The Perfect Heresy (44 page)

*B
RENON
, A
NNE
.
Le Vrai Visage du catharisme
. Portet-sur-Garonne: Lou-batieres, 1988. Far and away the best examination of Cathar beliefs for the general reader. Unfortunately, it has yet to be translated from the French. No readily accessible English equivalent exists, though Lambert, Moore, and Wakefield deftly cover the ground in a scholarly fashion.

———.
Les Femmes cathares
. Paris: Perrin, 1992.

———.
Les Cathares: Pauvres du Christ ou apôtres de Satan?
Paris: Gallimard, 1997.

Cahiers de Fanjeaux
, no. 14, “Historiographie du catharisme.” Toulouse: Privat, 1979.

*C
ANTOR
, N
ORMAN
F.
The Civilisation of the Middle Ages
. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. An accessible introduction to the entire millennium of the Middle Ages.

———.
Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages
. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

C
AUVIN
, A
NDRÈ
.
Découvrir la France cathare
. Alleur, Belgium: Marabout, 1993.

*C
OHN
, N
ORMAN
.
The Pursuit of the Millennium
. Rev. and expanded ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. A classic of scholarship on medieval apocalyptic cults.

C
OSTEN
, M
ICHAEL
.
The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade
. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1997.

D
ELORT
, R
OBERT
, ed.
Les Croisades
. Paris: Seuil, 1988.

D
UVERNOY
, J
EAN
.
Le Catharisme
. Vol. 1,
La Religion des cathares
. Toulouse: Privat, 1976.

———, trans.
Guilhem de Puylaurens, chronique; chronica magistri Guillelmi de Podio Laurentii
. Paris: C.N.R.S., 1976.

———, trans.
Le Registre d’inquisition de Jacques Fournier, Evêque de Pamiers (1318–1325)
. 3 vols. Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1977–78.

———.
Le Catharisme
. Vol. 2,
L’Histoire des cathares
. Toulouse: Privat, 1979.

———, trans.
Guillaume Pelhisson Chronique (1229–1244)
. Paris: C.N.R.S., 1994.

F
RAYLING
, C
HRISTOPHER
.
Strange Landscape: A Journey Through the Middle Ages
. London: Penguin BBC, 1995.

F
RIEDLANDER
, A
LAN
.
The Hammer of the Inquisitors: Brother Bernard Delicieux and the Struggle Against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century France
. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2000.

G
ARDERE
, M
ICHEL
, trans.
Rituels cathares
. Paris: La Table Ronde, 1996.

*G
EORGE
, L
EONARD
.
The Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics
. London: Robson, 1995. Lively writing, impressive scope, crammed with detail. A nonstuffy compendium of spiritual dissent. Eminently readable.

G
OUGAUD
, H
ENRI
.
Bélibaste
. Paris: Seuil, 1982.
N
.

———.
Les Cathares et l’éternité
. Paris: Bartillat, 1997.

G
RIFFE
, M
AURICE
.
Les Cathares: Chronologie de 1022 à 1321
. Le Cannet: Editions T.S.H., 1997.

G
UÉBIN
P.,
AND
H. M
AISONNEUVE
, trans.
Histoire albigeoise de Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay
. Paris: Vrin, 1951.

*H
EER
, F
RIEDRICH
.
The Medieval World: Europe, 1100–1350
. Trans. Janet Sondheimer. New York: Penguin NAL, 1961. Still a great sweeping read.

Hérésis
, no. 7, “Catharisme: L’Édifice imaginaire.” Carcassonne: Centre d’Etudes Cathares, 1998.

H
ETHERINGTON
, P
AUL
.
Medieval Rome: A Portrait of the City and Its Life
. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.

J
OHNSON
, P
AUL
.
A History of Christianity
. London: Penguin, 1988.

J
OULIN
, M
ARC
.
Petite Vie de saint Dominique
. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1989.

K
ELLY
, J. N. D.
The Oxford Dictionary of Popes
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

K
RAUTHEIMER
, R
ICHARD
.
Rome: Portrait of a City, 312–1308
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

L
AMBERT
, M
ALCOLM
.
Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation
. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.

*———.
The Cathars
. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. The latest scholarly tome on the Cathars. Special attention devoted to Catharism in Italy and the Autier revival. Authoritative, but for the stouthearted only.

*L
E
R
OY
L
ADURIE
, E
MMANUEL
.
Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error
. Trans. Barbara Bray. New York: G. Braziller, 1978. A justifiably famous examination of Pyrenean peasants infected by Catharism.

M
ARROU
, H
ENRI
-I
RÉNÉE
.
Les Troubadours
. Paris: Seuil, 1971.

*M
AURIN
, K
RYSTEL
.
Les Esclarmonde: La Femme et la féminité dans l’imaginaire du catharisme
. Toulouse: Privat, 1995. Maurin, an academic with a lyrical writing style, delivers a fascinating work of cultural archaeology about the image of woman in the Cathar mythmaking of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In French. Exceptional.

M
OORE
, J
OHN
C., ed.
Pope Innocent III and his World
. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1999.

*M
OORE
, R. I.
The Formation of a Persecuting Society
. New York: Black-well, 1987. A groundbreaking work in the study of heresy. Brief, crisp, and revolutionary in its assertions that Western civilization forged its institutions through persecution at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century. An important book, and not just for medievalists.

———.
The Origins of European Dissent
. Toronto: Medieval Academy of America Reprints, University of Toronto Press, 1994.

———, ed.
The Birth of Popular Heresy
. Toronto: Medieval Academy of America Reprints, University of Toronto Press, 1995.

M
UNDY
, J. H.
Men and Women at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars
. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990.

———.
Society and Government at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars
. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997.

N
ELLI
, R
ENE
.
La Vie quotidienne des cathares en Languedoc au treizieme siecle
. Paris: Hachette, 1975.

———.
Les Cathares
. Paris: Marabout, 1981.

N
IRENBERG
, D
AVID
.
Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages
. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996.

*O
LDENBOURG
, Z
OE
.
Massacre at Montségur
. Trans. Peter Green. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997. Reedition of the impassioned 1959 work of popular history. Many of Oldenbourg’s conclusions have been superseded by subsequent research, but the book is still a stirring read. Oldenbourg’s greatest contribution remains the historical novel, of which she was a peerless practitioner in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1998 and 1999, three of her superb, atmospheric novels were reissued by Caroll and Graf, New York:
The Cornerstone, Destiny of Fire
, and
The World Is Not Enough
. The last, which bears no relation to 007, was described by the
New York Times
on its release as “the finest historical novel about the Middle Ages in this century, little short of a masterpiece.” Although it does not deal with the Cathars, the novel could be read by anyone seeking an imaginative escape into the Middle Ages.

P
AGELS
, E
LAINE
.
The Gnostic Gospels
. New York: Random House, 1979.

P
ALADILHE
, D
OMINIQUE
.
Simon de Montfort et le drame cathare
. Paris: Perrin, 1988.

———.
Les Grandes Heures cathares
. Paris: Perrin, 1995.

P
ERNOUD
, R
EGINE
.
Pour en finir avec le Moyen Age
. Paris: Seuil, 1977.

P
ETERS
, E
DWARD
.
Inquisition
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

P
ILHES
, R
ENE
-V
ICTOR
.
Le Christi
. Paris: Plon, 1998.
N
.

*R
ICHARDS
, J
EFFREY
.
Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages
. London: Routledge, 1991. Brief, lively, and scholarly, the study gives hair-raising details of the persecution of Jews, heretics, and lepers. Instructive but appalling.

R
OQUEBERT
, M
ICHEL
.
L’Epopée cathare
. 5 vols.

Toulouse: Privat, 1970–89 (vols. 1–4); Paris: Perrin, 1998 (vol. 5).

———.
Montségur, les cendres de la liberté
. Toulouse: Privat, 1998.

———.
Histoire des cathares: Hérésie, Croisade, Inquisition, du onzième au quatorzième siècles
. Paris: Perrin, 1999.

*R
OUQUETTE
, Y
VES
.
Cathars
. . Trans. Roger Depledge. Portet-sur-Garonne: Loubatières, 1998. One of the few recent French popularizers of Catharism to be translated. Title presumably meant to be read: “Cathars. Period”—as if this were the last word. Rouquette is provocative in claiming to be a Cathar, polemical whenever he turns to history, and downright chatty in his tour of Languedoc literary circles. For Catharophiles only.

R
UNCIMAN
, S
TEVEN
.
The Medieval Manichee
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

S
AYERS
, J
ANE
.
Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–1216
. Harlow, England: Longman, 1994.

S
HIRLEY
, J
ANET
, trans.
The Song of the Cathar Wars, A History of the Albigensian Crusade, by William of Tudela and an Anonymous Successor
. Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1996.

S
OUTHERN
, R. W.
Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages
. New York: Penguin, 1970.

*S
TRAYER
, J
OSEPH
R.
The Albigensian Crusades
. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. Originally published in 1971, Strayer’s account remains the most readable scholarly examination of the crusade in English. The paperback edition has a splendid epilogue by Carol Lansing, which outlines recent trends in English-language Cathar historiography. If you wish to deepen your knowledge of the Cathars, start here.

S
UMPTION
, J
ONATHAN
.
The Albigensian Crusade
. London: Faber and Faber, 1978.

T
HOUZELLIER
, C., trans.
Une Somme anti-cathare: Le Liber contra manicheos de Durand de Huesca
. Louvain: Universite catholique, 1964.

———, trans.
Livre des deux principes
. Paris: Cerf, 1973.

V
ICAIRE
, M. H.
Histoire de saint Dominique
. 2 vols. Paris: Cerf, 1982.

*W
AKEFIELD
, W
ALTER
L.
Heresy, Crusade, and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100–1250
. New York: Allen and Unwin, 1974. A solid introduction
to the beliefs and the misfortunes of the Cathars and the Waldensians.