The Perfect Heresy (45 page)

W
AKEFIELD
, W
ALTER
L., and A
USTIN
P. E
VANS
, eds.
Heresies of the High Middle Ages
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

W
OOD
, C
HARLES
T.
The Quest for Eternity: Manners and Morals in the Age of Chivalry
. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1983.

*
www.cathares.org
. The best on the Web by far. Not at all flaky, like too many of its fellow Cathar sites. Thousands of pictures available, biographies, time lines, maps, interactive facilities, etc. Updated weekly. Much of it has been mirrored in English.

Z
ERNER
-C
HARDAVOINE
, M
ONIQUE
.
La Croisade albigeoise
. Paris: Gallimard, 1979.

It is customary in acknowledgments sections to start with the professional, then move to the personal. A new millennium is beginning—let’s get our priorities straight this time.

I owe a very large debt of gratitude to Jill Pearlman, who has helped me at every stage of this project, as a fellow writer, an editor, a companion, a cheerleader, a spouse, and, perhaps most important, a cosurvivor of living in the middle of the countryside with two young and alarmingly vocal daughters, one of whom decided to come into our rural world on a memorable winter’s night. Without Jill’s support and astonishing ability to do several things at once, I could not have summoned the monomania necessary to complete this book.

My warmest thanks go to our hosts in French Catalonia, Vladimir and Roselyne Djurovic, who were unfailingly kind to the aliens in their midst. Our neighbor Henri Fabresse put his tractor in the service of sanity by plowing the land behind our farmhouse for a vegetable garden that had blessedly nothing to do with flaming heretics. Let no one ever belittle Catalan hospitality or wisdom.

In Languedoc, Jean-Pierre Pétermann was invaluable for giving me Catharized guided tours of Carcassonne and Toulouse that conveniently ignored any irrelevancies built in the last 800 years. Jean-Pierre even managed to sneak me into an off-limits archaeological dig to view the alleged bones of Count Raymond VI.

In Rome, the American Academy made available its resources to a seeker of Innocent III. Eli Gottlieb and Danella Carter, my hosts at the academy and longtime pals from New York, were gracious and patient with my medieval garrulity. Eli risked his eyesight by reading the entire manuscript in E-mail format in time to beat a deadline. While not a Perfect, he’s close.

My thanks as well to my immediate family—my parents for their support, my brother Kevin (my companion at Albi) for his unstinting encouragement of projects past and present, and my brother Donal for faxes of obscure troubadour lore—and to the many people who have helped along the way. Foremost among them is the late Matt Cohen, a friend who gave me hope, laughter, and one big push. Others helped in ways that are too diverse to detail: Liz and Kevin Conlon, Sandy Whitelaw, George Haynal, Doris Pearlman, Audrey Thomas, Valerie Chassigneux, Jean-Jacques Bedu, Bruce Alderman, Henri Salvayre, Heidi Ellison, Ruth Marshall, Randall Koral, Dawn Michelle Baude, Susan Adams, Patrick Cox, Zia Jaffrey, Mitchell Feinberg, Edward Hernstadt, Helen Mercer, Mark Hunter, Scott Blair, Niels Stoltenborg, Robert Sarner, Charles F. MacDonald, and Yovanka Djurovic. I would also like to acknowledge the invisible presence of two uncles who have been looking over my shoulder: Fathers Elisha and Damien O’Shea. It is a great pity that this book comes too late for us to sit down over a glass of brandy and have a meandering conversation about the Albigensians.

Thanks are also in order to the courteous librarians of the new and quirky Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, who, against all odds, never once failed to find the books I was seeking.

Publisher Scott Mclntyre deserves my gratitude for once again making a leap of faith, as does publisher George Gibson, who, along with editor Jacqueline Johnson, trained a textual trebuchet on the weak spots
of my exposed prose. Any errors or lapses left standing are the result of my obstinacy.

Lastly, a tip of my hat to the café owners, restaurateurs, tourist office employees, hotel keepers, booksellers, museum guards, bartenders, and nuns of Languedoc, all of whom seem to have well-developed theories on who the Cathars were.

Abelard, Peter,
28

Ad extirpanda
(papal bull),
229
,
230

Agnes of Montpellier,
76

Aimery of Montréal,
63
,
104
,
111
,
130
–31

Al-Andalus,
132

Albi,
1
–5,
7
,
31
,
52
,
58
,
64
,
110
,
183

inquisitors in,
196
,
200
,
205
–6

Albigenses

see
Cathars

Albigensian Crusade,
2
,
4
,
6
–8,
10
,
19
,
90
,
97
,
218

end of,
187
,
192

Innocent III announced end of,
137
,
138
–39

mass executions by fire,
116

protagonists in,
152
–56

Alfons-Jordan,
47

Alice of Montmorency,
108
,
127
,
135
,
162
,
255

Almohad armies,
132
–33

Alphonse of Poitiers,
207

Amaury, Arnold,
ix
,
6
,
15
,
58
–60,
61
,
66
,
68
–69,
73
,
92
,
131
,
137
,
152
,
180
,
183
,
246

and conclave on Raymond of Toulouse,
125
–26

conflict with Pedro of Aragon,
138
–41

and crusade,
76
–78,
81
–82,
84
–85,
87
,
95
,
100
,
101
,
115
,
133

in crusades,
76
–78,
133

death of,
176

excommunicated civic government of Toulouse,
117
–18

excommunication of Simon de Montfort,
159

and Raymond’s effort at rehabilitation,
128

Amaury de Montfort,
xi
,
166
,
169
–70,
172
,
177
–78,
181
,
225

Amiel de Perles,
237

Amiel, Peter,
183
,
215
,
219

Amiens,
181

Andalusia,
133
,
134

Annibaldi,
35

Anthroposophy,
254

Anticlericalism,
51
–52

Antioch Wood,
209
,
210

Antipopes,
34

Applewhite, Marshall,
261

Aquinas, Thomas,
175

Aquitaine,
47
,
181
,
212

Aragon,
47
,
49
,
137
,
138
,
139
–40,
181
,
240
–41

nobles from,
92
,
142

Aragon and Barcelona, kingdom of,
10
,
47

Aragonese,
144
–45

Ariege,
258
–59

Aries,
183

Arnald, William,
200
,
201
,
202
,
204
,
206
,
208
,
210
,
227

Arnold of Brescia,
28
,
34

Arnold of Villemur,
153

Asset forfeiture,
57

Autier, James,
237

Autier, Peter,
ix
,
15
,
231
–32,
233
–34,
235
,
236
,
237
,
238
,
240
,
242

Autier, William,
231
–32,
237

Avignon,
182
–83

Avignonet,
208
–10,
211
,
213
,
215
,
218
,
226

Babas-cool,
258
–59

Baigent, Michael,
260

Balearic Islands,
181

Barcelona,
47
,
138
,
181

Basil the Bogomil,
23

Basque nobility,
142
,
144

Baudelaire, Charles,
254

Bayle, Pons,
237
,
242

Bayle, Sibyl,
242
,
246

Béarn,
134

Beaucaire,
158
,
159
,
164
,
183

Becket, Thomas,
25
,
38
,
66
,
70

Bélibaste, William,
ix
,
15
,
239
–46

Bélibastes (clan),
239
–40

Beatrice of Béziers,
49

Benedict VIII, Pope,
230
–31

Benedict of Termes,
63

Bernanos, Georges,
64

Bernard de Castanet, Bishop,
4
,
5
,
232
–33

Bernard de Caux,
227
–28

Bernard de St. Martin,
210

Bernard de Simorre,
59

Bernard of Clairvaux,
ix
,
29
–30,
29
f
,
40
,
42
,
49
,
63

Bernard of Tiron,
28

Bernard-Otto of Niort,
184

Bertrand of Saissac,
51
,
77
,
104

Béziers,
7
,
17
,
52
,
53
,
58
,
62
,
90
,
92
,
100
,
109
,
111
,
117
,
163
,
169

attack on,
78
–80,
81
–87,
88
,
221

massacre at,
83
f
,
85
–87,
89
,
105
,
124
,
183

revenge of,
99

sack of,
6
,
14
,
121

Bishops,
50
,
58
,
140
,
170
–72,
195

ferreting out heretics,
194

Biterrois,
78
–79,
81
,
84
,
85
,
90

Black Brotherhood,
123
,
160
–61

Blanche of Castile,
xi
,
185
–86,
185
f
,
189
,
190
,
207

Blanche of Laurac,
x
,
43
,
63
,
131
,
184

Blood money,
196

Bogomil faith,
23
,
26

Borsier family,
192

Bouchard de Marly,
xi
,
105
–6,
108
,
127
,
135

in battle of Muret,
144
,
145
–47

death of,
182

Bouffeurs du curé
(priest eaters),
249