Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

A most holy war, the Albigensian Crusade and the battle for Christendom, Mark Gregory Pegg

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages [223]-242) and index

illustrationsmapsgenealogical tables

index present

non fiction

A most holy war

bibliography

Mark Gregory Pegg

"In January of 1208 a papal legate was murdered on the banks of the Rhone River. Pope Innocent III accused Raimon VI, count of Toulouse, and pestilential heretics of the crime. He exhorted all Christians to fight the count and to exterminate heretics between the Garonne and Rhone Rivers - a vast region that is now southern France - 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. He interweaves troubadour epics, eyewitness account, and thousands of testimonies from men, women, and children collected by inquisitors after the war. What it was like to live through such brutal decades comes vividly to life. Pegg argues that generations of historians (and novelists) have misunderstood the crusade, assuming it was a war against the Cathars, the most famous heretics of the Middle Ages. These Cathars, Pegg reveals, never existed. He further shows how a millennial fervor about "cleansing" the world of heresy was amplified by a fear that Christendom was being eaten away from within by heretics who looked no different than other Christians. The battles, sieges, and massacres of the crusade were ferociously apocalyptic in their intensity and led directly to the creation of the Inquisition, the rise of an anti-Semitism dedicated to the violent elimination of Jews, and the moral justification for the mass murders that have scarred so much of Western history for almost a millennium. The Albigensian Crusade, far from being an aberration, epitomized the sanguine beauty and bloody savagery of medieval Christianity. Mark Gregory Pegg is Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis."--BOOK JACKET

Pivotal moments in world history

the Albigensian Crusade and the battle for Christendom

Dramatis personae -- Genealogical charts -- A most holy war -- Glossary -- Abbreviations used in notes