Documents recording the interrogation of sixteen women and the nature of their unusual spiritual practices, now available in a full edition and, for the first time, a full English translation.

This book presents essays considering how information could be used and abused in the service of heresy and inquisition.

First English translation of seminal essays on heresy and other aspects of medieval religious history.

A strikingly original approach to the inquisition movement in Italy, examining the roles of the protagonists.

An investigation of two manuals of inquisition reveals much about the practice in action.

First major survey of the German inquisitor Petrus Zwicker, one of the most significant figures in the repression of heresy.

Fresh investigations into heresy after 1300, demonstrating its continuing importance and influence.

Cathars have long been regarded as posing the most organised challenge to orthodox Catholicism in the medieval West, even as a "counter-Church" to orthodoxy in southern France and northern Italy. Their beliefs, understood to be inspired by Balkan dualism, are often seen as the most radical among medieval heresies. However, recent work has fiercely challenged this paradigm, arguing instead that "Catharism" was a construct of its persecutors, mis-named and mis-represented by generations of subsequent scholarship, and its supposedly radical views were a fantastical projection of the fears of orthodox commentators.
This volume brings together a wide range of views from some of the most distinguished international scholars in the field, in order to address the debate directly while also opening up new areas for research. Focussing on dualism and anti-materialist beliefs in southern France, Italy and the Balkans, it considers a number of crucial issues. These include: what constitutes popular belief; how (and to what extent) societies of the past were based on the persecution of dissidents; and whether heresy can be seen as an invention of orthodoxy. At the same time, the essays shed new light on some key aspects of the political, cultural, religious and economic relationships between the Balkans and more western regions of Europe in the Middle Ages.

Antonio Sennis isSenior Lecturer in Medieval History at University College London Contributors: John H. Arnold, Peter Biller, Caterina Bruschi, David d'Avray, Jörg Feuchter, Bernard Hamilton, Robert I. Moore, MarkGregory Pegg, Rebecca Rist, Lucy Sackville, Antonio Sennis, Claire Taylor, Julien Théry-Astruc, Yuri Stoyanov

Religion amongst ordinary men and women in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages is the subject of this book. Focusing on laypeople attached to the Cathar movement, it investigates the interplay between heresy and orthodoxy, and between spiritual and secular concerns, in people's lives, charting the ways in which these developed through life cycle: childhood, youth, marriage and death. This period was one of great upheaval in the region, brought about bythe Church's response to the perceived threat of heresy, and the book also explores the effects of the Albigensian Crusaders and the inquisitors who followed in their wake. It draws on a large range of evidence, including civic and ecclesiastical legislation, contemporary literature and chronicle, and broader scholarship on the region, but its principal sources are the records of inquisitorial tribunals that operated between 1190 and 1330: transcripts of interview and sentencing which represent the closest thing that exists to an oral history of the period. The author teases out the vibrant detail with which these archives document people's lives, developing and illustrating its argument through the recounting of their stories. Chris Sparks gained his doctorate from the University of York; he now works at Queen Mary University of London.

The medieval county of Quercy in Languedoc lay between the Dordogne and the Toulousain in south-west France; it played a significant role in the history of Catharism, of the Albigensian crusade launched against the heresy in 1209, and of the subsequent inquisition. Although Cathars had come to dominate religious life elsewhere in Languedoc during the course of the twelfth century, the chronology of heresy was different in Quercy. In the late twelfth century, nearby abbeys were still the main focus of devotional activity; inquisitors' discoveries in the 1240s point to the previous twenty years as the period when Catharism and also the Waldensian heresy took a firm hold, most dramatically in its far north. This study deals with the cultural and political origins of the religious change. Its careful analysis offers a significant re-evaluation of the nature and social significance of religious dissidence, and of its protection and persecution in both the history and historiography of Catharism. Dr Claire Taylor is Associate Professor, School of History, University of Nottingham.