On Cathars, Albigenses, and good men of Languedoc: [Journal of Medieval History, 2001, 27(2) 181–195]

✍ Scribed by Mark Gregory Pegg

• Book ID: 117482046
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 11 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0304-4181
• DOI: 10.1016/s0304-4181(01)00019-7

✦ Synopsis

This essay proposes a re-evaluation of how Cathars, Albigenses, and the heresy of the good men are studied. It argues that some commonplace notions about the Cathars, virtually unaltered for over a hundred years, are far from settled -especially when inquisition records from Languedoc are taken into account. This historiography rests upon an intellectualist and idealist bias that, in the end, unwittingly restricts the historical imagination. This essay, by looking at some implications of this methodological tendency, suggests how the history of the Cathars, Albigenses, and the good men might be rethought.