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The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Spectacular Death of the Medieval Cathars

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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.

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.

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.

Actually this is one of my all-time favorite books. It is one of the few histories I have read where even the notes pages are interesting to read. He also ENCOURAGES you to look into it more on your own and includes an annotated bibliography in the back. The previous reviewer is WRONG about the title. The book IS about the LIFE and DEATH of the Medieval Cathars and NOT their theology. It goes over the contextual culture and history of the area where Catharism took hold, it goes over the various events that shaped what happened to the Cathars. The title does NOT imply that it is going to be about the theology of the Cathars although he touches on that in a basic form too. This is not a book written in an academic style (admittedly so by the author himself) but designed as a version written for a larger audience than just an academic with his nose up in the air at anything that doesn't read like a lab report. This is actually a fun read. I happen to be Catholic and this is NOT a biased book I felt. O'Shea is honest about what issues the Catholic Church had at the time (and continues to have in many aspects). Although I don't agree with one reviewer that the Papacy is the Anti-Christ (what some extreme Protestant sects hold that are the inherents of the Cathars), I do think some Catholics might find the information in this book challenging depending on their knowledge of the church and its history and thier experience with it. O'Shea does miss some important facts about the Cathars - what possibly happened within their ranks that might have contributed to their demise along with the crusade; the competition with the Spiritual Franciscans and the Waldensians who shared some of their views (extreme poverty for example). Their origins are more uncertain than he puts across as far as many academics are concerned but I don't find O'Shea's speculations (and there are some leaps he makes in the book) far off from being possible. Many Catholics (depending on how conservative and maniacally orthodox they are) might be offended by this book but the truth sometimes does that to people who put dogma before facts. This book doesn't bow down to either in my view - dogma or facts but does present the facts in a novel like way. For indepth academic interest in this area - both theologically and historically, follow O'Shea's advice in the bibliography section after reading the book. But this is a very good introductory book (as was intended by the author) into a period and an event most people don't know about (or very much about) and it is vitally important to the future of Western Europe and the missionary world that later came in the 1500 and 1600s and after. Very readable and actually, for the genre of audience it is intended for, quite a good scholarly bit of info.

O'Shea has written a wonderful book for the average reader that is full of felicitous phrasing and memorable scenes. Though experts in this rather obscure chapter of history have quibbled over the limited field of inquiry that he presents, I can safely encourage any level of reader to pick up this book.

I, for one, am relieved that he presents the events of a time crowded with incident and luxuriating in tangled family ties in such a linear and comprehensible manner. Anyone who reads a lot of these semi-scholarly popular histories will have suffered through many a boring passage or recondite digression that serve only to confuse a person who hasn't got a stack of scholarly tomes at his fingertips ready for an obsessive cross-referencing. O'Shea presents a confusing period of time more lucidly than I have ever seen: I was always aware of which events happened in which order, and he managed to bring the characters on and off the stage with enough background information to keep them all straight in my head without the slightest bit of confusion or mental fatigue.

Perhaps to students of history such concerns seem almost criminally flippant; but if one is reading history for entertainment rather than education, such concerns can make the difference between a purchase or a pass.

After the utter fascination of the subject matter (Heresy! Inquistition! Medeival gore galore!), the most satisfying aspect of this work is the conversational tone O'Shea maintains throughout the book. A conversational tone studded with many a striking phrase, though, and some cleverly worded summations that speed the narrative along. Speaking of the difference between the works of the troubadors of Languedoc and the rest of the world at large, he writes:

"While beyond the Loire and the Rhine noblemen were still stirred by the viscera dripping from Charlemagne's sword, their counterparts in the sunny south were learning to count the ways."

When he introduces the first Jubilee, he describes it:

"Pope Benedict VIII... declared that pilgrims to Rome that year would receive a raft of spiritual indulgence so ample as to render future damnation an utter fluke."

A concise, readable book with a conversational tone and packed with wide-ranging and obscure facts. Very nice notes, too. And a bibliography referencing all the more scholarly works addressed by some of the more pedantic reviewers.

I have spent a bit of time in the Languedoc region of France, but had only the most passing familiarity with the compelling history of the Cathar Rebellion. Thus, I was very pleased to find this book. Stephen O'Shea's stirring history of the politics of religion and morality in 13th-century Southwest France is an incisive, richly detailed, and beautifully written account of the Cathar's striking metaphysical revolt against the established church. The medieval Cathars, Mr. O'Shea informs us, preached a version of Christianity that privileged open-mindedness and tolerance. This heresy, and the support extended to the Cathars bythe powerful Count of Toulouse, posed too grave a threat to the vested interests of the Catholic Church, which ultimately, and perhaps inevitably, declared the Cathars heretics and brutally destroyed them as a people. Mr O'Shea's talents are many: this odd, little-known, but remarkably powerful slice of history is extensively researched and skillfuly rendered. Bravo, Mr. O'Shea, for this lovely and eminently readable book!

Do not be mislead by the title -- the Book by Stephen O'Shea is really about the Albigensian crusades in early XII century in Occitania/Languedoc/Southern France. It has very little discussion on the Cathars, let alone any explanation of their "revolutionary life".

If one is really interested in the Crusade, I recommend Joseph R. Strayer's "The Albigensian Crusades". It's written much more seriously as a historical study.

If one is interested in the Cathars, I recommend "The Cathars in Languedoc" by Malcolm Barber.

All that being said, O'Shea's book is fine for the casual reader, who wants a quick glance of the wars in the south of France, and the author actually admits that his book is not a serious historic study.

I was expecting the book to cover Catharism as well as historical aspects of the Cathars. The author just presents a high level aspect of the Cathar religion itself.
Regardless of my initial expectations, this book gives a good comprehensive look at the region during that time period. The book covered a lot of historical points I was not aware of, and was truly an interesting read. Overall it added to my general understanding of Catharism.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in digging deeper in understanding the history of that region.

In my library I have three books that cover the Crusade to destroy the Cathars in Southern France. This is one of the first I read and I found it be very enjoyable. In around 264 pages the author, Stephen O'Shea, gives you a decent overview of the life and death of these so-called `heretics'. The author also supplies numerous notes and a decent bibliography along with a guide to recommended reading. There are a number of small black & white illustrations within the narrative but it would have been nice to see a few colour photographs of the locations visited by the author during the preparation of this book.

The story of the Crusade against the Cathars is truly horrifying in some places. The atrocities carried out by men of God against a peaceful population all in the name of religion is outstanding. During the Albigensian Crusade in 1209 Catholic Knights stormed the village of Beziers. Before breaching the walls they asked their spiritual leader, Arnold Amaury, how could they distinguish Catholic occupants from the heretics. His reply was "Kill them all, God will know his own."

That one line sums up this terrifying period of French history. The continual battles, sieges and murders where followed by the Inquisition where friend betrayed friend, family betrayed family, all just to survive under the `just' rule of the Catholic Church. We read about that famous French Knight, Simon de Montfort and we find out that in reality he wasn't all that nice! We read about ordinary people, the true heroes of this story, just trying to survive and elk out a living during extraordinary times.

The narrative flowed along and you found yourself drawn into the story with the occasional tourist guide information. This is a great introduction to this period and it should appeal to all that enjoy good historical writing. I would also recommended Jonathan Sumption's `The Albigensian Crusade' and Zoe Oldenbourg's `The Massacre at Montsegur'.

Would a Pope have committed what we'd nowadays consider war crimes? Would a Bishop have deceived a woman on her deathbed to believe he was a someone else and then, after encouraging her to profess her heretical faith, have her killed?

Glad we don't live in that world? Reading this book may make you wonder which was the heresy. Religious people who believed the world was evil were killed for that belief by religious people who became the evidence that there was a lot of evil in the world. Or were the Cathars simply killed for not paying their taxes to the Church?

"The Perfect Heresy" features excellent story-telling with a focus on political and military events. But it's a necessarily rough and not so inevitable tale that may leave you disoriented. At times it seems that the Cathars and their allies might save themselves, but that happy ending wasn't.

This book seems a good way to be introduced to the Cathars and other people of the medieval Languedoc region. With 40 pages of notes, "The Perfect Heresy" seems well-researched. O'Shea presents a moving tale but just be prepared for how much you may be moved.