraged in its desire to enforce orthodoxy. The Inquisition was a child of the Albigensian Crusade and its horrors spread and grew throughout Christendom: I shake my head in how the teachings of Jesus could have lead to such practices.
So, this book is a good general introduction to the Cathars and their fate.

[Mackay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book, which presents a perhaps simplified but easy to grasp history of a most difficult time - the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in southern France. O'Shea writes engagingly and isn't afraid to voice his opinions and insights, whether these align with or oppose more standard interpretations of these painful events. From this remove in time, what happened to the Cathars might seem unbelievable ... except in this day of jihadists and terrorists, human bigotry and cruelty are all too common for disbelief.

[Overbooked ✎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book presents the history of the Albigensian crusade. The author does an excellent job in explaining the complex political feudal patchwork that was Languedoc in the early thirteen century. It opens by briefly explaining a few of the tenets of Catharism but it soon focuses on the crusade and the important historical figures on both sides: the Catholic Church, the Monforts, Capets of France, Saint-Gilles, Trencavel, Foix etc. Some of these important personalities are truly fascinating, Simon the Montfort and Count Raymond VII (of Toulouse) for instance.

The central chapters dedicated to the military campaigns, the sieges and the battles with their frequent reversal of fortunes are detailed and a very engaging read. The author narrative style is a little bit casual for my tastes but the notes, reference to sources and bibliography are useful. I only wish that the author spent more time on the Cathars themselves especially in the years of the crusade, figures like Blanche of Laurac, the lady of who actively sheltered and supported many heretic believers, are only briefly introduced.

For a book with a title of “The Perfect Heresy” not enough of the book centers around Catharism itself which was kind of disappointing. The historical and political aspects of the crusade was well presented in this book, but I found a more in-depth discussion on the religious aspects of the Catharism and its distribution in medieval Europe (not geographically not limited to Languadoc), in The Cathars: The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages by Sean Martin, that I read a couple of years ago. Highly recommended to readers interested in the topic.
4.5 stars

[Ana Or'Lar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aprovechando el tiempo libre y el fin de año, me di a la tarea de poner algo de orden en mis estanterías de GR, específicamente aquellos libros que agregué cuando recién abrí mi cuenta. En ese entonces no le di importancia a las ediciones ni me animaba a escribir mis opiniones, ahora he querido cambiar a las ediciones correctas (las que hay) pero no me parece adecuado reseñar porque la mayoría de mis recuerdos no son ya todo lo precisos que deberían para hacer una reseña en condiciones.

Sin embargo, de este libro en especial, aún permanecen en mi memoria, sobre todo, las emociones que me provocó. El tema del catarismo (término que ha pasado a la historia a pesar de ser el que les dieron sus detractores) es uno de los que más interés y fascinación despertaron en mí durante una buena temporada, por lo que leer todo lo que cayera en mis manos al respecto era casi un deber. Este libro lo presenta de manera accesible y elocuente, con una documentación amplia y rigurosa aunque, por momentos, pueda parecer un poco repetitivo.

Aún recuerdo la angustia y el enojo que sentí ante la injusticia y la masacre, viendo hacia atrás, es probable que el autor sea algo parcial y mi yo de aquel entonces (creo que lo leí hace como 15 años, sino más) se dejó llevar, adoptando una postura clara y muy ofendida por lo que estaba leyendo.
Con independencia de ello, el caso es que sí, aún recuerdo lo mucho que me enganchó y lo bien que la historia me envolvió, haciéndome sentir rodeada de esa época, sus gentes y aquellos sangrientos sucesos que marcaron un episodio por muchos desconocido de la Europa medieval.

De leerlo ahora, no sé si aún le daría esta calificación pero no voy a modificarla, porque mi yo de cuando lo leí estaba convencida de que lo merecía y lo respetaré.

[Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the author of another fine and original book, Back to the Front, The Perfect Heresy provides an insightful up-to-date review of that most difficult subject, the Albigensian Crusade and the story of the Cathars, whose (lost) lives were at the heart of it. Yes, this is the story (more or less) which inspired some of the most insipid best-selling writing in recent years: Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Fortunately, the story is a good deal more interesting than Mr. Brown would have us believe, and Stephen O'Shea has gone to great pains to explain why.

Mr O'Shea manages to keep aloof from the Cathar/Catholic controversy, and presents the main lines of this old story in a competent prose, which can be top-heavy at times, as he is wont to enjoy playing around with language (some people will find this a plus; I know I did). Throughout the story, he manages to weave the various other stories that have issued forth from this one (leaving the treasure of Rennes-le-Château right alone, I might add!), thereby adding depth to the whole.

Altogether, a very satisfying read which should be of interest to all those who are tempted to peek into the medieval mists, and come to grips with one of the more successful (all the more successful, in my view, for having apparently failed so completely) attempts to right the wrongs of the Roman church. Talking about equality between men and women, let alone princes and underlings, demonstrated very far-sighted vision indeed, in the 13th century. Highly recommended.

[Lissa Notreallywolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book thoroughly-It doesn't give much information of the belief system of the Cathars, but is does a great job of explaining the political and economic reasons for the Albigensian crusade. We tend to think of France in it's familiar squarish shape, but before the country was united by the intervention of Rome it was a collection of small kingships. Shifting power by burning heretics and granting kingdoms as rewards consolidated the country into what we now understand as France. This is an interesting companion read to to Iain's Pears The Dream of Scipio, a novel about the same region.
What the book does detail is that theological virtue was considered to be a supra-natural gift from God to each individual that allowed human flourishing. The Cathars were beyond Aristotle and human tradition, considered themselves to be a Christian philosophy. Virtue originated from the practice of celibacy and purity. In the 12th century the Church enforced this obligation on the religious. It was accompanied by self hatred and hatred of the body and sexuality in the institutional church rather than understood as personal integrity, an opportunity to know oneself and be self defined rather than relationally defined. These latter characteristics were defined in the 4th century culminating in a sense of the body as sacred property.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note added 12/31/08: O'Shea attributes the phrase, "kill them all, God will know his own" to Pope Innocent III. In Kirsch's The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God the phrase is attributed to The Abbott of Citeaux outside the walls of Beziers, where all the inhabitants were slaughtered. The Wikipedia has this to say: The Béziers army attempted a sortie but was quickly defeated, then pursued by the crusaders back through the gates and into the city. Arnaud, the Cistercian abbot-commander, is supposed to have been asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. His reply, recalled by Caesar of Heisterbach, a fellow Cistercian, many years later was "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." — "Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own."[5][6] The doors of the church of St Mary Magdalene were broken down and the refugees dragged out and slaughtered. Reportedly, 7,000 people died there including many women and children. Elsewhere in the town many more thousands were mutilated and killed. Prisoners were blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice.[7] What remained of the city was razed by fire. Arnaud wrote to Pope Innocent III, "Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex."[8][9]. The permanent population of Béziers at that time was then probably no more than 5,000, but local refugees seeking shelter within the city walls could conceivably have increased the number to 20,000."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism


My interest in the Cathars was piqued upon reading The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwell. The Cathar heresy rose to prominence in the late 12th and early 13th centuries in what is now called Languedoc in southern France. At that time, the area consisted of city-states that thrived in the tolerant and liberal environment (Stadtluft macht frei - city air makes one free - was the rallying cry of medieval cities to describe the nascent liberties and independence available only in cities)

The Cathars were also known as the Albigensians and, of course, claimed to be the true Christians. Their clergy were poor and ascetic, known as the Perfects. Their beliefs infuriated Pope Innocent III and threatened the Catholic Church in addition to standard feudal relationships. They believed the world was not a creation of a good God, but the construction of a force of darkness. All worldly things were thus corrupt. This included Church sacraments, including that of marriage. In addition, they believed there was no such thing as private property, and the rich trappings and property of the church represented evil. Women were accorded a place equal to men. "Matter was corrupt, therefore irrelevant to salvation." Worldly authority was a fraud. "The god deserving of Cathar worship was a god of light, who ruled the invisible, the ethereal, the spiritual domain; this god, unconcerned with the material, simply didn't care if you got into bed before being married, had a Jew or Muslim for a friend ... or did anything else contrary to the teachings of the medieval Church." The individual had to decide for him/herself whether to renounce the material for a life of self-denial. "Hell was here, not in some horrific afterlife dreamed up by Rome to scare people out of their wits." The Church itself was a hoax. No wonder Innocent was pissed.

The Albigensian Crusade unleashed by Innocent has passed down a catchword to us: "Kill them all, God will know his own." That phrase is attributed to Arnold Amaury, the monk Innocent placed in charge. His instructions were followed to the letter, and the entire population of Beziers was killed - about 20,000 people. The crusade lasted from 1209-1229 and was unremitting in its violence and cruelty. O'Shea suggests it resulted in the first police state, and so devastated the region that the French monarchy was able to expand its territory into southern France.

The ostensible spark that lit the fire was the murder of Peter of Castlenau. He and several other legates had been sent by Innocent to reason, i.e., convert, the heretics. They had little initial success. Imagine a retinue of rich representatives from Rome, surrounded by sycophants ,trying to persuade a dedicated group of ascetics of their essential goodness and humility. When Saint Dominic (Latin wordplay later mocked the Dominican order he founded by calling them domini canes, i.e., the dogs of god) entered the scene, he recognized their error and convinced Innocent to tone things down. The feudal lord , Raymond of Toulouse, was excommunicated for the murder of Peter. He denied having anything to do with it, shades of Henry II and Thomas Beckett, but was forced to publicly humiliate himself and give up a great deal in order to get back in the good graces of the pope. Excommunication was a potent weapon in those days.

The Inquisition ripped apart the bonds of trust that are needed to hold a civil society together. Encouraged to inform on heretics, people often used informing on one's neighbor or kinsman as a strategy to eliminate people they didn't like or to whom they were in debt. For over 100 years, the Inquisition was a fact of life, as the dreaded Dominicans, often assisted by Franciscans, ruthlessly burned those tainted by the brand of unorthodox beliefs. Many of the inquisitors, like Jacques Fournier, later Pope Benedict XII, were extremely efficient - indeed the first Gestapo, as Jews were forced to wear yellow circles and persecuted just as vigorously as the Cathars - assiduously writing down everything and cross-referencing testimony in order to trap those who might be trying to hide their beliefs. Torture was officially sanctioned, although they were admonished not to sever limbs. Even the dead were not immune. Suspected of heretical beliefs, their bodies were dug up and burned. Entire communities were burned in huge pyres. Eventually, by the early 14th century, a backlash began, and the so-called "Spiritual Franciscans" led by Bernard Delicieux articulately argued that the prosecution of "a moribund faith had degenerated into an abuse of power." He despised the Dominicans for their slide into worldliness, but he made the fatal mistake of decrying the wealth of the Church. Fittingly, his brand of apocalyptic piety was declared heretical in 1317. More people to kill.

Today, we witness a touristic resurrection of the Cathars, signs all over Languedoc point to Cathar places of interest, and all sorts of myths and legends have been created around them, attributing hoards of vast hidden treasures and even Nazi links to a sect that celebrated poverty and abjured anything official. Figures.

[Sullivan Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Limped my way through this, despite it being an exciting topic. I ended up mostly skinny-reading it, and my lack of consistency when reading, paired with the overabundance of name-dropping, created the perfect storm for a boring read.

It could be a good history, but all I take away is thankfulness that I’m done.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since the name is "Perfect Heresy" I was expecting more details about the actual heresy, the theology, doctrine of the Cathars etc. Instead is was a detailed (reality based) history of the Cathars in what is now southern France. When things started, the region the Cathars were living in was an semi-independent area with its own language, not quite French or Italian or Spanish, but related. Not everyone was a Cathar but non-Cathars respected and protected them. This was beacuse the Cathars, for the most part, were better behaved and more moral than the established Catholic church. Then over the course of 3 or 4 generations a Crusade was launched against the heretics and the local lords who protected them. At the end of the Crusade, the King of France controlled the area and the local lords were exterminated or exiled. There was a lot of politics involved and religion was just an excuse to finance the wars and recruit soldiers.

The book covers mostly the events, personalities and politics and does not go deeply into the religion.

I say it is reality based, because since the early 1800's a lot of semi-fictional writing has taken place that connects the Cathars with the Knights Templars, the Holy Grail, hidden treasure, ancient mystic eastern knowledge and a supposed line of kings descended from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. This is all false and the development of these myths is gone over in the epilogue.

I did learn that the Albigensian Crusades took place over generations, that many who fought with the Cathars were not believers and that the local power structure was deeply involved. I wanted more information on the actual beliefs of the Cathars but this was not the book for that.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of the Algigensian crusade is a case study in senseless violence. So readers of this book must brace themselves against stories of relentless sieges, mass burnings, atrocious mutilations and the like.

That being said, the book is a fascinating read. It is well written, flows well and stays on subject. The author does a great job of explaining the complicated feudal relationships between the various barons, kings and other warlords. the real story here is not one of religion, but one of a clash between the parallel powers of the kings and the popes. But the author skilfully weaves anecdotes or contemporary sources between the descriptions of political manoeuvers and intrigues. So the narrative never became dry or boring - the author kept me engaged by sprinkling in individual human interest stories inbetween the larger political discussions. The discussions of the theological disputes between Rome and the various heretic groups of the 12th century were interesting, but never too detailed or long-winded.

One of the most fascinating chapters was the very last one, where the author describes how, sometime in the 19th century, the Cathars were rediscovered and help up as a shining example of whatever virtue people were interested in. Someone even invented a fabulous Cathar treasure, which pops up every once in a while in novels of "The Da Vinci code" genre. Hippies, gnostics, even Nazis apparently found something to admire in the gentle souls of Languedoc.

Finally, the user-friendliness of the book is greatly enhanced by the presence of a list of characters at the beginning, maps and pictures.

[Useless Mathom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely engaging and well-written, one of the best pop-history books I've yet to come across.

SIDENOTE: Reading and learning about the Cathars from other sources concurrently with this book, I learned that in the past few decades since its publishing, the existence of Cathars and the nature thereof has become an interestingly contested issue, and I found myself disappointed that the book didn't annotate some of its more incredible accounts by citing sources. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it did, in fact, cite sources, only my bootleg e-book hadn't been displaying those hyperlinks (presumably because they clashed with the parallel footnote system), so I missed out on following along and making notes on those sources, which I encountered only once I reached the very back of the book. END OF SIDENOTE

Either way, the narrative here is gripping and well put together, the episodes depicted vividly and conveying a clear idea of the main actors' interests and ideologies. I found myself swamped with ideas of what-could-have been, something I think the author was as well, especially when he indulged in Pedro's dream of a united Occitania. Occitan culture and language had been one of my many passive interests for a while, ever since I spent some time in Toulouse, but this is the first time I ever delved into Cathar history in any detail -- and boy was there detail.

Of course, this is nothing to begrudge the author, considering the linear flow of time and all, but it's a shame that this book came out before the research of people like Mark Pegg (allided to in the sidenote) and that its beautiful narrative can't be described as anything more than incomplete now. Still, a great first read on the subject.

[J. Lee Hazlett · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best historical monographs I've ever read. Readers with a moderate understanding of the main structures and key players in medieval Europe will be able to easily understand every aspect of O'Shea work despite the fact that the Cathars are not a subject of regular study in the US. Admirably researched and beautifully written, 'Perfect Heresy' cuts through the myths and mists of centuries to bring the Cathars, the Church, and medieval Languedoc as a whole to life. O'Shea's passion for this project shows on every page without ever bringing his authorial neutrality into question. Brilliantly done.

[Hermano · Rating 4 out of 5]

While an entertaining book, from a historical troubling. Author is not objective and more cheerleader than anything else. One side is bad another good is way to simplistic to understand medieval history. In the end, a lot of this conflict is more about power and money than religion. It’s, if a can borrow Game of Thrones idea, about bending the knee and what happens to those who do not.

[Felipe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tema practicamente desconocido por mi. Me ha gustado y me ha enganchado . Muchos nombres , a veces algo repetitivo y parcial .
Entretenida y escrita correctamente .
Recomendable

[Warwick Stubbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, you didn't get enough brutality, dismembering of limbs, mass burnings, sacking of villages, gouging out of eyes, linguistic inquisition traps, betrayal, and all-out horror towards our fellow human beings who just wanted to live a peaceful, respectful, and equality-driven life before attaining their place in heaven in your everyday tale of life in the middle-ages? Well, thank the Catholics, here's some more!

[Iza C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book broke my heart

[Annabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's a title I had been hesitant to buy, and which had been sitting on my shelf for over year, not to mention casually rejected each time I was in search of more interesting-sounding titles. It turned out to be one the best books I read in 2020.

Man's capacity for violence is embodied in The Perfect Heresy. Perfect being a noun and not an adjective and, if one's going to be a snob about it, pronounced Parfait. O'Shea starts off with a picturesque, present day travelogue of France's bucolic Albigensian countryside before acquainting us with the probable origins and dynamics of the heresy in question, the resulting geographical and religious implications, and a cast of all-too-human, and inhuman characters. Cathars. A word I've only come across once, and fleetingly, when I read The Da Vinci Code. In a nutshell as I understood it, Catharism believed men were fallen angels, and espoused the renunciation of the material, and the abstention from sex, marriage, and the consumption of meat. The consummate Cathar's life was dedicated to meditation, prayer, and the pursuit of goodly--what the Catholics would label as Godly, work. The objective was to stop the cycle of reincarnation, as man or woman, into this world of evil, and rejoin the angels, and only the exalted position of a Cathar Perfect can attain this. Meanwhile, a credente is a practicing Cathar who can stay married, and lapse from abstinence. So many labels and terms, places and positions I'm bound to forget. But here's a visual that will stay with me for some time:

"In early April, a stumbling procession of about 100 men in single file arrived at the gates of Cabaret. They had walked across the inhospitable countryside from Bram, twenty-five miles away, a poorly fortified lowland town that had yielded to Simon de Montfort after only three days of siegework. The exhausted, whimpering men were Bram's defeated defenders; each trudged through the dust of the courtyard with face downcast, an arm outstretched to touch the shoulder of the man ahead in line. The people of Cabaret soon saw the reason for their odd parade discipline. The men had been blinded, their eyes gouged out by the wrathful victors. So too had each man's nose and upper lip been sliced off--they were walking skulls, their unnatural, immutable grins a hideous spectacle of mutilation. Their leader who had been left with one eye so as to guide his companions from Bram to Cabaret, brought the grotesque march to a halt in front of Peter Roger, his knights, and their ladies."

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Cathars are a fascinating subject that, going in, I didn't even know existed. However, this book is just not written in a way that sustained my interest. Mr. O'Shea is obviously highly literate, and there are no editing errors that I came upon, but it just wasn't written very well. I was also irritated when I reached the footnote section. There was nary a hint that there were footnotes as I was reading, and for the best comprehension, I think footnotes should be read at the point to which they are relevant.
I'm also confused by the Ottawa Citizen's review: "This is a road book from the same neck of the woods as Bill Bryson in England and Bruce Chatwin in Patagonia". Except for a short section in the first chapter where he first visits Albi with his brother and the last section of the epilogue where he discusses visiting Montségur, this is not written in the first person. There is the odd landscape description, but this is most certainly not a road book. It makes me wonder if the reviewer even read the book.
There doesn't seem to be that many books on the Cathars, and this one was certainly well researched. If you have an overwhelming desire to know more about the Cathars than you can learn by scanning the Wikipedia article, then I guess this may be a good book for you. But as a starting point, or if you think that this is from the road book genre, I can't recommend this book.

[Jo Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history. It covers a period of about 100 years in which the Catholic Church make it their crusade to wipe out the Cathars in what is now southern France. And some pretty horrific atrocities it throws up too. Their major crime was to show up the hypocrisy, corruption and greed that was rife through the establishment. Someone is reportedly to have stated "kill them all God will know his own" - perhaps Obama could adopt this slogan for his drone strikes.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Perfect Heresy is a very well written and extremely engaging history of the medieval Cathars, the Catholic Church's extermination of these people, and the beginning of the Inquisition. O'Shea does a great job of providing an overview of the key events and personalities involved while always keeping the narrative interesting. This is popular history at the highest level.

[Jeffrey Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

eloquently written, poignantly told, detailed but insightful and fun, and thorough, it's the kind of accessible academic writing I'd like to one day put my name to myself. Tragic tale, true to human experience in a beautiful locale... perfect title

[Dana Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very fascinating story, actually history, of a fascinating collection of people who simply referred to themselves as "good Christians." The Church (Roman, of course) took intense exception to them, especially pope Innocent III (an ironic name to take in the extreme). This work is primarily a story, as the title suggests, of the life and death of a group of people in what is now the south -central portion of France, known as Languedoc in the 12-13th centuries.

These people, pejoratively called Cathars by their enemies, were known for their religious movement that exhibited equality between genders, noncreedal, religious tolerance (rare in the Middle Ages) and an embrace of simplicity, bordering on poverty. It was a dualistic theology akin to Manicheism, believing the material world was evil and that the Church was irrelevant. Beyond dualism, the main tenets were mostly involved with ceremonial functions and the "changes" that occurred by them.

It is a Medieval history with which I was unaware, except for some of the massacres described. I came away with a greater understanding of the Church and its history. For example, the Inquisition was begun in this period with the Cathars among the first targets. Many of the characters in this "drama" were fascinating, even if not altogether true.

[Dropbear123 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5 Worth a read if you want a fairly short (260 pages) and accessible book on medieval history or the history of the Albigensian Crusade in southern France.

It is my first book on this specific subject, my only knowledge of the Cathars before this coming from the Crusader Kings 2 game, and I found this easy to read. It has a decent list of the main people involved, split between religious and secular figures, which does help when the noblemen weren't creative with names (there is a lot of Raymonds for example). It covers the battles, fights and atrocities in decent detail. The author does set out the Cathar beliefs fairly well and in a way that is understandablle for somewhat doesn't know much about religion or theology but he does seem sympathetic towards their beliefs. The book also covers the post-crusade Inquisition of the Cathars and the author portrays the Inqusition's methods as almost like a proto-police state. Finally there is a chapter on the cultural legacy of the Cathars but since the book was released around 2000 it won't have any things that covered the Cathars after that (like CK2 I mentioned).