Catharism was a Christian sect in south France that defied most everything the “Church” required of its believers. Christians should strive to be like Jesus, a poor man who respected men and women. Cathars reincarnated until they are “Perfect” and finally are released from their corporal bodies to join Christ. This heresy in the 11-1200s was so antithetical to the Church that it called on a crusade to kill them all, ultimately succeeding. O’Shea is an excellent writer and historian, making ancient primary sources accessible. I was confused by the first few chapters but as the story of the crusade developed it was almost impossible to put down. I learned so much about a fascinating Christian sect I knew nothing about and which predated Protestantism. Trigger warnings: the Church and its henchmen were cruel and brutal. Many thousands died cruel, painful deaths. ( )

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.
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Interesting exposition of Medieval European Papacy during the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Deals with Pope Innocent III and the main agents both for and against the Cathars of Languedoc...(southern France and NE Spain). ( )

Notes whilst reading:
Excellent writing style.
Good general review of what they believed. It was quite heretical.
Right amount of information about the battles.
Good insight into the medieval life, and of the ruthlessness of the corrupt Roman church.
Wish I would have read this some years ago when we stayed some weeks in the region.
Lots of interesting notes at the back, but there are no references in the book to these notes. ( )

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 [book: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.


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