The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars [Hardcover]

Stephen O'Shea (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2000

Chronicles the life & death of the Cathar movement, led by a group of heretical Christians whose brutal suppression by the Catholic Church unleashed the Inquisition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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

From Publishers Weekly

Although its title and subject confound such a prospect, this broadly researched, well-crafted and extensive treatment of an extinct Christian heresy would make excellent beach reading. Investing his story with the pace and excitement of a novel, journalist and translator O'Shea skillfully brings to life the tale of the medieval Cathars. A group of Christian heretics living, predominantly, in southern France, the Cathars, also known as the Albigensians, claimed to be the true Christians. Members of a church that was characterized by a poor, ascetic clergy (known as the Perfect), they stood against the power, wealth and luxury of the clerics who owed their allegiance to the bishop of Rome. They adhered to a doctrine remarkably similar to that of the Christian Gnostics and challenged the authority of the Church, claiming Catholicism was a false religion; in return, they were exterminated by the Church in the first half of the 13th century in "a ferocious campaign of siege, battle, and bonfire." O'Shea (Back to the Front) suggests that the harsh reprisal against this alternative sect both enabled the expansion of the French monarchy into the formerly independent region of Languedoc and created the first modern police stateAthe Inquisition. Cogently, provocatively and precisely argued, this volume is a sound and engaging exposition of a pivotal episode in European history. 15 b&w illus. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802713505
• ISBN-13: 978-0802713506
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #236,939 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Black and White world...., December 21, 2000

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (Hardcover)

Stephen O'Shea's book, THE PERFECT HERESY is extremely readable, and if you're on your way to Languedoc and want to know more about the Cathars, this is a good read. However, be warned, the book is a bit biased, and there are some factual errors.

O'Shea relies on secondary sources, and although he quotes some "primary" sources (English translations) others have translated the passages differently. For example, in 1242 in the town of Avignonet, two Domincan priests, Stephen of St Thibery and William Arnald, were attacked and killed by the Cathers. O'Shea says, "Feverish hands rifled through a wooden chest, found the Inquisition register, and ripped it to pieces; a flaming brand was lowered to set the names alight." Malcom Lambert, in his book THE CATHERS says the registers were taken and sold by soldiers.

O'Shea's writing, including the excerpts he uses to illustrate his points are designed to enhance the sensationalism of the story of the Cathars (he is a journalist). For example, on page 5 he attributes a quote Arnoud Amaury supposedly uttered at the seige of Beziers, "Kill them all, God will know his own." This quote was written thirty years later by a chronicler not present at the seige. Mr. O'Shea acknowledges later in the book that "historians disagree" about the accuracy of Amaury's statement. The chronicler wrote a French version of a mot taken directly from the Bible and put it into Amaury's mouth. So much for verismilitude.

O'Shea's book is mistitled. He spends little time discussing Cather theology or "heresy" and much time describing Simon de Monfort's military victories (maps of field movements, etc.) which is quite interesting, and takes up about a third of the book. What the Cathars believed was recorded by the Inquisitors. Since they provided conflicting information some historians question if the "lay" Cathers really understood their faith! The "Perfects" or the elect apparently believed Jesus and Satan were brothers and that the world was 100 percent wicked. Dying was was the only way out. As O'Shea says, the Cathers won the war because they are gone.

If you want to know more about "Dualism" and the movement that began in Bosnia and spread to the West to Languedoc, read Lambert's book on the Cathers. O'Shea says Lambert's book is for the stout-hearted, but that is the only way to get at the truth. Historians may never fully understand what caused the conflict between the Catholic Church and the Cathers. The only thing I am certain of is that this is not a black and white world, and saints and sinners are hard to tell apart at times.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but shallow, December 20, 2000

By 

John Cragg (Delta(greater Vancouver), B.C Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (Hardcover)

Stephen O'Shea has written a fast-paced and absorbing, though somewhat superficial, book on the crusades against the Cathars and the start of the Inquisition. Despite the title, the book is not really about the heresy. Instead, it is about the wars of conquest that were inspired in the name of stamping out heresy. O'Shea quite reasonably portrays the crusade as a land-grab by Northern barons and in particular the King of France. He sees the whole sorry business as being also an assertion of the temporal as well as spiritual hegemony of the papacy.

As such a history, the book is well done, but don't look here for any detailed exposition of the origins of Catharism and its doctrinal development, analysis of where Cathar beliefs differed from orthodoxy or how these beliefs were related to standard heresies going back to the early Church.

More puzzling is a lack of discussion in the book about why the crusade and apparently the geographical range of Catharism were limited to Languedoc. The conditions that O'Shea believes fostered the growth of Catharism surely were as prominent in Aquitaine as in Languedoc in the 12th century. Also missing is much discussion of why the English-Aquitaine crown essentially stood idle while areas (especially Toulouse) claimed as theirs fell into the hands of their principal rival.

O'Shea has written a very one-sided book. It starts with a description of the looming threat of the Cathedral of Albi, with its tiny entrance and castle-like buttresses, but O'Shea fails completely to mention the astonishing interior, with a totally different atmosphere and a concrete, positive portrayal of what the Church could offer to those within it. This aspect of the Cathedral is one of the wonders of medieval architecture, and its neglect here is symptomatic of the neglect of any arguments that might be made in favor of traditional religion. (There must be some - it did after all inspire in the 13th century some very good minds and some very good people as well as some appallingly venal ones.)

I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it as light reading. It raises more questions than it answers, even about things it seems to answer. But with a light style and engaging presentation, there is much to be said in favor of one-sided and unbalanced, but straightforward, historical accounts-and O'Shea has produced a fine example.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent very readable history, February 19, 2003

By 

Eric C. Welch (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Spectacular Death of the Medieval Cathars (Paperback)

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.