The Perfect Heresy: The Life and Death of the Cathars - Hardcover

O'Shea, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1861972709 ISBN 13: 9781861972705

Publisher: Profile Books, 2000

Synopsis

Eight hundred years ago, the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians from all walks of society, high and low, flourished in what is now the Languedoc in Southern France. Their subversive beliefs brought down on them the wrath of Popes and monarchs and provoked a brutal 'Crusade' against them. The final defeat of the Cathars was horrific with mass burnings of men, women and children in the village of Montaillou in the Pyrenees.

About this title

Review:

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

About the Author:

Stephen O'Shea is a Canadian historian and journalist. His earlier books Back to the Front: an accidental historian walks the trenches of World War I and The Perfect Heresy: the Life and Death of the Cathars were acclaimed as popular history at its best. He lives in France. Click here for his webpage.

About this edition

• Publisher: Profile Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1861972709
• ISBN 13: 9781861972705
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 333