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The Cathars. By Malcolm Lambert. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999. viii + 344 pp. 10 photos. 11 maps. $31.95 paper.
The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. By Malcolm Barber. The Medieval World. New York: Longman, 2000. xvi + 282 pp. 18 photos. 7 maps. 3 tables. n.p.
Each of these two fine books tackles a much-discussed subject, and each makes a fresh contribution to it. Malcolm Lambert, known for earlier studies on medieval heresy and Franciscan poverty, treats Catharism as a religious movement, an approach he thinks has been devalued by historians viewing it as a rationalization of political, economic, regional, or ethnic concerns. He also decenters scholarly emphasis on Languedoc by considering Catharism from beginning to end, wherever it occurred-although the nature of the sources perforce foregrounds Languedoc and Italy. Malcolm Barber, an authority on crusading orders, concentrates on Languedoc, with only a sidelong glance at Italy and other areas. Agreeing with Lambert that Catharism was Christian Europe's first organized counter-religion, he considers its relations with Catholicism, both on the ground and in papal and French royal policy. His handling of the Albigensian Crusade reaps rich benefits from his expertise on crusading. Barber also highlights the post-Crusade policy of Louis IX in explaining Languedoc's reconciliation to the crown. Both authors discuss the Catharist revival of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, accenting different aspects of it, and both offer epilogues on the later legacies of Catharism.
Lambert and Barber agree on the origin and spread of Catharist dualism. Against scholars arguing for direct genetic connections between Manichees, Bogomils, and Cathars, they cite the dearth of documentary evidence for such a filiation, noting that dualism entered the Balkans and western Europe in multiple ways; when the Bogomil bishop Nicetas arrived in Languedoc in 1167, he found a Cathar church already established. Here, the authors' differences are twofold: where Barber sees Catharism as a non-Christian movement that acquired Christian coloration, Lambert views it as a Christian heresy-a bona fide if exotic interpretation of Christianity. As to how and why Catharism took root in Languedoc and Italy, Lambert accents, first, episcopal weakness. Undermined by the investiture contest, operating in areas without central authorities to guarantee quality control, many bishops in both regions...