Sean Martin's 'The Cathars' 2005

 

Pocket Essentials first edition - 2005

This is part of a series of short books on history topics published by Pocket Essentials. The author, Sean Martin, had already produced The Black Death, Alchemy and Alchemists and The Knights Templar for them. Like Aubrey Burl (see last Blog), he is not a professional Historian, but a filmmaker, poet and writer. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as some 'professional' Historians are as boring as they come. I read this immediately after Burl's account - even though I have had Martin's book several years - simply to make a little more sense of the Cathars and the Albigensian crusade. It certainly helped.

What I found particularly useful was Martin putting the Cathars in the context of other 'dualist heresies'. I had never heard of Bogomilism until relatively recently. Founded by the priest Bogomil in the early 10th century, it not only influenced Catharism but considerably outlived the latter, with reports of Bogomils continuing up to the 19th century. Another dualist religion, founded by the Persian prophet Mani (216-75), was Manichaeism - it became a byword for heretic in the Middle Ages. This is not to be confused with Marcionism, a Gnostic dualist sect that taught the principle of the two gods, with Christ being the son of the true god, and the Jehovah of the Old Testament being seen as the evil god. I must admit I have a great deal of sympathy for this belief, as I admire the teaching of the Four Gospels (rather than the Pauline teachings) and dislike most of the Old Testament. Other dualist heresies included Paulicianism, which emerged in 7th century Armenia, and Nestorianism, founded by Nestorius (c.386-c.451), which proposed that Christ's person contained two separate beings, one human, the other divine. Apparently, this 'ism' survives to this day. Confused?  So am I!

Once the author has wended his way through the thickets of the various Dualist heresies, he turns to the Albigensian Crusade. It makes much more sense than Aubrey Burl's rather heavy-going account. Briefer, yet more analytical and explanatory, it is a better book. The Inquisition's development is also made clearer - a method for keeping clergy in line was to become one of the most effective means of thought control that Europe has ever known. However, even the early Inquisitors - Conrad of Marburg and his two henchmen, Conrad Tors and the one-eyed, one-handed layman called John,  send shivers down one's spine.  Conrad met an untimely - if deserving - end, stabbed to death by a Franciscan. Then there was Robert the Bulgarian, William Arnold and Stephen of St Thibery - the first eventually disgraced and imprisoned, the latter two murdered by Cathars.

The Cathars claimed to be part of an authentic apostolic tradition dating back to the time of Christ. It is no more capable of proof than the Catholic Church's claim to be descended from Peter. In March 2000, Pope John Paul II issued an apology for the Crusades. No mention was made of the Albigensian Crusade - will the papacy ever say sorry for that blot on its history? Unlikely.

Aubrey Burl's 'God's Heretics' 2002

 

Sutton Publishing first edition - 2002

I found this hard-going for two reasons. First, the sheer horror of what man can do to man (and woman); and, second, the book was not very well written. The tale of bigotry and deceit leading to unbridled bloodshed is horrific. The horror began in 1209, when the intemperate Pope Innocent III (what a misnomer) ordered a crusade against the obstinate heretics known as Cathars, 'the pure ones'. They believed in two gods, one spiritual and Good, the other earthly and Evil, and denied the physical reality of the Crucifixion. The Catholic Church demanded the extermination of such ungodly. An earlier debate (in 1165) between the two sides, organised by the Bishop of Albi, led to the heretics being termed Albigensian, even though the majority lived a long way from Albi itself. For over a century the area degenerated into near anarchy with external threats, internal disruption, outside orders, everything splintered the countryside creating distrust, petty feuds among minor knights agitating beneath the much  larger disputes between counts and viscounts. There were years when the clear-cut intention to suppress heresy was corrupted by a decision to oppress a population. 

Abominations were regular. At Lavaur, protected by steep cliffs above the river to the west, and heavy walls and towers to north, east and west, its fall led to one of the worst atrocities of all. The lord, Aimery, was hanged on an improvised gallows; it toppled due to the weight of his armour. De Montfort, impatient, ordered that Aimery and 80 or more of his surviving knights should have their throats cut. Aimery's wife, Guirauda, was discovered in the castle. Screaming 'she was offered for the amusement of the soldiery, stripped, abused and finally thrown down a well and buried under an avalanche of stones'.

Early on, I lost track of who was who, partly because of the way the book was written. There were too many Raymonds - Raymond de Baimiac, Bernard Raymond, Raymond de Termes, Raymonde Autier and Raymond (V and VI), Counts of Toulouse. Then there were the various Counts of Foix (one, inevitably called Raymond-Roger) and other noblemen. Papal legates came and went, but one sticks in the mind - the fanatical, vicious Arnaud Amauray, Abbot of Citeaux and, later, Archbishop of Narbonne; the author calls him the inflexibly arrogant prelate. Towering above them all was Simon de Montfort IV, at first a little-known knight, but soon to be a byword for terror in the region and de facto lord of the Languedoc.. He may have been a devout Catholic, monogamous and straightforward in character, but he was unforgiving and ruthless, eventually guilty of megalomania. What had been a holy war in 1209 had become corruption by 1218. As for his wife Alice de Montmorency, the daughter of the Constable of France, a 20th century Cathar apologist maligned her as a creature with rotting teeth, sallow skin the colour of Sicilian lemons and a big nose... She would have spoken highly of him too! Simon seemed to be here and everywhere, criss-crossing the unwelcoming land to lay siege to small castles and walled towns. Burl regards him as a military genius. His death, aged 53, occasioned an outbreak of jubilation, dancing on ramparts, candle lighting on altars and bells ringing across the region.

Reading the book further embedded anti-catholicism in my mind. As the author writes, hundreds of clerical kneecaps were calloused more by copulation than by prayer. Events took a darker turn when the Inquisition arrived in April 1233 under Pope Gregory IX. Religion is too often an umbrella/cloak for pure evil and cruelty. The cold, damp prison beckoned for the immurati (the ones lost inside the walls) and the stake dealt with countless others.

The author simply did not (could not?) control his sources. Admittedly with so many in the cast, the story is bound to be confusing. But he does not help himself, or the flow of the narrative, by injecting red-herrings or asides which not only impede the narrative but irritate the reader. Often these asides are about future events or characters or, guidebook-like, a poorly inserted description of what the castles and towns looked like in the late 20th century. He comments on Helen of Troy's beauty and Cleopatra's nose in a whole page full of non sequiturs; later he brings the Jews of Norwich, Kublai Khan and Christopher Marlowe on board. The book ends with an Appendix, which discusses Rennes-le-Chateau and its mysterious 'treasure'. The author is best known for 'several outstanding books on stone circles'; perhaps this wider canvas was a step too far?

Susanna Gregory's 'The Chancellor's Secret' 2021

 

Sphere paperback edition - 2022

This is the 25th and final chronicle of Cambridge's Matthew Bartholomew - and I have collected the stories from the first and read the lot. Increasingly formulaic as time went on, Susanna Gregory was wise to call it a day. 

I recall buying the first volume on a bookstall outside Loughborough All Saints church in 1996. Two books came out that year; from 1997 onwards, it was an annual purchase. Only 2018 was a fallow year. It says much for Gregory that she kept up the imaginative story lines, admittedly usually on the rather claustrophobic canvas of the small town of Cambridge. Quite often the plot revolved round town v. gown; on other occasions it was inter-collegiate rivalry. Perhaps the reader got a little tired of the Benedictine Brother Michael's gluttony (he was of the opinion that a princely girth was a sign of healthy living, not because he ate too much), the Franciscan William's disreputable habit (the grubbiest friar in Christendom), John Clippesby (Michaelhouse's gentle Dominican...it was generally assumed that Clippesby was either insane or a saint in the making) talking to and surrounded by a variety of feathered and other animals. Others came and went - often by being murdered. The women rarely played other than bit parts - why Matilde kept hanging on for so many years hoping for marriage with Bartholomew (she got her man in this final volume) was very unlikely. Sometimes they were the murderers.

The 25th Chronicle sees Michael finally getting the job as Chancellor (he had been Senior Proctor controlling the previous Chancellor for some while) and Bartholomew finally leaving Michaelhouse. Not before a rather drawn out search by the latter for a murderer (then murderers) of a variety of unappealing coves. The book could have been fifty pages shorter and thus being much improved. Too many false alleyways or red herrings, which necessitated Bartholomew repeatedly criss-crossing the town and rarely uncovering anything. He didn't finger the evil genius until right at the end. I am not surprised as it seemed beyond belief that the youngster, bad as he was, could have choreographed such manoeuvres. The body count was rather high, but so it is in many 'modern' crime stories.

Susanna has sensibly finished with Bartholomew and Michael but she still has the Thomas Chaloner Adventures on the go, only into his fourteenth spying service at the court of Charles II. Yes - I have all these too.