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In 1208 Pope Innocent III called for a Crusade against a country of fellow-Christians. The new enemy was Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, one of the greatest princes in Western Christendom, premier baron of all the territories in southern France where the langue d'oc was spoken. So began the Albigensian Crusade (named after the French town of Albi), which was to culminate in 1244 with the massacre of Cathars at the mountain fortress of Montségur.
This Crusade was the Catholic Church's response to the rapid growth of a rival Christian religion in the very heart of Christendom - the religion of the Cathars (or 'pure ones'). These heretics drew their strength from the consciousness of belonging to a faith that had never seen eye to eye with Catholicism and was more ancient than the Church itself. From the beginning this religious war was to show all the characteristics of a national resistance movement, so that in the end it was not just the survival of the Cathar faith that was at stake but also that of the Languedoc itself as an autonomous and independent region of France.
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The book is an exciting read and gives a depth and breadth of research, and erudition, that is hard to find on this subject. She follows through from the roots of the movement, its social and political context of the time, and its sister movements such as the Vaudois or Waldesians that were to be persecuted by the Catholic Church all the way through to the 16th century. But most of all, this is a history of the Catholic Church and the beginning of the Inquisition.
This is a well written and interesting read that combines historical facts with a fluent writing style worthy of an adventure writer. It covers the period of the inquisition against the Cathars in the Languedoc in the 12th and 13th centuries and reveals the politics behind the campaign to destroy Catharism. It is evident that the author sympathises with the Cathars whom she depicts as the heroes even though they were seen by the Church at the time as heretics who should be burned to death for their belief in an alternative doctrine.
This book gives you a great overwiew of the albigensian crusades and is a great start for someone interested in this period of turmoil between the church of Rome and the Cathars. I find it to be well written and researched and giving an insight into politics and life in the midi versus the rest of France and gives you a better understanding and foundation for further reading.
There's much in Zoe Oldenbourg's book to be positive about. It is thoroughly researched and facts tumble off the pages at a pace that makes them easily digestible but nutritious. With a few reservations that I will come to she has a good insight into the people who were involved in this unpleasant but formative period of history in the Languedoc and a good understanding of the region and the privations it experienced during this period. The events of the period are clearly explained. In many ways this could have been an utterly reliable and 'cornerstone' volume about a period of history in which religion and politics mingled to deadly effect. BUT The author is way too partisan. Her admiration for the Cathar "perfecti" is way too unquestioning. And that provokes the cynical side of my nature in a way that I don't like, and I start to mutter to myself as I read, "So let's see, these "unworldly" "spiritual masters" who think that the created world is the realm of Satan make it a priority to get their gold out of Montsegur?" and much more in that vein. Let me be clear - I hold no brief for the Catholic church in this matter; it's behaviour was brutal. Yet Ms Oldenbourg's partisan reportage actually had me rooting for Simon de Montfort! SO 3 stars for solid historical knowledge, clear writing and an enthusiasm for subject
Jonathan Sumption's book on `The Albigensian Crusade' does not list Zoe Oldenbourg's 1961 account in its bibliography, and yet her `Massacre at Montsegur' was apparently the first populist account of the Cathars in the English language (translated by the classical scholar Peter Green). There has been, of course, volumes upon volumes of further research conducted since then, and it is difficult to gauge how well Oldenbourg's account stands up to current academic thinking about the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade. Oldenbourg was at a loss to account for Raymond VII's acceptance of the Treaty of Meaux, for example; are we any the wiser in the twenty-first century? This book covers both the subjects of the Cathars themselves and the crusade against them in some detail, and is written in a clear and lucid style.
This question of style, I think, is the key to the book's continuing popularity. It is certainly of its time: outwardly educational in tone without being hectoring, it has the sense of informing with only a slight hint of being patronising. She poses her own questions, as if these are what the reader him- or herself has been asking (and they often are), before then going on to answer them in systematic form. One also feels that the author is speaking directly to the reader, as if she is both telling an interesting tale but also not refraining from giving her personal views on certain events and subjects.
A few examples of the latter include her unforgiving account of the role of St Dominic - she accuses the Dominicans of originating the tactics of the modern police-state - and how the defeat of the Cathars was "a crime against the Spirit". The author demeans her own sex when, writing of Blanche of Castile, she describes "a woman, a member of the weaker sex ...... liable to let herself be dominated by her emotions", but also, on the subject of mass hysteria, "women are more prone by nature than men". But then, this was 1961!
Over twelve chapters the author describes the background to the crusade, its causes, its narrative, and its conclusion, but she also delves deeply into the workings and beliefs of the Cathar religion, pointing out that if Catharism seems to defy reason, "such is the case with all dead religions; besides, mediaeval Catholicism on occasions seems just as strange." Oldenbourg is equally exploratory and explanatory about the position of Rome in its attempts to come to terms with and eradicate what it considered to be a grave and threatening heresy. There is much said too about the nature of society at this time in Languedoc and its surrounding lands, as well as the ways of the period's warfare and politics, some of which was very bloody indeed.
For sure, there are some contradictions in the author's account. For example we are told that the routiers lacked all discipline, and then, a few paragraphs later, they are obeying orders. We are told of Simon de Montfort's militant piety, and then later learn how he viewed the Cathar heresy merely as a means for despoiling the local lords of their property. And some of the information provided begs questions that go unanswered. Oldenbourg, for instance, mentions the militant Bishop of Toulouse's White Brotherhood of catholic terrorists, against which arose the Black Brotherhood. But there is no mention of who or which faction lay behind the latter. If it was the Cathars (rather than the supporters of the prince), then this demonstrates that they were not so pacific in their reaction to the crusade as the author makes out.
There are concerns too about plenty of assertions going unreferenced in the notes, such as Cathars in England and even, ironically, in Rome itself. But some of the accounts and assertions are pretty serious claims, such as combatants "roasting children over slow fires". Whilst not accusing Oldenbourg of making up such claims, I think she had at least the duty to direct us to their source.
For whilst her bibliography covers six full pages and lists many contemporary records, she concentrates on only a handful of sources in her own narrative. For example, her notes for the chapter on the important campaign of 1209 virtually all refer to `Chanson de la Croisade'. According to Oldenbourg, the infamous cry `Kill them all; God will look after his own' is attributed to Arnald-Amalric, leader of the crusade, by the Caesar von Heisterbach, but we are not told anything about this mysterious German, whether he was a contemporary, whether he witnessed it personally: Heisterbach does not even feature in the index.
Another gripe is the map printed in its opening pages, marked as giving "the geographical background to the Albigensian Crusade". It does not even show Albi, which is off the map to the north, and neither does it show such important places in the tale as Minerve, whose siege and capture in the summer of 1210 "witnessed the first great burning of heretics." There are some monochrome plates provided but these failed to convey to this reviewer much of the period's sense of destruction and fear. And having just a "diagrammatic sketch" of Montsegur and a single photgraph does not do much justice to her account. (She also makes some veiled but strange claims about the architecture of Montsegur itself, which no doubt fostered its occult standing.)
But lest this review turn into a negative critique, it is good of the author to review the state of the Midi at the end of hostilities prior to the treaty of Meaux. She notes that by this time, "On both sides, in fact, heresy seems to have served as a mere excuse". Oldenbourg invokes a proto-nationalism in Languedoc that had not been there fifty years before. This is all thoughtful stuff, but it was disappointing to find that her account more or less ended at Montsegur: there is barely a whisper of the fall of Queribus over ten years later.
There are six useful appendices, especially those that explore the Cathar religion. Reading these on a superficial level, I could not help but think that the differences between the Cathars and the Catholics were less than the links that united them, and that Oldenbourg is probably right in her conclusion that politics rather than religion was the cause and sustenance for over forty years of pain and suffering in the south of France.
So, in conclusion, this book is a very good read on the subject and a very good introduction to both the crusade and its underlying causes. There is much background material about the region and its main players to aid the reader. But, Oldenbourg's account is now almost forty years old, and the prospective purchaser of this volume should perhaps consider augmenting it with a more recent account.Read more ›
