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Loading... The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246 (edition 2005)by Mark Gregory Pegg
Work InformationThe Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246 by Mark Gregory Pegg
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Pegg examines a manuscript, known as "manuscript 609", which is a partial copy of the transcripts from the Inquisition in Toulouse. He argues that the inquisitors defined people's identities based on actions rather than beliefs, and that thus identity was seen as relational; that through their questions they redefined how people saw themselves; and that to talk of any international heretical "Cathar" church in the thirteenth century is ridiculous. However, while he pays lip service to the problematics of writing history, he doesn't fully address them. For instance, he acknowledges that the scribes transcribing the answers people gave in the vernacular translated them into Latin, transforming their statements into stock phrases in the process. But then he goes on to draw conclusions from the similarity in different people's responses to the same questions. How can you know this similarity exists in anything other than the scribes translation? no reviews | add a review
On two hundred and one days between May 1, 1245, and August 1, 1246, more than five thousand people from the Lauragais were questioned in Toulouse about the heresy of the good men and the good women (more commonly known as Catharism). Nobles and diviners, butchers and monks, concubines and physicians, blacksmiths and pregnant girls--in short, all men over fourteen and women over twelve--were summoned by Dominican inquisitors Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre. In the cloister of the Saint-Sernin abbey, before scribes and witnesses, they confessed whether they, or anyone else, had ever seen, heard, helped, or sought salvation through the heretics. This inquisition into heretical depravity was the single largest investigation, in the shortest time, in the entire European Middle Ages. Mark Gregory Pegg examines the sole surviving manuscript of this great inquisition with unprecedented care--often in unexpected ways--to build a richly textured understanding of social life in southern France in the early thirteenth century. He explores what the interrogations reveal about the individual and communal lives of those interrogated and how the interrogations themselves shaped villagers' perceptions of those lives. The Corruption of Angels, similar in breadth and scope to Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou, is a major contribution to the field. It shows how heretical and orthodox beliefs flourished side by side and, more broadly, what life was like in one particular time and place. Pegg's passionate and beautifully written evocation of a medieval world will fascinate a diverse readership within and beyond the academy. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)272.2Religions History, geographic treatment, biography of Christianity Persecutions Heretics by Inquisition for Holy Office (Since 1470)LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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