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The Perfect Heresy
Jan. 19th, 2003 07:38 pmIs the title of a book on the Cathars that I took out of the library recently. As I perused the bibliography, I was struck by how many books on the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade have been published since 1990: At least half a dozen, not counting ones in French that have not been translated into English. Which is interesting. Back when I was a professional medievalist, the Cathars (and heresy in general) were definite minoritity interests within the medievalist community. There were a good number of books on the subject, but none particularly recent, and many written from an orthodox Catholic viewpoint unsympathetic to their subject.
Well, this year marks 10 years since I stopped being a medievalist, and obviously I haven't been keeping up with publishing trends in the field. A lot of the new books on the Cathars haven't been written by medievalists (The Perfect Heresy being a good example, but there's also a brand new one by Aubrey Burl, the stone circles expert). But an equal number of these new books are by experts in the field, and many of the old classics on the subject have been revised and reprinted since 1995. There's also a plethora of new books on aspects of medieval history that sound really interesting that I had no idea about: with titles like The Formation of a Persecuting Society and Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages.
I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this observation, aside from the obvious that this is becoming a more mainstream interest. (It's not a reason to regret leaving the field just before it got trendy; as my serious work wasn't in that area anyway. That's reserved for my PhD field, as there's an emerging number of books about the British in India in the latter half of the 18th century).
As to the quality of these new books on the Cathars, the only two I've read so far (The Perfect Heresy and The Yellow Cross) have been well written and interesting.
Incidentally, The Perfect Heresy is a very entertaining read, aimed at the general reader. The final chapter covers the mythology about the Cathars that sprung up in the 19th and 20th centures, and has a particularly amusing summary of Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, with the rational explanation for the riches of the priest at Rennes-le-Chateau that set off the whole phenomenon of the "wibble" school of history: he had a nice little earner selling indulgences by mail order!
Well, this year marks 10 years since I stopped being a medievalist, and obviously I haven't been keeping up with publishing trends in the field. A lot of the new books on the Cathars haven't been written by medievalists (The Perfect Heresy being a good example, but there's also a brand new one by Aubrey Burl, the stone circles expert). But an equal number of these new books are by experts in the field, and many of the old classics on the subject have been revised and reprinted since 1995. There's also a plethora of new books on aspects of medieval history that sound really interesting that I had no idea about: with titles like The Formation of a Persecuting Society and Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages.
I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this observation, aside from the obvious that this is becoming a more mainstream interest. (It's not a reason to regret leaving the field just before it got trendy; as my serious work wasn't in that area anyway. That's reserved for my PhD field, as there's an emerging number of books about the British in India in the latter half of the 18th century).
As to the quality of these new books on the Cathars, the only two I've read so far (The Perfect Heresy and The Yellow Cross) have been well written and interesting.
Incidentally, The Perfect Heresy is a very entertaining read, aimed at the general reader. The final chapter covers the mythology about the Cathars that sprung up in the 19th and 20th centures, and has a particularly amusing summary of Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, with the rational explanation for the riches of the priest at Rennes-le-Chateau that set off the whole phenomenon of the "wibble" school of history: he had a nice little earner selling indulgences by mail order!
