The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life And Spectacular Death Of The Medieval Cathars (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
Ye gods and little fiishes, what a ghastly thing the Catholic Church is. Reading this book about the treatment meted out to the unquestionably heretical Cathars, or "the Perfect" as they called themselves, makes me feel sorry for the "saints" and "holy" men involved in the brutal and complete suppression of this dualistic religion.Hell, in which they seem to have believed unquestioningly, must resound with their cries and pleas for mercy and understanding.The political threat of the anti-clerical, anti-authoritarian Cathars could not be tolerated. The Church would have been suicidal to ignore the appeal of the Manichaean world-view in a priest-ridden, anarchic world just clawing its way out of a devastating few centuries of almost simultaneous economic and population collapses beginning in the sixth century. Imagine, after quite a looong time of answering to your overlord and only vaguely to the local priest, having to *ask* the *Church* for permission to get married! The very idea! That the Church, where one went for spiritual uplift, should suddenly interest itself in who you sleep with!It was one of many means the Church used to make itself the replacement for the vanished Roman Empire. It caused a bitter backlash. It was viewed as unChristian (Heaven, after all, is the Church's stated model for life, and in Heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, right?). And along come these religious guys, doing the work of the world along side you, saying scrupmtious things like the entire physical world is a snare of the Devil, so what's a "Holy Mother Church" doing trying to tell you what to do in it, instead of telling you how to get out of it?I would've loved the Cathars. They said that all the Heaven and woo-woo stuff was codswallop, and the best you should do in this world is Not Hurt Nobody Nohow. As you, o creature of flesh, learn more and more and more to follow that rule, you *step off the cycle of rebirth* and cease to be flesh.In fact, I *do* love the Cathars.So anyway, their commonsensical view of the teachings of Jesus caused no end of angst in Rome, and the Holy Office of the Inquisition was invented to cause these right-thinking Perfect as much pain and suffering as possible.It worked, as viciousness and evil routinely triumph over good, at least in the short run (though 800 years don't seem so short to me, but then I'm only a Devil-created human, ain't I?). It was painful to read this book because I knew how it would end, it was painful to read because I felt such compassion for the Perfect, and it was just damn good and depressing to be reminded of the horrors humans visit upon each other in the name of their big-bully imaginary friend in the sky.If this is what "God" really wants, I say screw him. Fortunately, I don't for one single instant believe such a "God" actually exists. The Divine might not be susceptible to our limited reasoning power, but active evil such as the Crusades, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation play no part in its wishes.The author pens a creditable sentence, and tells the well-known tale with such true compassion that it's as though he feels the flames and screams the screams. I'd recommend it to the anti-Christian/Catholic contingent, the spiritually honest Christians, and the stout of heart. Not for True Believers or those seeking peace.
My first introduction to the Cathars was in Kate Mosse's Labyrinth. They and their philosophies sounded interesting, so I went looking for a book about them. This one seemed to fit the bill. It went over what their beliefs entailed, introduced the key players (on both sides), and outlined the history of the movement. If you like your history full of lots of blood and drama, this is a story to check out, because the Catholic church really pulled out all the stops on this one.I'm really going to try not to come off as an anti-religious nutjob here, but honestly, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes it very difficult for me to buy in to the idea of organized religion. I know that not all Christians, or even all Catholics, espouse the kind of views demonstrated during the Albigensian Crusades, and I know that there has been evolution, and that the Popes of today and recent years would not likely support (certainly not publicly) the kind of mass murder carried out in the name of God during this period. But it's an unfortunate and undeniable fact that the Pope at the time did support those measures. The Albigensian Crusade, like all the other crusades, were declared and condoned by the head of the church, and it's very hard for me to accept the continued existence of an organization that ever endorsed something like that.But anyway, it happened, and tragically, pockets of similarly self-righteous religious zealots do continue to exist, giving all the rest of them a very bad name. But that's not really what I intended to get into here.The book itself was quite engaging, and seemed well-researched. It's hard to say sometimes, about subjects with which one is oneself only vaguely familiar, but there were reference notes and a bibliography, so I figure that's a good sign. I also appreciated the Who's Who section at the beginning, as a quick guide to some of the major players involved. And I liked his writing style. While the whole thing did not read quite so quirkily, the following is a particularly awesome example of O'Shea's rather delightful style:Clearly, Languedoc's mix of troubadour and trader culture was cocking a snook at the Church. (52)Anyway, I'm clearly not the only one intrigued by the Cathars, because they do turn up in literature from time to time (They're effectively a lost civilization, which is always fascinating, so that's probably why.), and this book provides a good overview and historical context for them.And also an appalling example of just how awful people can be to other people, especially in the name of religion.
What do You think about The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life And Spectacular Death Of The Medieval Cathars (2000)?
Having just finished a series of historical fiction by French author Bernard Mahoux entitled La Malédiction des Trencavel which I highly recommend to anyone who reads French,I wanted to re-read The Perfect Heresy to confirm some historical points. O'Shea's book is very readable and seemingly accurate. It was interesting to read his attutude regarding Innocent III as compared to John Julius Norwich in his excellent The Popes. O'Shea also has an exhaustive bibliography from which my next book Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error has come.
—Daniela
To the majority of European Christians, and indeed to Muslims, the Crusades are regarded as a period of war between two great faiths, when successive popes sent armies to enforce a claim to the Holy Land, committing brutal acts and occasionally, somewhat overzealously, attacking the wrong people. The people of the Languedoc region of southern France have a different view, however, and if you visit the great citadel of Carcassonne you will find people still defined by one crusade - the Albigensian - which was not only a war between Christian sects, in this case the Catholics and the Cathars, but a blatant political attempt to annex the region to France. And, it has to be said, a brutally successful one. The atrocities are seen as all the more scarring because they were committed on European soil and often because they involved warriors of the Catholic faith slaying their fellow Catholics too. In the end, military force was sufficient to annex territory but not to extinguish an alternative view of the Christian faith and it took the foundation of the Inquisition to complete the task, deepening the scars in the Occitan psyche as it went.O'Shea's fairly slender volume covers this somewhat distressing episode with a light touch. Whilst some of the details of the story could be harrowing if dwelt on, he avoids the habits of some historians, who would no doubt have coloured the battles with poetic licence and added gore. Instead he sticks to the facts and allows his language to serve the narrative rather than to heighten it. That's not to say his language is merely functional - indeed it is eminently readable - but he keeps it restrained, its only downside being that it occasionally makes it difficult to keep track of the seemingly endless supply of characters called Raymond.In this kind of history it is all too easy to see heroes and villains - the Cathars appear to have done little to provoke their extermination and the war fought on their behalf was largely defensive - but whilst the narrative doesn't attempt to defend the actions of the crusaders, neither does it attempt to caricature them. The facts are left to speak for themselves. And when it comes to the Inquisition it takes only a handful of isolated examples to make the nature of the exercise perfectly clear.In recent years, the Cathars have gradually become a vogue, their story attracting all kinds of mythological baggage, culminating in the works of authors such as Dan Brown, who have attempted to graft a deeper conspiracy onto what was a simple case of avarice and religious intolerance. In the last chapter of the book, O'Shea briefly explores the rise of this phenomenon, from the nineteenth century romanticists who first added references to the Grail to the twentieth century new age cults who radically reinterpreted their religion. O'Shea is clearly baffled by this development, but includes it perhaps to avoid being accused of conspiring to conceal it. As a coda to a work of history it could seem a little odd, comparable perhaps to exploring the Robin Hood myth in a book on the Plantaganets, but here it seems nicely to wrap up what is a very readable book. Anyone planning to visit the south of France and view the sights would be recommended to pick this up before they go.
—Andrew Fish
The Cathars were Dualists, a sect of gnostic Christians who believed that mankind is trapped in a world created by a false and evil God. Think the Truman Show. The God the Cathars worshipped was the one true God, the God of the etheral, spiritual plane who didn't intervene in this corrupt, material world of ours. The Cathars renounced all materialism and earthly concerns. They were pacifists and vegetarians. Because their values contrasted so sharply with the vast wealth and power of the Catholic Church, the Cathars became immensely popular, and the Pope saw them as a threat. So he launched the Albegensian Crusade, which resulted in thousands of Cathars being burned alive. We don't burn the heretics at the stake any longer, but we still dismiss and ridicule those who speak against this consumer lifestyle of ours.
—Mike
