The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade

Léglu, Catherine; Rist, Rebecca; Taylor, Claire

doi:10.4324/9781315798141

Cited by 12 publications

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“…16 For example, the inquisition witness Peter Garcias observed that the Waldensian Peter Desplas, imprisoned in 1247, was a 'sandal wearer', whilst the Occitan troubadour William of Tudela and the anonymous continuator of his Song of the Albigensian Crusade, used both Latin and local terminology. 17 Finally, Waldensians as well as Cathars were often described as being boni homines in inquisitorial depositions, such as in the register of the Dominican Peter Seilan, made in 1241-2. 18 Because the historians' 'Cathars' were referred to like this as well, we should regard it as the Latin translation of the conventional regional epithet concerning worthy status, a southern version of the more widely used urban prudhomme, rather than as a name for specific heretics.…”

Section: IImentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Sunt quadraginta anni vel circa’: Southern French Waldensians and the Albigensian Crusade

Taylor

2018

French History

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This paper contributes new evidence and a new perspective to the study of the religious heresy known as Waldensianism in the high-medieval Languedoc, and its relationship to both orthodox authority and the 'Cathar' heresy. Although they were outlawed by Rome in 1184, Waldensians were operating openly in the Cathar lands pertaining to the viscounts of Béziers and the counts of Toulouse and Foix-with clerical complicity. This was until the Albigensian Crusade (1209-29). Its northern French army attacked Cathars and their noble supporters, but began executing Waldensians too. This paper offers a precise chronology and demography for these processes of toleration and persecution. For the first time, it reveals that from 1209, Waldensian refugees relocated beyond the warzone, fleeing to the County of Rodez, the north of the County of Quercy, and the Duchy of Gascony, and were no longer to be found in the Cathar heartlands. In doing this, it sheds light on the wider process of suppressing minority religious groups in the high middle ages, particularly their social and geographical dislocation and assimilation. It also contributes to the related historiographical debate concerning the nature of heresy in medieval Languedoc more generally. 178 words 'Sunt quadraginta anni vel circa': Southern French Waldensians and the Albigensian Crusade Medieval Waldensians constituted an important movement of Apostolic Christianity, devoted to reforming lay religious practice. They were outlawed as heretical throughout Europe in 1184, but the quotation in the title of this paper-'It was around forty years ago'-refers to the recollections of inquisitorial witnesses in Languedoc in the mid-1240s, that Waldensians had operated openly in the region as recently as four decades previously. 1 This remarkable fact relates to the very specific circumstances and nature of their activity in Languedoc. New and re-evaluated evidence offered below indicates that a cautious toleration was the state of affairs right up to the arrival of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209-29. This was launched against lords of the region considered to be harbouring heretics whom historians usually call

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Section: IImentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Sunt quadraginta anni vel circa’: Southern French Waldensians and the Albigensian Crusade

Taylor

2018

French History

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Evidence for Dualism in Inquisitorial Registers of the 1240s: A Contribution to a Debate

Taylor

2013

History

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In the Christian middle ages, people who refused to accept what they were supposed to believe about God or His Church were labelled ‘heretics’. But who decided whether their views were ‘orthodox’ or ‘heretical'? ‘Heretics’ typically saw themselves as the true Christians. Most did not dispute the central doctrines of Christianity itself, but challenged the Church as it was constituted in their day. In this they clashed with the vested interests of clerics, and as a result they typically had doctrinal and moral crimes attributed to them in the sources. These possibly bore little relationship to what they actually believed. Given this, how can we know that they were heretics in the first place? Through examining the testimony of witnesses giving evidence to inquisitors in southern France in the 1240s, this article demonstrates not only that the role of the Roman Church was contested, but also that core orthodox doctrines, such as belief in one God, in His creation of the world, and in His Son Jesus suffering and dying in human form, were disputed. Such concepts were not simply imposed on the written record by inquisitors. We have evidence of sincerely held dissenting beliefs, which were often the result of discussion and debate between three competing religious systems prevalent in the region: Catholicism, what historians now call ‘Catharism’, and ‘Waldensianism’. Inquisitors did not simply impose an externally constructed or stereotypical ‘heretic’ onto its records. The evidence indicates that ‘Catharism’ was both real and antithetical to other belief systems.

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Introduction

2024

The Inner Life of Race

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Through a reading of Donald Trump’s use of the song “The Snake” to campaign about the dangers of America’s multiple racial enemies—Latin American migrants, Muslim “terrorists,” Jewish financiers, among others—the introduction argues that racisms of the color line share something with Islamophobia and antisemitism: they are all organized biopolitically around a probabilistic threat of evil presumed to dwell in the inner life of certain populations. The introduction argues that racial power operates as a game for managing bodies in order to expose the potential malevolence that hides within the souls they contain. This policing process enacts a hermeneutics of suspicion and relies upon a form of anxious reason with both a universalizing and a particularizing racial action. This presumption of threat to and by the soul is crucial for explaining the “anti” quality that we find in racisms: in anti-Blackness, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and even anticommunism.

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The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade

Cited by 12 publications

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‘Sunt quadraginta anni vel circa’: Southern French Waldensians and the Albigensian Crusade

‘Sunt quadraginta anni vel circa’: Southern French Waldensians and the Albigensian Crusade

Evidence for Dualism in Inquisitorial Registers of the 1240s: A Contribution to a Debate

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