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A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Pivotal Moments in World History), by Mark Gregory Pegg
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In January of 1208, a papal legate was murdered on the banks of the Rhone in southern France. A furious Pope Innocent III accused heretics of the crime and called upon all Christians to exterminate heresy between the Garonne and Rhone rivers--a vast region now known as Languedoc--in a great crusade. This most holy war, the first in which Christians were promised salvation for killing other Christians, lasted twenty bloody years--it was a long savage battle for the soul of Christendom.
In A Most Holy War, historian Mark Pegg has produced a swift-moving, gripping narrative of this horrific crusade, drawing in part on thousands of testimonies collected by inquisitors in the years 1235 to 1245. These accounts of ordinary men and women, remembering what it was like to live through such brutal times, bring the story vividly to life. Pegg argues that generations of historians (and novelists) have misunderstood the crusade; they assumed it was a war against the Cathars, the most famous heretics of the Middle Ages. The Cathars, Pegg reveals, never existed. He further shows how a millennial fervor about "cleansing" the world of heresy, coupled with a fear that Christendom was being eaten away from within by heretics who looked no different than other Christians, made the battles, sieges, and massacres of the crusade almost apocalyptic in their cruel intensity. In responding to this fear with a holy genocidal war, Innocent III fundamentally changed how Western civilization dealt with individuals accused of corrupting society. This fundamental change, Pegg argues, led directly to the creation of the inquisition, the rise of an anti-Semitism dedicated to the violent elimination of Jews, and even the holy violence of the Reconquista in Spain and in the New World in the fifteenth century. All derive their divinely sanctioned slaughter from the Albigensian Crusade.
Haunting and immersive, A Most Holy War opens an important new perspective on a truly pivotal moment in world history, a first and distant foreshadowing of the genocide and holy violence in the modern world.
- Sales Rank: #2002166 in Books
- Published on: 2008-01-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.40" h x 1.00" w x 9.30" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. When a papal legate was murdered in southern France in 1208, Pope Innocent III's reaction was swift and harsh. Convinced that the villages between Montpelier and Bordeaux were hideouts for heretics and accusing the count of Toulouse of protecting them, the pope issued his now famous plea for all knights and barons to be signed with the cross and to drive out all heretics in a great crusade. The Albigensian Crusade was the only one of the medieval crusades to pit Christian against Christian. In this lively and fast-paced inaugural book in Oxford's Pivotal Moments in World History series, Pegg grippingly retells the story of a crusade built on legend, not truth. The pope preached to his armies that whoever slaughtered these alleged heretics would not only cleanse his own soul but the soul of Christendom as well. This crusade, as Pegg remarkably demonstrates, introduced genocide into the world and paved the way for Christians to engage in the inquisitions against Jews and the crusades against Muslims that marked the remainder of the Middle Ages. Drawing on numerous primary documents, Pegg's compelling history offers fresh glimpses into the nature of religious violence as well as the easy ways that religions often fall into intolerance. (Feb.)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"[L]ively and fast-paced inaugural book in Oxford's 'Pivotal Moments in World History' series.... Drawing on numerous primary documents, Pegg's compelling history offers fresh glimpses, accounts of prophecies, answered prayers, and above all, forgiveness."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"As a social history of early thirteenth-century Languedoc, Pegg's work is terrific.... Throughout, Pegg places the supposed heretics firmly in very immediate local cultural, rather than wider religious or ecclesiastical contexts.... Mark Gregory Pegg's realization of Languedoc society is exceptional in its subtlety and accessibility."--imes Literary Supplement
About the Author
Mark Pegg is Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Author's Skewed Perspective on Crusade
By Arador
"A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom" by Mark Gregory Pegg is an attempt to address misconceptions regarding the Cathar heretics and modern portrayals of them. Pegg makes a strong case that the Cathars never existed, and that the twenty year long crusade in Southern France was a crusade against Albigensian heretics in a very specific geographic area. He has a very negative view towards past histories of these events, and he criticized the sources used in previous scholarship.
Pegg wrote that the Albigensian Crusade was a central event in the Middle Ages. It was the first time a pope called a crusade against Western Christians by declaring them heretics. Christians fought Christians, those who fought for the Pope were promised salvation and the heretics were killed for their unorthodox beliefs. He links the brutal crusade with the medieval mindset, propagated by the Church, in which heretics should be feared and hunted down because they appear so similar to orthodox Christians as to be indistinguishable but in reality they are a dire threat all of Christendom. Crusaders no longer had to travel to the Holy Land in order to receive absolution for sins; a campaign in France was an easier route to the same objective.
While Pegg states that there was a "moral obligation for mass murder," the Pope was not telling everyone to go to France and kill heretics. There actually seemed to be some hesitation by the public to join this crusade, as Simon de Montfort had to resort to using mercenary armies. Pegg also tries to link the Albigensian Crusade with Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, and that those who fought fellow Christians were imitating Christ. That connection was a stretch considering that Christ did not advocate violence, especially not against one's co-religionists.
Pegg also stated that, "The Albigensian Crusade ushered genocide into the West by linking divine salvation to mass murder." He then went on to describe six narrow categories with which to define genocide so that it fits his concept of the Albigensian Crusade. Redemptive homicide against one's heretical neighbor became acceptable crusade practice and added another enemy to the list of acceptable crusading targets.
The chapters where Pegg described the heretics and some of their practices might be difficult for some readers to follow. Those sections seemed overly repetitive and drawn out to ensure the reader got the point. Good men and women were named and their societal and religious practices were explained. Stylistically the rest of the book flowed rather well and the reader will not get slowed down even though there is twenty years of history to read through before the end.
Pegg provides a book which is easy to read and which sheds some new light on the subject of the Albigensian Crusades. He provided sources which support his thesis but does not utilize any contradictory evidence. His personal disregard for past scholarship and inability to remain unbiased in his writing, his emphasis on genocide, and calling the crusade an imitation of Christ detracted from the credibility of the book.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Pope Innocent III and a holy genocidal war
By P. A. Calta
A good story of an era about which little has been written but that has implications for today. This is not a quick read, but does tell of an interesting historical time period. Author debunks the Cathar influence in the heresies of the time.
12 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Evil versus Evil.
By John B. Hoehn
This informative and painfully insightful history of the persecution of one brand of Christianity by another brand of Christianity is certainly interesting, in the same way that any crime story is interesting.
But it is a crime story. The problem I see is that Mark Pegg seems not to understand who the criminals were and who the victims are. Although he reveals (largely through the words and records of their murderers and persecutors) that the more simple, non-papal, Albigensian Christians were known as bon home or "good men" to their neighbors and persecutors alike, his book minimizes their devotion and dedication. He seems to think that they were just different because their Provencal society had social needs and conventions that created them. And golly gee, didn't that get them into a pack of trouble! Why they could be faithful, by the thousands, unto death against the assembled might of arms, rulers, and pope for such a vapid and superficial faith, is never even hinted at by Pegg.
Likewise the Papal persecutors are presented as just good old Christians doing terrible things. The Catholic hagiography inspired by or invented to justify this bloody persecution is recounted mostly non-critically. And although clearly Pegg is critical of mass murders, ethnic cleansing, and religious intollerance, this is presented as a Christian problem, one that excessive love of Christ even worsens!
Trying to explain evil from a limited humanistic or modernistic viewpoint, is like trying to explain what happened at Hiroshima by carefully analysis of the chemical makeup of the bomb or the flight characteristics of the Enola Gay. While such a narrow focus may be perfectly true, it will not tell you the Truth.
This Christian crime story is not comprehensible outside of the broader context of a fallen Roman church with a corrupt and corrupting hierarchy, in unholy alliance with equally corrupt political powers, wealth, and pomp. The fact that this unholy power combination dares use the name of Christian against a grass roots attempt in Provencal to return to a more authentic, apostolic, and true version of Christianity is the real crime behind the multiple crimes of this story.
Read this book for information, but not for understanding. Besides telling of Cathar, Albigensian, Waldensian victims, Christianity and Christ Himself are victimized by Pegg's narrow analysis.
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