Secrecy and the Social Construction of Heresy in Medieval Languedoc

Secrecy is a powerful tool in religious conflict. The careful manipulation of information is critical to the strategic success of a religious group in its attempt to gain recognition of its legitimacy and status in a community or region. This work uses the historical context of the encounter between the Church and the Good Men and Women of Languedoc in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to analyze the use of secrecy the discourse of religious conflict. Reports from Languedoc describe communities who have left the institutions of the Church behind, and fallen into what the Church interprets as dangerous heresy. The "dangerous heresy" are the beliefs and practices of people who self-identify as "Good Christians". The encounters between the representatives of the Church and the Good Christians begin with debate and argumentation and proceed into war and physical coercion. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the allies of the Church assemble armies in order to extirpate the heresy from the lands around Toulouse. Following the Albigensian crusade, the Inquisition is founded to finish the work of reconciling the people of the region of Languedoc to the rest of Christendom. This thesis looks at the role played by secrecy in the conflict and its overall impact on the outcome.