Beyond Love Songs: Troubadours and Cathars
Exploring the theories that support and deny Cathar influence within the troubadours’ compositions.
Were the Cathars even real?
The Cathars are one of the most well-known heresies in medieval Europe. But how much do we know about them? In this episode, Lucie Laumonier interviews Jean-Paul Rehr about the mythical Cathars and a peculiar inquisition record drafted near Toulouse in the thirteenth century.
A Five-Minute Guide to the Cathars
Here is a quick, five-minute guide to one of the most popular spiritual movements of the Middle Ages.
Medieval Geopolitics: Crusades Against Christians
The most notable example of an ecclesiastical war waged against a heretical social movement was that waged against the Cathars or Albigensians in the Languedoc region in what is now southwestern France.
The Relationship of the Italian and Southern French Cathars, 1170-1320
The aim of this thesis is to answer two questions, namely why Southern French Cathars chose to flee to Italy
when persecuted in the early thirteenth century and secondly to assess the extent to which Catharism was a ‘universal church’.
The Cathar Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine: Pop Culture Legend vs. Medieval Doctrine
This study investigates the historical evidence for the widespread pop culture assertion, disseminated through popular histories, novels, and spiritual tourism, that the medieval Cathars of southern France treasured a tradition that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children.
The Shadow of the Cross: Book Tour and Giveaway!
Graphic novel fans! Today, we’re hosting day 2 of Dmitry Yakhovsky‘s Book Tour and running an international contest to give away a copy of his…
Women and Catharism
Participation of women in sustaining and spreading the dualist heresy known as Catharism in Languedoc in the first half of the thirteenth century was greater than the passive role generally assigned to them in medieval society
BOOK REVIEW: The Lady Agnes Mystery – Volume I
A review of the Lady Agnes Mystery by Parisienne author, Andrea Japp.
Cathar or Catholic: Treading the line between popular piety and heresy in Occitania, 1022-1271
This paper will explain the origins of popular piety and religious reform in medieval Europe before focusing in on two specific movements, the Patarenes and Henry of Lausanne, the first of which became an acceptable form of reform while the other remained a heretic.
The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: the Albigensian Crusade and the Subjugation of the Languedoc
In March of 1208, Pope Innocent III preached the Albigensian Crusade. The crusade, which covered an area from Agen to Avignon and the Pyrenees to Cahors, initiated a new phase in the already strained relationship between the Catholic Church and the Languedoc.
Herb-workers and Heretics: Beguines, Bakhtin and the Basques
During the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the word beguine was used by women to identify themselves as members of a wide-spread and influential women’s movement. The same term was used by their detractors and overt opponents, with the highly charged negative meaning of “heretic.” The etymology of the term “beguine” and ultimate origins of the movement have never been satisfactorily explained.
Women on Trial: Piecing Together Women’s Intellectual Worlds from Courtroom Testimony
To tease out these issues, I would like to offer an analysis of a specific set of criminal records from the city of Toulouse in the later Middle Ages. In recent years, many scholars have attempted to gain access to the lives of women in medieval Languedoc.
A Comparison of Interrogation in Two Inquisitorial Courts of the Fourteenth Century
The spread of the Cathar heresy in Western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was perceived as a real challenge to orthodoxy. The Catholic Church soon employed all means possible in a reaction against this dualistic religion, which was especially widespread in the south of France and in central and northern Italy.
Conflict and Coercion in Southern France
This paper endeavors to examine the mechanisms by which the crown of France was able to subsume the region of Languedoc in the wake of the Albigensian Crusade in the thirteenth century.
Understanding terrorism and radicalisation: a network approach
Our most recent work with this model has concentrated on the suppression of a network in the case of the Inquisition and the Cathar heresy in France in the 13th century; and on the spreading of a network in the case of the conversion to Protestantism of England in the mid-16th century.
In search of a missing link: The Bogomils and Zoroastrianism
Both Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism are dualist relig- ions. Implicit in the beliefs held true by these religions is the notion of co-equal and co-eternal principles. Implicit in this notion is the belief that both good and evil exist and are acted upon from the very beginning.
Memories of Space in Thirteenth-Century France: Displaced People After the Albigensian Crusade
It is clear that displacement was a policy of the crusade, a measure of its effectiveness, and a highly personal experience for individuals who were forced to flee the crusading army.
Labyrinth, Part 2
So we continue with the exciting conclusion of last week’s two part mini-series, Labyrinth. Alice is being pursued by unsavory attackers, and Carcassonne has all but fallen.
Labyrinth
A review of Part 1 of author Kate Mosse’s, “Labyrinth”. Cathars, Crusaders and the Holy Grail!
Nordic Witchcraft in Transition: Impotence, Heresy and Diabolism in 14th-century Bergen
Within the orbit of witchcraft, what is the relationship between sexuality, heresy, and diabolism?
“The Eucharist and the Negotiation of Orthodoxy in the High Middle Ages”
This paper is part of Adam Hoose’s dissertation. It examined the differences between Waldensians and Franciscans in their treatment of the Eucharist. It also explored why the Waldensians were unsuccessful in their bid to become a legitimate religious order and were eventually marginalized as heretics.
Waldensians at the turn of the fifteenth century in the Duchy of Austria: Perception of Heresy and Action against Heretics
The other major field of research that pertains to my current investigation is the inquisition; or the repression of heresy, as Richard Kieckhefer asserts. He notes that there was no such a thing as the Inquisition, because it existed only as mere offices, or functions of carrying out the inquisitorial justice, and did not as an institution as such, not even institutions, as was later the case in the sixteenth century.
Dualist heresy in Aquitaine and the Agenais, c.1000-c.1249
This thesis will examine whether the heresy in eleventh-century Aquitaine was dualist and will then discuss twelfth- and thirteenth-century Catharism in an Aquitainian context.