The War On Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe

Description

The war on heresy obsessed medieval Europe in the centuries after the first millennium. R. I. Moore's vivid narrative focuses on the motives and anxieties of those who declared and conducted the war: what were the beliefs and practices they saw as heretical? How might such beliefs have arisen? And why were they such a threat? In western Europe at AD 1000 heresy had barely been heard of. Yet within a few generations accusations had become commonplace and institutions were being set up to identify and suppress beliefs and practices seen as departures from true religion. Popular accounts of events, most notably of the Albigensian Crusade led by Europe against itself, have assumed the threats posed by the heretical movements were only too real. Some scholars by contrast have tried to show that reports of heresy were exaggerated or even fabricated: but if they are correct why was the war on heresy launched at all? And why was it conducted with such pitiless ferocity? To find the answers to these and other questions R. I. Moore returns to the evidence of the time. His investigation forms the basis for an account as profound as it is startlingly original.

R. I. Moore is professor emeritus of Medieval History at Newcastle University. His books include The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Western Europe 950-1250 , described by the Guardian as One of the most influential and controversial books of medieval history of the last twenty years; and The First European Revolution (2000) reviewed in History as, 'So well researched and argued that even though it asks the reader to accept yet one more period as revolutionary, it is entirely convincing.' He is also the editor of the Blackwell History of the World series.

This is a jaw-dropping book. Thrilling, unsettling, revelatory. -- Tom Holland Moore makes a very powerful case ... if only half of his revolutionary new claims are accepted, every encyclopedia entry on the Cathars will have to be completely rewritten * Daily Telegraph * Brilliantly told, profoundly thought-provoking. * History Today * Moore's latest book is as good, and as provocative, as anything he has produced. The book is one of the finest accounts of medieval heresy that you are likely to encounter ... serves to enhance Moore's status as one of the finest historians of medieval heresy. * BBC History Magazine * Elegant and intelligent. * Literary Review * Wide-ranging, beautifully written, and compellingly argued, this is a book that overturns the traditional picture. * Times Literary Supplement * Moore's approach to Catharism is intriguing and provocative. [This is] an accessible and up-to-date history of the rise of heresy persecution in the medieval West. The book will inspire ample criticism and defenses among scholars. Amateur historians will find a pleasing expository style burnished with colorful details. * America * A bold new vision. * The Historian * An intellectual thriller ... An absolute page-turner ... Startling, unsettling and revelatory, The War on Heresy is Homeland in cowls. -- Tom Holland * Toronto Globe and Mail * The The War on Heresy is an important and well-argued book that will force scholars to re-examine the history of medieval heresy and provides the methodological blueprint for the study of heresy in the Middle Ages. * The Medieval Review * A very impressive study, made all the more accessible by the author's admirably lucid writing style * Church History * The book under review here is a brilliant and sobering meditation on this theme ... The War on Heresy is a triumph. * Standpoint * Beautifully written, measured, searching, and sublimely free from jargon. We are presented with eye-witness accounts that are not knocked into pre-conceived patterns. The effect is to draw the reader into not just the story but into how the story became a story in the first place. Inevitably this affords a double-take perspective, in which history and stories excitingly grow together and the reader becomes a participant. -- Rene Weis * Professor of English, University College London, and author of The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars, 1290-1329 * The War on Heresy is social and religious history at its best, the fruit of many decades of intense engagement with one of the most complex and difficult problems of medieval history. With admirable clarity, R. I. Moore tells the deeply troubling story of how heretics became a persecuted minority, not so much because of their beliefs, but because of the anxieties, needs, and ambitions of their persecutors. This is a masterfully researched and deeply thought book that tells its exciting and still relevant story with verve and with sympathy for the victims of the war on heresy. -- Anders Winroth * Professor of History, Yale University, and author of The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe * Fierce competition for power produces fierce discursive competition. In this grand and sane book, armed with many lights (intelligence, narrative skill, learning) R. I. Moore re-enters the territory of Europe's ferocious medieval competition for theological orthodoxy; wherever he ventures, he illumines what had been dark. -- James Simpson * Professor of English, Harvard University, and author of Idolatry and Iconoclasm *