The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Spectacular Death of the…

This is a popular account of the life and death (but mostly the latter) of the Cathar religous movement in Languedoc, in what is now the south of France, in the thirteenth century. It truly is a catalogue of horrors of suppression, massacre, mutilation and terror that chills the blood; the incidences of mass murder and repression are punctuated by a depressing catalogue of deceptions and trickery that show the basest side of human nature. The incident of the betrayal and burning of the already dying Cathar woman in 1234 (pp 191-3 of the Profile paperback edition) is particularly depraved. As much as an illustration of Medieval religious conflict and fervour, this is a demonstration of the appalling lengths human beings can go to inflict suffering on people with a different view of life. One man who comes off particularly badly in terms of inflicting suffering in repressing the Cathars is Simon De Montfort, the father of his more famous namesake who is is usually credited with founding the first English Parliament. Only the final chapter provides a little lighter relief - a description of how the experiences and beliefs of the Cathars have been represented and misrepresented by groups as varying as new age hippies, Nazis and conspiracy theorists of the Dan Brown stripe. ( )

A look at the life and times of the Cathars, a heretical movement that was focused in the Languedoc region of France. The corruption of the bishops and priests had led to ideas of not needing the intermediaries between man and God. So the various, so called heretics, were flourishing. After years of ineffectual Popes the election of Innocent III led to his bid to make the Roman Catholic church a major spiritual and temporal power. What followed was a Holy War.

This is a fascinating study of a particularly bloody period in history. Stephen O'Shea takes an almost conversational tone as he describes the two centuries of suppression, battle, betrayal and ultimate destruction of the Cathars. We see the birth of monastic orders (such as the Dominicans and Fransiscans) and the Inquisition and meet many of the major players of the time. ( )

Ye gods and little fiishes, what a ghastly thing the Catholic Church is. Reading this book about the treatment meted out to the unquestionably heretical Cathars, or "the Perfect" as they called themselves, makes me feel sorry for the "saints" and "holy" men involved in the brutal and complete suppression of this dualistic religion.

Hell, in which they seem to have believed unquestioningly, must resound with their cries and pleas for mercy and understanding.

The political threat of the anti-clerical, anti-authoritarian Cathars could not be tolerated. The Church would have been suicidal to ignore the appeal of the Manichaean world-view in a priest-ridden, anarchic world just clawing its way out of a devastating few centuries of almost simultaneous economic and population collapses beginning in the sixth century. Imagine, after quite a looong time of answering to your overlord and only vaguely to the local priest, having to *ask* the *Church* for permission to get married! The very idea! That the Church, where one went for spiritual uplift, should suddenly interest itself in who you sleep with!

It was one of many means the Church used to make itself the replacement for the vanished Roman Empire. It caused a bitter backlash. It was viewed as unChristian (Heaven, after all, is the Church's stated model for life, and in Heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, right?). And along come these religious guys, doing the work of the world along side you, saying scrupmtious things like the entire physical world is a snare of the Devil, so what's a "Holy Mother Church" doing trying to tell you what to do in it, instead of telling you how to get out of it?

I would've loved the Cathars. They said that all the Heaven and woo-woo stuff was codswallop, and the best you should do in this world is Not Hurt Nobody Nohow. As you, o creature of flesh, learn more and more and more to follow that rule, you *step off the cycle of rebirth* and cease to be flesh.

In fact, I *do* love the Cathars.

So anyway, their commonsensical view of the teachings of Jesus caused no end of angst in Rome, and the Holy Office of the Inquisition was invented to cause these right-thinking Perfect as much pain and suffering as possible.

It worked, as viciousness and evil routinely triumph over good, at least in the short run (though 800 years don't seem so short to me, but then I'm only a Devil-created human, ain't I?). It was painful to read this book because I knew how it would end, it was painful to read because I felt such compassion for the Perfect, and it was just damn good and depressing to be reminded of the horrors humans visit upon each other in the name of their big-bully imaginary friend in the sky.

If this is what "God" really wants, I say screw him. Fortunately, I don't for one single instant believe such a "God" actually exists. The Divine might not be susceptible to our limited reasoning power, but active evil such as the Crusades, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation play no part in its wishes.

The author pens a creditable sentence, and tells the well-known tale with such true compassion that it's as though he feels the flames and screams the screams. I'd recommend it to the anti-Christian/Catholic contingent, the spiritually honest Christians, and the stout of heart. Not for True Believers or those seeking peace. ( )

The best general book I have read on Catharism and its suppression. ( )

An accessible introduction to the history of the Cathar heresy in medieval France. O'Shea doesn't go particularly deep into their history, or the origins of their particular brand of Christian theology, but he's good at mining the sources—which are almost all from an orthodox Catholic perspective—to see what they can tell us of the views and the lives of the Cathars. If you have read much about the Cathars before this, then The Perfect Heresy might well be a little too simplistic for you; if not, it's a reasonable place to start. ( )