We have surveyed about eighty-five years of history pertaining to the Cistercian Order's preaching and other engagement against heresy in Occitania from 1145 to 1229. I first situated monastic preaching in the context of twelfth-century events and currents of thought and their impact on Cistercian thinking and action; and second, within the framework of monastic spirituality and literature. The vineyard image, appearing in a letter where Bernard of Clairvaux employs it to describe turning from the interior vineyard of the monastery to the exterior one of the Church and the world, serves as a unifying motif for the book's chapters.

This study has held to a twofold task: reconstructing the preaching of individual Cistercians and collaborative campaigns; and deconstructing the rhetoric of the same preaching to reveal the strategies that the monks utilized against their adversaries. Some attention is given as well to what can be learned about dissident beliefs and practices from the pens of their adversaries. Cistercian participation in anti-heretical campaigns differs in accordance with the agenda of individual preachers and prelates, and along a range from reluctant acceptance of papal commission, to ardent public preaching, to leading armies. Individual Cistercians varied in their stance along that spectrum, but the extant texts reveal hostile language that belongs to the rhetoric of persecution. The Conclusion reviews the history of Cistercian preaching against heresy in Occitania from 1145 to 1229, evaluates the order's involvement, reviews the book's reconstructive process as well as its deconstruction of rhetoric, and points to possibilities for future research on later Cistercians and on the evidence for voices of dissent within the order.