The Albigensian Crusade and heresy

Hamilton, Bernard

doi:10.1017/chol9780521362894.010

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Following the writings of contemporary Cistercians chroniclers, historians saw the Cathars as developing a church-like organization in opposition to the Catholic Church. Oldenbourg (1961, 28-81), Lambert (1998), Hamilton (1999), and Barber (2000). This view sees the Cathars as decisively influenced by the Bogomil heresy which arose in Macedonia in the tenth century.…”

Section: Religious Toleration and Legal Centralizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legal centralization and the birth of the secular state

Johnson

Koyama

2013

Journal of Comparative Economics

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This paper investigates the relationship between the historical process of legal centralization and increased religious toleration by the state. We develop a model in which legal centralization leads to the criminalization of the religious beliefs of a large proportion of the population. This process initially leads to increased persecution, but, because these persecutions are costly, it eventually causes the state to broaden the standards of orthodox belief and move toward religious toleration. We compare the results of the model with historical evidence drawn from two important cases in which religious diversity and state centralization collided in France: the Albigensian crusades of the thirteenth century and the rise of Protestant belief in the sixteenth century. Both instances support our central claim that the secularization of western European state institutions during the early-modern period was driven by the costs of imposing a common set of legal standards on religiously diverse populations.

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Section: Religious Toleration and Legal Centralizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legal centralization and the birth of the secular state

Johnson

Koyama

2013

Journal of Comparative Economics

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“…In 1974, Bernard Hamilton's article-length pamphlet outlined the story of Catharism and the Albigensian Crusade in a very matter of fact, even-handed way, reflecting the historical consensus of that time. 50 He noted that the 'chief beneficiary of the Albigensian Crusade was undoubtedly the French crown.' 51 Seven years after Strayer, Jonathan Sumption published his book on the crusade, one that continues to be widely cited.…”

Section: The Albigensian Crusade As the Central Eventmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…50 He noted that the 'chief beneficiary of the Albigensian Crusade was undoubtedly the French crown.' 51 Seven years after Strayer, Jonathan Sumption published his book on the crusade, one that continues to be widely cited. 52 Sumption's work used readily available primary sources and is a straight-forward narrative.…”

Section: The Albigensian Crusade As the Central Eventmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Albigensian Crusade in Anglo‐American Historiography, 1888–2013

Marvin

2013

History Compass

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Of all the crusades which occurred in the crusade era, the Albigensian Crusade stands as one of the most infamous, although the Cathar religion and the Inquisition have drawn more academic and popular attention. Older scholarship treated the Albigensian Crusade as ancillary to the development of the Inquisition. Assigning the relative importance of the Albigensian Crusade within wider crusade historiography remains problematic for historians. An important historiographical development began in the 1970s as Anglo‐American scholars chose to treat the Albigensian Crusade not simply as precursor of the Inquisition but as a standalone event. Besides this advancement, Anglo‐American scholars have done valuable work on regions and towns affected by the crusade and Catharism. Since 9/11 and the on‐going ‘War on Terror’, crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean still drive the historiography, but more remains to be done on the Albigensian Crusade. The local church, regional studies, biographical treatments, and prosopographical work have barely been touched on in English.

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“…Commonly cited examples include the extermination of almost all inhabitants of Magdeburg by the Imperial troops during the Thirty Years War (Wedgwood 1938), the massacre of the population of Bezier during the Albigensian Crusades (Hamilton 1999), and St. Bartholomew massacre in Paris and other French cities during the Wars of Religion (Knecht 2001). Such examples can be multiplied, but the issue cannot be resolved by simply citing anecdotal evidence in support of one, or the other side.…”

Section: Conditions Favoring Cooperation Of Lower-level Units: Intensity Of Warfarementioning

confidence: 99%

Warfare and the Evolution of Social Complexity: A Multilevel-Selection Approach

Turchin¹

2010

Structure and Dynamics: eJournal of Anthropological and Related Sciences

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Multilevel selection is a powerful theoretical framework for understanding how complex hierarchical systems evolve by iteratively adding control levels. Here I apply this framework to a major transition in human social evolution, from small-scale egalitarian groups to large-scale hierarchical societies such as states and empires. A major mathematical result in multilevel selection, the Price equation, specifies the conditions concerning the structure of cultural variation and selective pressures that promote evolution of larger-scale societies. Specifically, large states should arise in regions where culturally very different people are in contact, and where interpolity competition -warfare -is particularly intense. For the period of human history from the Axial Age to the Age of Discovery (c.500 BCE-1500 CE), conditions particularly favorable for the rise of large empires obtained on steppe frontiers, contact regions between nomadic pastoralists and settled agriculturalists. An empirical investigation of warfare lethality, focusing on the fates of populations of conquered cities, indicates that genocide was an order of magnitude more frequent in steppefrontier wars than in wars between culturally similar groups. An overall empirical test of the theory's predictions shows that over ninety percent of largest historical empires arose in world regions classified as steppe frontiers. Introduction: the Puzzle of UltrasocialityWhen World War I broke out in August 1914 patriotic crowds in Vienna, Berlin, and London demonstrated in support of their governments' decision to enter the war. More remarkably, young men volunteered in large numbers for military service. In the United Kingdom 300,000 men enlisted in August alone, and more than 2.5 million throughout the war (Ferguson 1999:198). The British government did not need to institute the draft until 1916. Huge numbers of these men were killed (close to a million in Britain alone); others were physically maimed (1.6 million in Britain) or psychologically scarred for life (Urlanis 1971). Such willingness to sacrifice life and limb for the sake of a nation-an imaginary construct with uncertain boundaries encompassing millions of people, most of whom could never even hope to meet each other-presents a huge problem to the standard evolutionary theory. It is a central part of the "puzzle of ultrasociality"-the ability of humans to form cooperating societies consisting of huge numbers of genetically unrelated individuals (Campbell 1983, Richerson andBoyd 1998).It may seem strange to equate cooperation with warfare, but war encompasses both morally repugnant atrocities and morally uplifting stories of selfless heroism. A fruitful conceptual framework for the study of this human activity, which involves both coercion and cooperation, is offered by the theory of multilevel selection (Sober and

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The Albigensian Crusade and heresy

Cited by 9 publications

References 21 publications

Legal centralization and the birth of the secular state

Legal centralization and the birth of the secular state

The Albigensian Crusade in Anglo‐American Historiography, 1888–2013

Warfare and the Evolution of Social Complexity: A Multilevel-Selection Approach

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