THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADES

by Joseph R. Strayer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 27, 1971

A very brief, very good history of the Crusades waged from 1208 to 1225 by the northern French state against the atomized principalities in the south of France and the heretical Cathars they refused to suppress. Professor Strayer, a Princeton medievalist, begins with an acute socio-political resume of the differences between the regions and a lucid, animated account of the complicated war, examining the selectively applied policies of massacre, looting, imprisonment, and negotiation, and underlining the Northerners' difficulty in ruling their conquered lands. Strayer gives sensitive explications of the Cathars' fundamentalist beliefs and anticlerical practices, interpreting the political sociology of the incidence and perseverance of Catharism, and testifying with due detachment to the heretics' courage. The methods and goals of the newly instituted Inquisition -- to reconvert, not to burn -- are also examined; as in the book as a whole, the author's familiarity with his subjects shows to advantage. He is, however, ambiguous in his view of the motives of the Crusaders: at first he suggests that the northeners conquered all their new territories in a fit of absent-mindedness during their religious battles, but then, in observing that by 1229 the Crusaders had done very little about the heresy itself, he says killing heretics was a mere byproduct of conquest and reconquest. In his summary of the Crusades' effects -- the establishment of the Inquisition, the preservation of religious unity under Roman church leadership, new Mediterranean power for France, cultural weakness in the Languedoc, etc. -- Strayer conjectures that they contributed to popular apathy during the 14th-century European crisis. There is no comparably short, balanced, broad study in English. A bit of Cathar ritual is appended. The fourth book in the crosscurrents in World History series.

Pub Date: Aug. 27, 1971

ISBN: 0472064762

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dial

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION