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WORK TITLE: God’s Armies
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1/6/1931
WEBSITE:
CITY: Worthing, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
Univ of Bristol, England, prof of history & theology, until 1991. * http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-063120959X.html * https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/history/Crusade-and-Jihad-Malcolm-Lambert-9781846685545
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born January 6,1931.
ADDRESS
CAREER
University of Bristol, Bristol, England, reader in medieval history until 1991.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Malcolm Lambert is a scholar of medieval history and theology, and has written extensively about the religious movements of the period. He taught at the University of Bristol in England until 1991, when he retired to focus on writing.
Medieval Heresy
First published in 1977 as Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus, subsequent editions, in 1992 and 2002, were published under the title Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation. The book has become “the standard English-language introduction to medieval popular heresy,” John Cotts noted on H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, in a review of the third edition. Heresy is a belief that goes against church orthodoxy, and in the period under study, the dominant church in Europe was the Roman Catholic Church. Popular heresy refers to movements that originated among laypeople or low-ranking clergy members rather than church leaders. Lambert begins his narrative of popular heresy in the early eleventh century, when heretics were sentenced to die by burning in Orleans, France. In the following century, many itinerant preachers spread alternative beliefs around the Catholic world, and eventually larger heretical movements arose; these included the Cathars, the Walbigensians, the Lollards, and the Hussites. Heretical movements were not a consistent presence in the Middle Ages, but rather would come and go, Lambert writes. He sees these movements as rooted in sincere religious belief, not in class tensions or other social issues. As heretics posed a threat to Catholic power, and because the church considered heresy the literal work of the devil, the Catholic hierarchy sought to root out heretics, lest they win converts who would then suffer eternal damnation, and visited harsh punishments on them, including execution. Occasionally, however, the church adjusted its theology in response to unorthodox beliefs.
Lambert’s third edition “endows an almost unmanageable bulk of material with a remarkable historiographical flexibility,” Cotts related. It incorporates a wealth of scholarship generated in the 1990s, and the resulting text “is dense and exhaustively detailed,” he continued.Medieval Heresy “should remain the essential reference work on medieval religious dissent,” Cotts concluded.
Christians and Pagans
Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede surveys the Christianization of Great Britain and Ireland from the third through the eighth centuries. Roman soldiers were the first to bring the new religion to this outpost of the empire, and missionary monks and priests followed, hoping to win over the pagans. In the third century, a Briton named Alban became the region’s first Christian martyr; he had helped a Christian missionary escape punishment by the pagan governor’s soldiers, became a Christian in the process, and was beheaded for his faith. Christianity spread sporadically in the British Isles until the seventh century, when Archbishop Theodore consolidated Christian power there, using his substantial administrative skills to organize the church around a central authority and bring consistency to its practices. Lambert details the challenges the Christians faced, as the popularity of pagan beliefs persisted in some areas, and how the church adapted—for instance, converting pagan temples to Christian houses of worship instead of destroying them. He offers portraits of many of the people who spread the faith, some of whom became saints—in addition to Alban and Theodore, the list includes Columba, Cuthbert, Patrick, and Bede. The latter, a monk known popularly as the Venerable Bede, wrote an extensive history of Christian Britain, and Lambert draws heavily on his account.
Several critics found this an appealing, accessible work as well as an informative one. Lambert’s “insights sometimes jump from a page like sparks off a flywheel,” reported E. J. Kealey in Choice. The author, Kealey continued, provides “carefully considered details, new ideas, and perceptive interpretations” that sometimes question accepted views of the topic. In Church History, however, Lisa M. Bitel termed Christians and Pagans “a very old-fashioned history” and faulted Lambert as relying too much on Bede, resulting in “a reductive view of non-Christian religions and an assumption that Christianization was inevitable.” She admitted to enjoying the book as a “guilty pleasure,” as “Lambert propels interesting characters through his narrative of spiritual achievement.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research reviewer Alan Kreider similarly praised Lambert’s “affectionate and insightful treatment of major figures,” adding: “Columba, Cuthbert, Hild, and Bede come alive, also particularly Patrick, ‘most remarkable of all British Christians.'” He noted that “Lambert rightly emphasizes the magnitude of the task of Christianizing the British Isles,” although he thought the author could have delved more deeply into the endurance of paganism and the degree to which Christians incorporated pagan rituals. In First Things, A. M. Juster called Lambert’s account “a captivating narrative” that is “delightfully free of academic theorizing,” if leaning a bit excessively on Bede at the expense of other chroniclers. Juster summed up the book as “thoughtful, enjoyable, and valuable.”
God's Armies
God’s Armies: Crusade and Jihad: Origins, History, Aftermath examines the medieval Crusades, in which European Christians sought to reclaim the Holy Land of the Middle East from Muslims, and their implications for the present day. Lambert discusses a variety of figures involved, including Pope Urban II, who ordered the First Crusade, in 1095; crusaders such as King Richard the Lionheart and Guy of Lusignan; Muslim military leader Saladin; and Ottoman Sultan Suleiman. Throughout the Crusades, there were a variety of motives on both sides, with some leaders acting out of faith, others from a desire for power or wealth, he writes. He also portrays the contributions of ordinary men and women to the events of the period and offers graphic descriptions of battles. He further explores the similarities and differences between the militant strains of both Christianity and Islam, and the tensions within each religion—Roman Catholicism versus Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Shiite versus Sunni Islam. In the Middle East, he writes, resentment over the Crusades continues today.
Some critics deemed God’s Armies a thorough and fascinating historical work. Lambert provides “an all-encompassing introduction to the Christian-Islamic struggle for the armchair history buff,” remarked a Kirkus Reviews contributor, who added that the book “can be somewhat overwhelming in its breadth of history and geography.” In Booklist, Bryce Christensen commended Lambert’s depictions of “the leading personalities” along with “the epic journeys and the heroic battles,” plus his analysis of the religions involved. Library Journal reviewer Brian Sullivan praised the author’s “keen insight into the contemporary implications of medieval history and a refreshing absence of easy answers.” Christensen concluded: “Such balanced scholarship offers hope of interfaith understanding.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 15, 2016, Bryce Christensen, review of God’s Armies: Crusade and Jihad: Origins, History, Aftermath, p. 13.
Choice, July, 2011, E.J. Kealey, review of Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede, p. 2176.
Church History, March, 2002, Marcia L. Colish, review of The Cathars, p. 181; September, 2011, Lisa M. Bitel, review of Christians and Pagans, p. 642.
First Things, June-July, 2011, A.M. Juster, review of Christians and Pagans, p. 62.
International Bulletin of Missionary Research, July, 2011, Alan Kreider, review of Christians and Pagans, p. 180.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2016, review of God’s Armies.
Library Journal, September 1, 2016, Brian Sullivan, review of God’s Armies, p. 123.
Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2016, review of God’s Armies, p. 60.
ONLINE
Allen and Unwin Web site, https://www.allenandunwin.com/ (May 3, 2017), brief biography.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, http://www.h-net.org/ (May 22, 2017), John Cotts, review of Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation.*
Author bio:
Malcolm Lambert was formerly Reader in Medieval History at the University of Bristol. Of his book Medieval Heresy (now in its third edition), the American medieval historian, Norman F. Cantor, wrote: 'A masterpiece of learning, thought, and insight. No serious student of the Middle Ages will fail to read and indeed reread this seminal work. I regard it as one of the finest and most important books on medieval history ever written.' His other books include The Cathars (1998) and Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede (2000). He lives in Worthing.
God's Armies: Crusade and Jihad; Origins,
History, Aftermath
Bryce Christensen
Booklist.
113.2 (Sept. 15, 2016): p13.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* God's Armies: Crusade and Jihad; Origins, History, Aftermath. By Malcolm Lambert. Oct. 2016. 352p. illus. Pegasus,
$27.95 (9781681772240). 909.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Fifteen years after thenPresident George W. Bush announced that the U.S. was launching a crusade against terrorism,
Lambert illuminates that unfortunate analogy. Readers travel back to 1095, when the realpolitik Pope Urban II called
upon Christian Europe to take up the cross and the sword to reclaim the Holy Land from the pagans. Readers
experience the epic journeys and the heroic battles, but they also probe the leading personalities and investigate their
pivotal private acts. Readers witness the fierce assault on Jerusalem in 1099complete with battering rams and hymnsinging
priestsand they draw close to the cavalry charges beneath showers of arrows during the Battle of Hattin in
1187, a battle clearing the way for the great Muslim warrior Saladin to reclaim Jerusalem. But they also peer into the
perilously insecure psyche of the crusader Guy of Lusignan and ponder Saladin's spiritual transformation after a neardeath
experience. Recognizing that the Christian crusades unfolded in a world shaped by Islamic jihads, Lambert
scrutinizes both militant forms of religion simultaneously, highlighting the fissures setting Christian crusaders against
Eastern Christians and Shiite Muslims against Sunni Muslims. In a world where memories of crusader atrocities sustain
virulent new forms of jihad, such balanced scholarship offers hope of interfaith understanding.Bryce Christensen
Christensen, Bryce
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Christensen, Bryce. "God's Armies: Crusade and Jihad; Origins, History, Aftermath." Booklist, 15 Sept. 2016, p. 13.
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Lambert, Malcolm. God's Armies: Crusade and
Jihad; Origins, History, Aftermath
Brian Sullivan
Library Journal.
141.14 (Sept. 1, 2016): p123.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Lambert, Malcolm. God's Armies: Crusade and Jihad; Origins, History, Aftermath. Pegasus. Oct. 2016. 352p. illus.
maps. index. ISBN 9781681772240. $27.95; ebk. ISBN 9781681772752. HIST
Enthusiastically embracing intricacy and eschewing oversimplification, medieval history scholar Lambert (Medieval
Heresy) boldly plunges into the struggle between Christianity and Islam to control the Middle East between the seventh
and 13th centuries. As a framework for his absorbing narrative, the author traces the development of the intertwined
concepts of jihad and crusade. Paying careful attention to nuance, Lambert avoids pitting these as monolithically polar
opposites, instead exploring the internal tensions within both religions, as well as some of their surprising similarities.
In flowing and accessible prose with minimal footnotes. This book includes a fascinating cast of personalities such as
Egyptian sultan Saladin, king of England Richard the Lionheart, and fourth sultan of Egypt Baybars. The last few
chapters look at the continuing effects of jihad and crusade up to the present, post9/11 world. VERDICT With keen
insight into the contemporary implications of medieval history and a refreshing absence of easy answers, this book is
recommended not only for history buffs but for anyone seeking a better understanding of the deep roots of today's news
stories.Brian Sullivan, Alfred Univ. Lib., NY
Sullivan, Brian
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Sullivan, Brian. "Lambert, Malcolm. God's Armies: Crusade and Jihad; Origins, History, Aftermath." Library Journal,
1 Sept. 2016, p. 123. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462044942&it=r&asid=7a644edf58cbf1f16825a478841bbc9f.
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God's Armies: Crusade and Jihad: Origins,
History, Aftermath
Publishers Weekly.
263.32 (Aug. 8, 2016): p60.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
God's Armies: Crusade and Jihad: Origins, History, Aftermath
Malcolm Lambert. Pegasus, $27.95 (352p) ISBN 9781681772240
In this readable, although not groundbreaking, survey of the history of military interaction between the Middle East and
Western Europe, Lambert (Christians and Pagans), formerly a professor of theology and medieval history at the
University of Bristol, provides a chronological overview of the development of Islam, starting with a brief biography of
Mohammed, before focusing on the crusades and papal history in Western Europe. He touches on the development of
the caliphate and the succession of Islamic leadership after the death of Mohammed. He mentions the various groups
that sought to interpret Mohammed's original vision, including Sufism, and the ninthcentury split in Shiism. His
consideration of jihad is interesting but not very detailed. The bulk of the volume is focused on Islamic history
presumably the least familiar to the audience of nonspecialists Lambert anticipatesbut he also retells the story of the
Crusades from 1095 to the fall of Acre in 1291. The coverage of the crusader period is the most detailed, and Lambert
touches only briefly on the Ottoman Empire and Suleiman the Magnificent, moving through the 18th, 19th, and 20th
centuries in a single chapter. The book would have benefited from a reduction in scope; the amount of material is
simply overwhelming. Despite this, readers will find a reasonably good introduction to the topic, and Lambert's
suggested "further reading" will be of great use to those looking to dig deeper. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell
Management (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"God's Armies: Crusade and Jihad: Origins, History, Aftermath." Publishers Weekly, 8 Aug. 2016, p. 60+. General
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Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain
from Alban to Bede
Lisa M. Bitel
Church History.
80.3 (Sept. 2011): p642.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S000964071100076X
COPYRIGHT 2011 American Society of Church History
http://www.churchhistory.org/churchhistoryjournal/
Full Text:
Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede. By Malcolm Lambert. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 2010. xx + 329 pp. $50.00 cloth.
I was delighted to open this book and read Malcolm Lambert's rueful confession of a conversion experience in the
National Library of Wales. Lambert suddenly realized that the history of "British" Christianity must include the
converts of Wales, Cornwall, and Scotland, and that even the Irish had helped with Britain's proselytization; further,
that Britain's Christian traditions continued on the island's fringes while they seemed to disappear for a century or more
in AngloSaxon territory, and that they contributed to the Christian revival of the seventh century. The problem of
Britain's first Christians has puzzled English historians for centuries since there is little explicit evidence about their
practices, beliefs, or communities. Although Lambert's new narrative of British Christianization tackles that
undocumented period and graciously includes the Celts, I was disappointed to realize that this is still a very oldfashioned
history. Lambert relies on Bede's eighthcentury Historia Ecclesiastica for his teleology, using recent
archaeological work only to substantiate and enhance Bede's account rather than challenge it. He also shares two of the
monk's most medieval sensibilities: a reductive view of nonChristian religions and an assumption that Christianization
was inevitable.
Lambert was further inspired to write by meditation on the work of his fellow medievalist, R. I. Moore. With Moore
(The Origins of European Dissent [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983]), he ponders the "crucial questions" of
religious change, that is, "when, how, and even whether Christianity became the consolation of the simple in their
misery, the source and frame of all their thoughts as the familiar picture of the age of faith would have us believe"
(xviii). Lambert suggests that Christianity brought "consolation" to the "troubled lives" of Britons during the
undocumented centuries of raids, invasions, and immigrations. After all, Christianity had so much more going for it
than paganism, according to Lambert: it offered a moral system, promoted compassion and mercy regardless of social
status, and came with prayers as well as saints (such a bargain!), whereas paganism was nothing but ungovernable
magic. Christianity appealed to individuals concerned about their salvation, whereas polytheism was a crowd religion
that "lacked the vitality to defeat Christian belief" (5). What is more, Christianity's doctrine of redemption affected "the
minds and hearts of the poor just as much as [those of] the magnates" (xx).
Anyone who can deduce spiritual longing and private epiphanies from fragments of red slipware must have a pretty
good "instinctive feel" for British Christianity, as Lambert phrases it. It takes imagination to see in the scanty debris
either misery or consolation. The archaeologist Charles Thomas had that instinctive feel for imagining religion,
according to Lambert, but not Martin Henig (although Henig does understand the "often illogical, highly flexible"
paganism of Roman Britain, p. xvi). Like Henig, Lambert locates the Jesus cult as one among many different religions
spreading through the imperial provinces of the second and third centuries. From Thomas's classic survey of
archaeological evidence, supplemented by more recent reports, Lambert reconstructs the surroundings of Britain's first
Christiansfloor mosaics, lead cisterns used for baptism or as lavers, silverware decorated with the iconography of
dolphins and shepherds, as well as bits of shabby pottery scratched with chirhosand concludes that a small
population of believers lived scattered across towns and farms of colonial Britain. Where artifacts are lacking and Bede
is taciturn, Lambert uses placenames, genetic research, and familiar scraps of writing such as Continental hagiographies
and the letters of the missionary Patrick (whose revelations and perseverance Lambert compares, surprisingly, to
another famous escaped slave, Harriet Tubman, p. 51).
Lambert offers some sensitive visualizations of the likely past, for instance, when he uses Gildas's and Patrick's
writings to suggest the fragile, failing romanitas of British congregations on the brink of invasion. But he combines
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these small insights with careless cliches, such as suggesting a reread of Tacitus's firstcentury Germania to understand
sixthcentury Germanic religionswhich would be like reading Pliny to understand AngloSaxon Christians. He pays
more attention, though, to Britons in Wales, Cornwall, and Scotland. Uinniau (also known as Ninian or Finnian) of the
Candida Casa at Whithorn and Columcille of Iona get almost as much page space as Cuthbert and Wilfrid do in later
chapters. There are lengthy discourses on Christian allusions (or lack thereof) in early Welsh poetry, the scholarly
achievements of Irish churchmen, and oghamcarved stones.
Lambert ably dramatizes the late sixthcentury mission sent by Pope Gregory to the southern kingdom of Kent, turning
it into a personal struggle by the missionary Augustine, first bishop of Canterbury, to reestablish a Roman presence at
the edge of the known world. Lambert imitates Bede's emphases, rehearsing favorite episodes: the charming analogy of
life as a swallow's brief flight, the infiltration of Northumbria by Celticizing monks, Oswald's life and cult, the
unrelenting crankiness of Wilfrid, and the canonical efficiency of Archbishop Theodore. He differs from Bede in
arguing that most AngloSaxon Christians came to value both Irish and Welsh styles of religion as well as the
Romanizing authority of Theodore. But, just like Bede, Lambert's favorite Christians are the Northumbrians, who gave
us Lindisfarne, Saint Cuthbert, the Codex Amiatinus, and, of course, Bede himself.
Lambert's ideas about religious change are closer to those of nineteenthcentury missionaries than those of fifthcentury
Britons or seventhcentury AngloSaxons. The archaeological evidence from Britain is rich with implications for lived
and built religion and the slow shift in habits that eventually produced permanent communities of Christians. But in this
book, the bones and stones are made to support a story about individual religious beliefs and motives. The narrative has
heroesthe "pioneers" of Christianity, "natural leaders and motivators" such as Patrick, and "consolidators" such as
Theodoreand bad guysWilfrid and the pagans who lacked compassion, believed in demons and magic, and really
enjoyed warfare and heavy drinking. There are few women in the book besides the predictable Hild and Bertha,
although the author does insist twice on page 298 that "queens mattered." Most troubling, though, is Lambert's
conviction that Christian ideas were superior to any other religious concepts that ever flitted through British mindslike
a sparrow in one window and out anotherover six long centuries.
Nonetheless, I have to confess: I enjoyed this book. Lambert propels interesting characters through his narrative of
spiritual achievement. I read with the same guilty pleasure I take from movies about ancient Britain, in which all the
Romans speak with British accents, all the Britons are disguised as Picts, and the missionaries are mild and reasonable,
just like Anglican pastors (no Wilfrid in the movies). I cannot recommend Lambert's book to impressionable graduate
studentsgive them Thomas and Henig, along with Richard Sharpe, Thomas CharlesEdwards, and Ian Wood instead.
Undergraduates and generally educated readers will understand and probably like this book, though, and it makes
entertaining reading for professional medievalists.
Lisa M. Bitel
University of Southern California
doi: 10.1017/S000964071100076X
Bitel, Lisa M.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Bitel, Lisa M. "Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede." Church History, vol. 80, no. 3,
2011, p. 642+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA270730934&it=r&asid=4e8f6a57b85742598f6f0f1505c1e8c1.
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Lambert, Malcolm. Christians and pagans: the
conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede
E.J. Kealey
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
48.11 (July 2011): p2176.
COPYRIGHT 2011 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
486512
BR748
200952141
CIP
Lambert, Malcolm. Christians and pagans: the conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede. Yale, 2010. 329p index afp
ISBN 9780300119084, $50.00
This is a wonderful book. Destined for a knowledgeable readership, it is filled with carefully considered details, new
ideas, and perceptive interpretations that should prompt numerous revisions of how to best understand the exciting,
conflictfilled centuries from the growth of British Christianity about 200 CE until the death of the Venerable Bede in
735. Lambert (formerly, Bristol Univ., UK), whose insights sometimes jump from a page like sparks off a flywheel,
graciously debates with the original sources and later scholarship. Although he minimizes the influence of Christianity
in Romandominated years, the author paints a vivid picture of its survival and vitality in early medieval western
Britain, the land of the Picts, Scotland proper, Wales, and Ireland. Despite the endless number of Saxon leaders,
eventually there is a thread of steady growth for the church throughout their battles, marriages, and rivalries. Lambert
gives truly fascinating portraits of people like Saints Patrick, Columba, and Wilfrid and the anonymous monks who
supported them. Moreover, he looks beyond Christianity as the faith of rulers to reveal it as the choice of people of all
stations. Sure to be consulted many times, the book is perfectly suited to students who rightly wish to delve beyond
mere survey information. Summing Up: Essential. **** Graduate students, faculty, specialists.E. J. Kealey, College
of the Holy Cross
Kealey, E.J.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Kealey, E.J. "Lambert, Malcolm. Christians and pagans: the conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede." CHOICE:
Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 2011, p. 2176. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA260331156&it=r&asid=7744d92f6c6a5202a3f2b53e9afedb56.
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Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain
from Alban to Bede
Alan Kreider
International Bulletin of Missionary Research.
35.3 (July 2011): p180.
COPYRIGHT 2011 Overseas Ministries Study Center
Full Text:
Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede. By Malcolm Lambert. New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 2010. Pp. xx, 329. $50.
In Christians and Pagans Malcolm Lambert provides a detailed account of Christianity in Britain from its origins in
Roman Britain to its dominant presence in the "Christian Britain" of the eighth century. Lambert is a meticulous
scholar. His reading of the early texts is careful and observant, and his mastery of the extensive scholarly literature is
evident in the footnotes. Many of the recent advances in understanding early British Christianity come from
archaeology, which obviously fascinates Lambert. His leisurely and precise descriptions of finds are fascinating: fifthcentury
Eucharistic vessels from Water Newton in Huntingdonshire reveal the liturgical sophistication of an early
church; two centuries later, in a grave ten miles from Canterbury, a warrior's belt buckle depicting Woden enables one
to appreciate what the Christian evangelists were up against.
Lambert's account has numerous strengths. One is his treatment of the "lost church" of the first five centuries. Drawing
on archaeology, Lambert shows us a church that from the outset grew bottomup through the initiative of ordinary
Christians and that, even after Constantine's adhesion to Christianity, remained a minority visavis the pagans. Another
strength is Lambert's affectionate and insightful treatment of major figures. Columba, Cuthbert, Hild, and Bede come
alive, also particularly Patrick, "most remarkable of all British Christians" (p. 49). A third strength is Lambert's
appreciation, stated repeatedly throughout the book, that it was hard for Christianity to penetrate elite societies that
celebrated gore and were deeply imbued with "the paganism of the battlefield" (p. 178). Lambert tells stories of monks
(often the main missionaries) who were committed to nonviolence. But kings, who also played dominant roles in
Christianization, could murderously dispose of relatives as well as enemies. AbbotAdomnan of Iona, Lambert notes,
attempted to lessen the violence by restricting the slaughter to fighters with his Law of the Innocents.
Lambert's title led me to expect that he would keep his focus on the impact of paganism and Christianity upon each
other. Lambert rightly emphasizes the magnitude of the task of Christianizing the British Isles, which were deeply
rooted in polytheism. And he points to Gregory the Great's famous letter to Abbot Mellitus, which changed papal
policy on the means of Christianizing; instead of destroying pagan structures, Mellitus should cleanse them and adapt
them to Christian use. But cleansing, Lambert realizes, takes time and involves character and practices, as well as
buildings. I wondered whether, as the centuries went by and the Christian literary sources increased in quantity,
Lambert was losing his earlier focus on archaeology, thereby understating the syncretism that was widespread in the
lives of the people. And I wondered whether he could have done more to detect the syncretism that is present in literary
texts. For example, in sermon 8 from Vercelli MS 5, a ninthcentury AngloSaxon preacher told the story of Christ's
birth with Caesar and his retinue coming to Bethlehem. This adaptation of the story to a society in which kings had
long been dominant was a bold bit of inculturationa term that Lambert does not use. But it makes one wonder to what
extent, as Christianity became dominant, paganism lived on.
Alan Kreider is Professor of Church History and Mission (retired), Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart,
Indiana.
Kreider, Alan
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Kreider, Alan. "Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede." International Bulletin of
Missionary Research, vol. 35, no. 3, 2011, p. 180. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA261080628&it=r&asid=07cacba5271515c51b9332096e7092e9.
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Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain
from Alban to Bede
A.M. Juster
First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life.
.214 (JuneJuly 2011): p62.
COPYRIGHT 2011 Institute on Religion and Public Life
http://www.firstthings.com/
Full Text:
Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede
BY MALCOLM LAMBERT
YALE, 336 PAGES, $50
By the second century, Roman soldiers were bringing their new faith to Britain, and in the middle of the third century
St. Alban became Britain's first known Christian martyr, but we don't know much more about who these Christians
were, and it is here that Malcolm Lambert begins in Pagans and Christians: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to
Bede, producing a captivating narrative by squeezing what he canbut no morefrom archeological evidence (mostly
from burial sites) and the limited historical record. He does so in a clear and prudent way delightfully free of academic
theorizing.
After St. Alban, Christianity maintained a tenuous hold in Britain for four centuries as small kingdoms and many
religions battled for dominance amid intermittent invasions by tribes from Ireland and the Continent, until the arrival of
St. Theodore in the midseventh century. Lambert's documentation and analysis of Theodore's role as the great
consolidator of the Christian presence in Britain is an important contribution to scholarship.
In his discussion of the eighth century, Lambert relies too heavily on the writings of the astonishing Bede, substantially
excluding other figures who left significant paper trails of different kinds, such as St. Aldhelm, and causing him to
downplay the continuing Irish influence on British Christian writing, including the shift to rhyme and accentual
prosody in hymns. Christians and Pagans, despite these minor faults, is thoughtful, enjoyable, and valuable.
A. M. Juster's translation of Tibullus" elegies will be published in early 2012 (Oxford).
Juster, A.M.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Juster, A.M. "Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede." First Things: A Monthly Journal
of Religion and Public Life, no. 214, 2011, p. 62. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA256683697&it=r&asid=c7793c9f6b09a895c6ca003acaec8cbe.
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The Cathars
Marcia L. Colish
Church History.
71.1 (Mar. 2002): p181.
COPYRIGHT 2002 American Society of Church History
http://www.churchhistory.org/churchhistoryjournal/
Full Text:
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 muchdiscussed 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 occurredalthough 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 counterreligion, 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 postCrusade 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 nonChristian movement that acquired Christian coloration, Lambert views
it as a Christian heresya 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 were unreformed and
unreforming, lacking in authority and effectiveness. Lambert also discusses the role of noble patronage in Languedoc,
the economic problems of nobles impoverished by partible inheritance, the rivalry between nobles and bishops, and, for
women, the lack of nunneries as a reason for their attraction to Catharism. But his aim is to downplay political and
economic factors. Most of all, the simple, apostolic life of Cathar perfecti, the ethical appeal of Catharism, and its
renunciation of tithes and ecclesiastical property were its selling points. For his part, Barber moves immediately to
nobles and their family networks, in which women were prominent. He flags the independent, unfeudalized nature of
Languedocian lordship, arguing that it discouraged subordination to an elaborate penitential system. Next, he targets
towns and commercial networks. In striking contrast to earlier scholars, he shows that there was no automatic
correlation between Catharism and urban growth. Also innovative is Barber's handling of the counts of Toulouse, often
depicted as supporters of Catharism. These counts, he notes, had political agendas more important to them than heresyhunting.
In any case, this family was orthodox and many of its members were crusaders. At the bottom of his list
Barber places the region's bishops. He agrees that they were corrupt and ineffectual. But, far from describing
Languedocian society as virtually captivated by Catharism, he observes that new and reformed religious orders, like the
Cistercians, Templars, and Hospitallers, received strong support in the region, especially from nobles. Orthodox
Catholic piety and charity were alive and well there.
Neither author devotes much attention to early antiheresy preaching campaigns in Languedoc, moving swiftly to the
Albigensian Crusade. Lambert gives it short shrift, noting merely that the Crusade killed many perfecti and destroyed
many Cathar records. He then shifts attention to the doctrinal and jurisdictional infighting among Italian Cathars in the
same generation. His alternation between the Languedocian and Italian movements in subsequent chapters, after a brief
look at northern European Cathars, characterizes the rest of his book, a backandforth strategy entailing some
disjunction and repetition. Conversely, after a chapter that details Cathar beliefs, organization, and praxis and that notes
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the range of theological and ethical appropriations made by adherents, Barber gives a detailed analysis of the
Albigensian Crusade. Here, his insights as a Crusades historian are invaluable. He notes that recent losses in Palestine,
capped by Saladin's victory at Hattin (1187) and the growing elaboration of just war theoryand not merely the policies
of Pope Innocent III and his successorsintensified the pressure to take military action. As with campaigns in outremer,
Simon de Montfort's strategy emphasized sieges. Unlike crusaders overseas, he was inadequately funded. At the same
time, few members of his army, like theirs, remained to found longterm dynasties in the lands conquered. Manpower
remained a fundamental problem. This is why, in Barker's assessment, the Albigensian Crusade did not and could not
solve the problem; it could only be addressed by royal intervention. The most important consequence of that
intervention, for Barber, was not the death or emigration of perfecti but the defeat of Castellans who had been the
Cathars' leading patrons and defenders. It was this shift, combined with the success of the Inquisition, the favorable
economic climate of the later thirteenth century, and Louis IX's economic initiatives in the region, that reconciled
Languedocian elites to the new regime. The brief Cathar revival at the turn of the fourteenth century is significant, in
Barber's view, for reflecting the depleted patronage base and lowered social status of Cathar adherents.
Lambert lays more emphasis on the Inquisition in explaining the extirpation of Catharism but emphasizes that
inquisitorial dynamics differed in Italy and Languedoc. In Italy, imperial and municipal antiheresy legislation and
orthodox lay confraternities that opposed heresy and that provided agencies for various forms of lay piety were as
important as the Inquisition. In all cases, the internal politics of individual towns affected how this hand of cards was
played. Also, the popularity of Franciscan and Dominican preaching, accenting the sanctity or natural goodness of
creation, undermined the dualism of the Cathars, who grew increasingly factionalized. These factors led to the demise
of Italian Catharism. The publication date of his book made it impossible for Lambert to consult Carol Lansing's Purity
and Power: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), with its analysis of Catharism
in towns in the Papal States, where a different set of political issues was involved. The most important reason for the
demise of Italian Catharism, in Lambert's view, was a shifting climate of opinion that made Cathar dualism seem
unattractive and passe. To the extent that heterodoxy survived there, it tended to be Waldensian.
As to the survival of Catharism in Languedoc after the Albigensian Crusade, Lambert, while acknowledging the
lowering of the social status of Cathars and their supporters, emphasizes the continuing appeal of their beliefs, rituals,
and ethics and the exemplary behavior of the perfecti, in a region where reform of the Catholic clergy remained
laggard. He agrees with Barber on the disparities of belief and practice among adherents. Both authors confront
squarely and deal successfully with the methodological problem of reconstructing Catharism from inquisitorial records.
They both show that, read with circumspection, these records yield precise and accurate data that correct earlier
interpretations. Thus Lambert shows that, while perfectae catechized women and prepared them for the
consolamentum, women never held positions in the Cathar hierarchy and did not participate in public debates. Against
scholars who argue that women were particularly drawn to Catharism, he points to strong opposition to Catharism from
women who rejected its denigration of marriage and childbearing. Statistically, heterodox women were more likely to
choose Waldensianism. For Lambert, the late medieval Cathar revival reveals the continuing attractiveness of the sect's
teachings and praxis and the fact that perfecti could function in the absence of bishops and deacons. For all that,
Catharism in Languedoc could not withstand the vigorous inquisitorial activity of figures like Bernard Gui and Jacques
Fournier. Strangely, given his expertise on the subject, Lambert ignores the possible competition of Spiritual
Franciscanism and its local offshoot, the Beguins, which emerged concurrently with Catharism's last hurrah.
After a chapter on Bosnian Catharism, which Lambert characterizes persuasively as doctrinally Catharoid and not an
exclusive state church, he ends with an epilogue on the legacy of Catharism. In extirpating it, he holds, inquisitors were
neither fanatics nor sadists but conscientious administrators doing a job their society thought needed doing. Still, the
system they set up had negative consequences later. Lambert does not consider the origins of inquisitorial procedure in
Roman law or compare them with secular usage. He makes witchhunting, and not the expulsion of entire nonChristian
populations, the endpoint of this negative legacy. Although his book has extensive footnotes, sometimes
outlining scholarly controversies, it lacks a bibliography.
Barber's final chapter, on Catharism after the Cathars, documents the development of a host of myths about Catharism
and their appropriation by assorted partisans and crazies. Most recently, local chambers of commerce have revived a
vulgarized Catharism as a tourist ploy. Barber concludes with three extremely valuable historiographical essays, on the
primary sources, on Catharism in general, and on the topics covered in each chapter. He also provides an extensive
bibliography. There are, then, notable differences in emphasis between these two books; each adds something new and
each scores points against scholars with whom the respective authors disagree. Lambert's chief interest is illuminating
the inner life of Catharism as a religion. Without ignoring doctrine and praxis, Barber is more concerned with placing
Catharism in the political and ideological context of crusading. Barber guides readers more fully in the literature of
Catharism. Both books deserve a space on the shelf of anyone interested in this subject.
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Marcia L. Colish
Oberlin College
Colish, Marcia L.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Colish, Marcia L. "The Cathars." Church History, vol. 71, no. 1, 2002, p. 181+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA85920260&it=r&asid=8dae653cb3ec52c2659df5d23e1ef9b9.
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GOD'S ARMIES
Crusade and Jihad: Origins, History, Aftermath
by Malcolm Lambert
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A Medieval history expert introduces readers to the epic struggle for the Near East, spanning the dawn of Islam to the rise of the Ottoman Empire and beyond.
In a work that can be somewhat overwhelming in its breadth of history and geography, Lambert (Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede, 2010, etc.) provides a full introduction to the politics, warfare, and intrigue that marked Christian-Islamic history for many centuries—and which still colors it today. Readers will find many familiar names within these pages—Richard the Lionheart, Saladin, Genghis Khan, Suleiman, among several others—as well as a host of little-known warriors, potentates, divines, and, notably, women who helped create the history of the era. In the process of telling this story, Lambert hopes to dispel myths on both sides of history. Realizing that both “crusade” and “jihad” have been politicized in modern parlance, he attempts to humanize these concepts by sharing the real lives behind these broad terms. He presents leaders and warriors of all stripes, from those motivated by faith and a desire to do right to those motivated by a hunger for power, profit, or revenge. The author also makes it clear that discerning “good” versus “bad” actors throughout these centuries is almost impossible. Readers will learn a great deal about how Medieval Christian and Islamic warfare and power-shifting set up the violence we see even today, from lingering anger over the Crusades to the Sunni-Shiite split. If there is any truly overriding theme, it is the pervasiveness of violence throughout this period. Some readers may become numb after several chapters detailing how captives were executed, hostages murdered, rulers assassinated, and one political opponent after another brutally tortured—all in the name of God or Allah.
An all-encompassing introduction to the Christian-Islamic struggle for the armchair history buff.
Pub Date: Oct. 11th, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-224-0
Page count: 352pp
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3rd, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15th, 2016
Quoted in Sidelights: the standard English-language introduction to medieval popular heresy
endows an almost unmanageable bulk of material with a remarkable historiographical flexibility
is dense and exhaustively detailed,
should remain the essential reference work on medieval religious dissent
Malcolm Lambert. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. vi + 491 pp. $52.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-631-22276-7; $98.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-631-22275-0.
Reviewed by John Cotts (Department of History, Grinnell College)
Published on H-W-Civ (October, 2003)
This third edition of the standard English-language introduction to medieval popular heresy endows an almost unmanageable bulk of material with a remarkable historiographical flexibility. Malcolm Lambert has retained much of the structure of the highly regarded second edition (1993), while incorporating recent research (in an impressive array of languages) and continuing to argue implicitly in favor of his ideas-based approach to the study of religious dissent. Readers familiar with the earlier editions will find no major changes; the chapter organization and methodology is unchanged, though the chapters on the Cathars and Lollards have been updated to reflect recent scholarship, as has the already impressive bibliography. That a third edition was considered necessary, barely a decade after the second, is testament to the vital scholarship that emerged, in a great many languages, during the 1990s.
No short review could do justice to the range and scope of Lambert's project, but a brief survey of the book's contents will help explain the author's assumptions and methods. In this regard the volume's subtitle itself is not insignificant. From it we learn that for the author, as he says explicitly in his final chapter, "heresy and reform were twins"; that "popular heresy" is a meaningful term only for the central and later Middle Ages; and that this study is more concerned than much recent scholarship to explore parallels between medieval heretics and the Protestant reformers of the early-sixteenth century. After a programmatic introduction devoted primarily to pointing out divergences from his earlier editions, Lambert begins in a subtly polemical fashion by leading off with the burning of Orleans heretics in the early-eleventh century, an episode that has previously been thought to pertain more to local politics than real religious dissent. But for Lambert, "the first burning in the West was a burning of true heretics." This artfully constructed, episodic chapter explores Orleans and other instances of eleventh-century heretic burning and, with a remarkably light touch, makes a persuasive case that the period represents a serious revival of heretical popular piety. It is in this discussion that Lambert makes his clearest statement on recent historiographical trends, with R. I. Moore's theories in particular attracting both praise and revision.
The rest of the book follows a more-or-less standard chronological progression. The early-twelfth century saw the advent of independent orthodox and heterodox wandering preachers who set the stage for larger, more dangerous movements such as Catharism and Waldensianism, which in turn inspired an often successful ecclesiastical reaction marked above all by the development of inquisitorial procedures (which Lambert is comfortable calling "the inquisition"). The chapters dealing with the relationship between orthodox reform and heresy effectively rebut recent claims that heresy was invented by a church progressing inexorably towards system. Instead, Lambert's medieval church was caught off guard by religious enthusiasm and reacted in fits and starts. Borrowing R. W. Southern's notion of an "inflationary spiral" in which the unceasing growth of papal administration occasioned a concomitant loss of spiritual prestige, Lambert turns to the fourteenth century, focusing above all on Lollardy and the Hussites, before concluding with a consideration of the co-existence and assimilation of pre-existing heretical movements with early Protestant communities. Revisions to this new edition reflect Lambert's own recent work on the Cathars as well as a great deal of new scholarship on the Lollards. Engagement with recent theories about medieval history is, for the most part, implicit in Lambert's exhaustive footnotes.
The narrative is dense and exhaustively detailed, and will certainly be referenced more often than read. With the exception of the second chapter, with its clear response to differing views on the nature of eleventh-century outbreaks of heresy, Lambert's account reads as a straightforward account, which never quite bears out the polemical potential suggested in the introduction and revived in the conclusion. Pointing out that contemporaries were not prone to think of religious dissent as the product of class differences or even well-intentioned reform, he boldly claims at the outset that churchmen "believed that heresy was the work of the devil." This implies (pace Moore, John Boswell, and others) a rather static model for the ecclesiastical attitudes to dissent, and the author's choice of words could well discomfit some medievalists who work on the historical contingency and complexity of medieval persecution. Lambert unfortunately does not follow this statement with an examination of the theology of the devil's work on earth (traceable to Gregory the Great, above all), or the tension between Augustinian and Gregorian attitudes towards evil and their implications for views on heresy. In fact, his presentation of the church as occasionally scrambling to articulate responses to the dissenters, whose spiritual dynamism demands a reaction, seems to militate against such a monolithic view of medieval thought on the nature of dissent. It is consistent with his general method, however, that Lambert should present ecclesiastics as perpetually reacting to the dissenters, as spiritually powerful heretical beliefs forced the church, not necessarily reactionary but always a step behind, to adapt or persecute. This approach reflects the author's acknowledged methodological debt to Herbert Grundmann's Religisebwegungen im Mittlealter, and above all that book's conviction that heresy is "born out of religious conviction" rather than the growth of institutional structures or social tensions.
Still, the sometimes dry and schematically organized text does not quite fulfill the introduction's promise that the account will be a messy one. In his introduction Lambert rightly insists that "the history of medieval heresy is a terrible story." He invokes Henry Charles Lea's A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (1888) to ally himself with scholars who simply could not maintain any detachment when faced with the fact of the human intellect's suppression. The main chapters of Medieval Heresy, however, relentlessly follow a traditional narrative in the style of a general textbook, and rarely suggest messiness. There is little, beyond a general explanation of inquisitorial procedures, about the nature of coercion (or the fear inspired by it), and Lambert's eschewal of theory seems to have denuded his book of discussions of such sociological phenomena as pollution fear, which contributed to the horror associated with dissent and have inspired many fruitful inquiries into medieval heretics. Finally, although the chapter on the clerical counter-attack on heretics does allow that inquisitors could and did create heresy where none existed, the inherent methodological challenges presented by scholars' necessary reliance on mostly pro-clerical sources are seldom addressed.
These criticisms, however, are those of a specialist, and many apparent deficiencies could well be calculated sacrifices in the interest of the greater goal of providing a straightforward synthesis of a vast subject. This goal is more than adequately met. Medieval Heresy, in its updated form, should remain the essential reference work on medieval religious dissent. That such a large survey manages to reflect slight shifts in scholarly consensus and provoke discussion of approaches and methodologies makes Lambert's achievement even more impressive.
FROM TRUDY--DIFFERENT AUTHOR, DIFFERENT BOOK
Malcolm Barber. The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. London and New York: Longman, 2000. vii + 282 pp. $79.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-582-25661-3.
Reviewed by Dawn M. Hayes (Department of History and Political Science, Iona College)
Published on H-Catholic (June, 2001)
The Medieval Heresy That Refuses to Die: Catharism, Then and Now
The Medieval Heresy That Refuses to Die: Catharism, Then and Now
The most recent contribution to the history of the Cathars has been made by Malcolm Barber, Professor of History at the University of Reading. Employing a thematic approach within a chronological framework, Barber offers us what is perhaps the first comprehensive authoritative, yet accessible,English-language examination of the Cathars.[1] While firmly rooted in primary sources, supported by an ample amount of footnotes, and demonstrating an impressive command of the fairly extensive secondary literature on the subject, the account is highly readable for the non-specialist audience it targets.
The author begins with a chapter on the spread of Catharism, discussing the probable origins of the heresy and links between early dualists, the Messalians and the Paulicians; and the Bogomils, dualist heretics in the Balkans whose derivative name, Bulgars, by the thirteenth century was used in the West as a general label for heretics. Barber then takes the reader through the question of the relationship between the Bogomil Church's missionary efforts to spread its heresy to western Europe, most likely (though this is still debated by scholars)by 1140.
Leaving the broad scope of the first chapter behind, the second focuses on the Cathars and their function in Languedoc, arguing that the powerbase of Catharism can be found in the region's "network of interrelated lordships" (p. 43). Writing against a good deal of earlier scholarship that maintains urbanization was crucial to the spread of Catharism in Languedoc, Barber argues that the interaction between the heresy and southern French society was largely fostered by the castra and villages of powerful local nobles, over whom the great lords had minimal control. Though dualism had spread to many regions of Europe along well-trodden trade routes, the degree of the heresy's success in Languedoc was largely determined by its communities' social structures. There networks of local nobles, linked by marriage, exercised regional influences that permitted Cathars to preach and establish religious communities over relatively large areas.
The Cathar Church is the subject of chapter three. By the late twelfth century Cathars and Bogomils had established sixteen bishoprics stretching from Constantinople to Toulouse. Of note to those interested in feminist history is Barber's questioning of the popular notion that women served as "deaconesses," running many of the Cathar houses. Though this is possible, Barber admits, he contends that is was unlikely since there is no solid evidence to support this idea. In fact, it appears that the perfectae were overall less active in and important to the Cathar Church than the perfecti. Also in this chapter is a discussion of the consolamentum, which was the key ceremony of the western Cathar Church between ca. 1140 and 1320. Though central to their identity, numerous controversies developed around this practice, including a Cathar version of the Donatist heresy. More frequent were the controversies surrounding Cathars who had received the endura and later recovered. Barber ends the chapter with a discussion of the reasons why people were attracted to the church. Ultimately, there were three: the impressive morality of the perfecti; the encouragement of the promise and power of the consolamentum; and the rejection of the Old Testament, whose Jehovah, the Cathars maintained, was incompatible with the God of the New Testament.
The Catholic reaction to Catharism, the infamous Albigensian Crusade of 1209-1229, is the subject of chapter four. Barber is careful to note that the crusade did not eliminate the heresy. It did, however, usher in irreversible changes, transforming Languedoc from a region that was once "expansionist and confident" to one that became "defensive and beleaguered" (p. 139). The ensuing decline of Catharism is the topic of the following chapter. It was achieved via two strategies: the Treaty of Paris of 1229, which helped undermine the social and political infrastructures of the Cathar Church in Langue doc, and the inquisition unleashed against the remaining Cathars. By the 1250s the Cathars had "been driven down the social scale," ultimately losing much of their noble support (p. 173). Although there is evidence of Cathar resistance to it, the inquisition proved successful.
The penultimate chapter focuses on the last Cathars in Languedoc. In the late thirteenth century the heresy experienced a brief revival, due to the impetus provided by the brothers Peter and William Autier. Never on a firm foundation, the revival was squashed, most notably under the direction of the infamous inquisitor Bernard Gui.
Perhaps the most intriguing chapter of the book, however,is the last, "Cathars and Catharism," which sets the heresy in its later historiographical context. Barber notes at the end of his introduction that "[e]ven more than most historical subjects, the Cathars are viewed today through the many-layered filters of the more recent past" (p. 5). He returns to this idea at the end of the book, exploring how these filters have influenced the way various people have interpreted the Cathars and their demise. Deodat Roche, founder of the Cahiers d'Etudes Cathares and a twentieth-century magistrate of Limoux and Carcassonne who was removed from his position by the Vichy government for his interest in religion and spirituality, wanted to lay bare to his contemporaries the light which the Cathars had tried to reveal to the medieval world. A self-proclaimed neo-Cathar, Roche believed deeply in the need to uncover the true history of the Cathars, which had been obscured by an intolerant medieval Church.
Simone Weil, a French philosopher of the inter-war period, was moved by Roche's work, particularly by his discussion of the Cathar's rejection of the Old Testament Jehovah (whom she saw as a god of "pitiless cruelty" and, like the medieval Cathars, believed was incompatible with the God of the New Testament). Living during some of the darkest days of Europe's history (she died of tuberculosis in 1943), Weil saw the Roman Empire and its child, the Catholic Church, as the original sources of European totalitarianism, brutally exercised by the Office of the Inquisition.
To the twentieth-century German writer Otto Rahn, the Cathars were able custodians of a dualist tradition that predated Christianity. In fact, to Rahn, the Cathars carried on traditions that can be traced back to the Celts and the Iberians. Published in Germany during the late 1930s Rahn's second book, Luzifers Hofgesind (1937), argues that the Cathars were disciples of Lucifer, the Bringer of Light, whose church was an enemy of the "Judaic" Catholic Church. An instrument of Nazi propaganda (Rahn worked for Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Schutzstaffel and later head of all German police forces, during these years), Luzifers Hofgesind argues that until the thirteenth century the Cathars maintained a European tradition that did not have to be purified of "Jewish mythology" (p. 210). Although it didn't have a major impact during the war years, in the recent past Luzifers Hofgesind has stimulated a genre of books employing unconventional historical approaches, such as Jean and Michel Angebert's 1971 work Hitler et la tradition cathare, that claims to uncover secret relationships between the Cathar tradition and the Nazi regime.
The chapter concludes with discussions of Protestantism and Catharism and the role of the Cathars in modern Occitan identity. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, some fifty years after the publication of Jacques Benigne Bossuet's Histoire des variationes des eglises protestantes, many Protestants believed that they were successors to a Cathar tradition, which for centuries the Catholic Church had been trying to destroy. It was around this same time that perceptions of thirteenth-century Languedoc began to gel as French writers cultivated an image of the Albigensian Crusade as a barbaric papal attack against an innocent people and their highly developed culture. As regionalist movements became popular in France during the 1970s, their adherents in Languedoc began to see themselves as neo-Cathars who, after seven centuries, were yet again fighting for their cultural independence. Though the occitaniste movement was ultimately unsuccessful (actually, it was the French government that was responsible for the popularization of regional languages in the 1980s), the legacy of these ideas can be seen in modern television, advertising and tourism where local towns present their Cathar credentials to gullible visitors. Hautes-Corbieres has become le pays cathare and a commemorative stone which reads "[a]t Lavaur, the occitan people lost their independence but seven centuries later the laurel grows green again" can be seen at the Esplanade de Plo. Barber concludes that "superstition and credulity" have enabled modern audiences to distort the history of the Cathars and manipulate it for financial gain or the satisfaction of personal fantasies (p. 225).
The historian Norman F. Cantor has long been arguing that among the modern educated reader is a vast and relatively untapped interest in the Middle Ages. And he challenges professional medievalists to write the kinds of works that will target this readership. This is not a simple task; many people prefer to imagine the Middle Ages rather than read responsible reconstructions of the period. As Barber has noted, during the recent past various people with less than honest motives have hijacked the subject of the Cathars. It appears, though, that he has written a book that can effectively and responsibly meet the needs of lay readers who want to learn about the Cathars and the heresy for which many lived and died. With its three tables, seven maps, bibliography, adequate footnotes and suggestions for further reading this is a solid work. Yet at the same time it is highly readable and a potential antidote to the tendencies toward invention and distortion.
Notes
[1]. Though it is not the first comprehensive examination of the history of the Cathars, as the publisher's WWW site maintains. For example, readers who are interested in an account that targets a scholarly audience can pick up Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford, England and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998). Comprehensive foreign language accounts may be gleaned from Barber's bibliography.
FROM TRUDY--DIFFERENT AUTHOR, DIFFERENT BOOK
The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle AgesPrinter-friendly versionPDF version
Book:
The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages
Malcolm Barber
Harlow, Longman, 2000, ISBN: 9780582256615; 298pp.
Reviewer:
Professor John Arnold
Birkbeck, University of London
Citation:
Professor John Arnold, review of The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages, (review no. 231)
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/231
Date accessed: 10 April, 2017
In recent years, it has become very much easier to teach medieval heresy at undergraduate level. In addition to a long-established and outstanding collection of sources (Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages) we have been blessed, in the last five years, with two textbooks and a collection of essays on the Waldensians, three monographs on inquisition, two popular books, two textbooks and a monograph on the Cathars, full translations of two major sources related to the Albigensian Crusade, and a collection of translated sources relating to heresy in the East.(1) The most recent entrant into this thriving arena is Malcolm Barber's The Cathars, a long-awaited textbook by an historian familiar for his past work on the Knights Templar, and for his editorship (sadly just relinquished) of the excellent Journal of Medieval History.
Certain topics fall in and out of favour with both the general public and academia; in the case of the Cathars, it is probably the shadow of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's seminal Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village (1978) that has until recently kept writers somewhat at bay from attempting to present accessible, alternative versions of this major medieval heresy. In fact, of course, Ladurie's book talked very little about heresy itself, and was concerned only with the early fourteenth century, when bishop Jacques Fournier launched an inquisition against the Pyrenean peasants of Languedoc (a more clear example of sledgehammer and nut could hardly be found). Until the recent flurry of titles, pretty much the only attempt to set Catharism in perspective, for a student audience, was the central chapters in Malcolm Lambert's excellent Medieval Heresy (first published in 1977 and now approaching its third edition). As things now stand, Barber's The Cathars has three main competitors or confrères: the aforementioned Medieval Heresy, Lambert's The Cathars, and Michael Costen's The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade. Happily, there is space for all three in the field. Costen's text is more focussed on the crusade than anything else, and Lambert's is concerned with Cathars (and other dualists) throughout Christendom, whereas Barber has stuck to one region: Languedoc.
As with Barber's earlier textbook The Two Cities (dealing with medieval Europe 1000-1300), The Cathars is written extremely clearly and accessibly - the sine qua non for a student audience, although achieved less frequently by historians than one might wish. The style is relaxed, the structure of the book and its component parts is clear, and above all else the author does not make any unwarranted assumptions about what students will already know: when a new topic, area, or theme appears, its context and relevance are spelt out clearly and succinctly. Over seven chapters, Barber takes us from the origins of the Cathars, through the support enjoyed by the Cathar elite - the perfecti or 'perfects' - in southern France, examining the structure and practices of the Cathar church and its social context, to the Roman Catholic church's reaction (preaching, followed by crusade, followed by inquisition) and its eventual suppression of the Cathars. Finally, we are shown the last murmurs of the heresy as it briefly reappeared in the Pyrenean villages persecuted by bishop Fournier, and the strange and resonant 'afterlife' that Catharism has enjoyed for Occitaniste patriots, Simone Weil, and the modern southern French tourist trade.
The Cathars arose in southern France in the twelfth century, propounding a faith that posited the existence of two gods: one good, who created the spirit, and one bad, who created all corporeal matter. In Italy, the theology was more complicated, as certain Cathars adopted 'mitigated' dualism: that is, that the bad god as the creation of the good god. Languedoc, however, seems to have retained absolute dualism; this geographical distinction is not made completely clear in Barber's text, as he relies more on the narrative Italian materials for his section on Cathar theology, rather than excavating the fragments of theology contained in inquisitorial depositions. The Cathar rejection of corporeality provided one foundation for their faith, leading to the ritual of consolamentum that transformed a believer into one of the 'perfect', the perfects' abstention from meat and sex, and their belief that marriage was innately sinful (because it pretended to sanctify bodily relations). The second foundation was the Cathar belief that they were the true inheritors of the early, apostolic church; from this sprang the need for the perfects to minister to their flock, to preach and to practice poverty (their mendicancy provided the example from whence sprang the Dominican order). At their apogee, the Languedocian Cathars created a church structure, including bishops, deacons and other officials for different areas, and enjoyed the support (either passive or active) of much of the southern French nobility.
For those of us interested in the Cathars, certain key areas of debate tend to demand attention. One is the question of origins: from whence the heresy arose. A second is the matter of continuation: what allowed the heresy such success (particularly in southern France)? A third is decline: when and how did the orthodox church succeed in putting down this competitor? For all three, Barber provides sensible responses. On the question of origins, he summarises clearly and succinctly the main arguments of the key historians, provides a brief overview of the pros and cons of interpreting instances of heresy prior to the mid-twelfth century as dualist, and argues (I think correctly) that heretical theologians from the East - perhaps specifically from Constantinople - must have played an influential role in evangelising dualism in the west.
The second question - the continuation and success of Catharism - is also handled well. Previous arguments have suggested that Catharism essentially filled a void left by an ill-educated and lax orthodox clergy in Languedoc, and that the social changes wrought by urban expansion formed a seedbed for new and unorthodox ideas. Barber takes both points on board, but sounds welcome notes of caution: orthodox piety was also strong in Languedoc (Cistercian, Hospitaller and Templar institutions were all founded in the area, attracting strong support) and the area was far from being heavily urbanised. As the author comments, 'poor clergy and urban growth made a contribution, but the interaction between heresy and society is much more complex than such simple formulae will allow. The relationship between Catharism and social structure is not, indeed, subject to a single, monolithic explanation' [69]. Indeed, one of the particular strengths of The Cathars is Barber's handling of the social context for the heresy. There is very little written in English on southern French society in general, and what is provided here is extremely welcome. Particularly persuasive is Barber's agreement with historians such as Andrew Roach, Jean Duvernoy and Mark Pegg that 'the example set by the lifestyle of the perfecti was more important [to their sympathisers] than dualistic belief as such' [96].
If I am slightly less impressed by Barber's response to the third area - suppression/decline - this is perhaps only because it is the area in which I have greatest interest. The Cathars certainly provides a clear account of church reactions in the thirteenth century, narrates the events of the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), and examines the beginnings of inquisition in Languedoc in a sensibly nuanced fashion. Most importantly, Barber's section on 'decline' concludes with a smart analysis of the socio-economic change wrought by the longer term effects of the Crusade and the extension of French administration into the region: this, he suggests, is the final blow to Catharism - 'In fifty years the environment had been transformed, changing the Cathars first from reformers to maquisards, and then from maquisards to fugitives' [175].
However, the efforts of the church (both before and after the Crusade) are presented a little too neatly. In the Introduction, noting the fundamental theological challenge that Catharism presented to Catholicism, Barber writes:
For Catholics therefore, there could be no compromise with the Cathars, manifestly working to subvert the faithful at the behest of the Devil; it was the responsibility of all Catholic leaders, ecclesiastical and lay, to strive to overcome this heresy with all the strength at their command. This [.] was particularly pertinent to the reformed papacy which, since the 1050s, had been working to reassert its leadership of the universal Church. [.] Repression of Catharism was not therefore a question of choice, nor was there any option of toleration, for it was a positive obligation upon those charged by God to lead His Church on earth. [2]
One may demur over whether there was a choice to repress: not from an ahistorical desire to condemn Catholicism for its excesses (it's been guilty of worse), but because the image painted here is too univocal and coherent. Although heresy, from c. 1000 onwards, certainly caused ecclesiastical authorities great concern, the main feature of orthodox reactions up to the thirteenth century were their undirected and uncentralised nature; and even in the thirteenth century (the period when that imaginary monolith 'the Church' was arguably closest to actual achievement) both crusade and inquisition were conducted under confused and altering conditions. It is not clear, for example, how the Crusade was supposed to succeed: that is, the nature of the supposed enemy (a clear band of heretical outlaws to be suppressed, or a region that was endemically problematic and in want of governance) changed over the course of its twenty years. So too with inquisition: begun (as Barber makes clear) more as a physical search for heretics, it mutated into something more extraordinary - a system for interrogating individual lay people about their innermost thoughts and beliefs. These changes are of interest, and affect our story.
An important element leads on from this last point: the nature of the evidence upon which Barber (and any historian dealing with the topic) relies. Almost everything we know about Catharism comes from hostile sources, whether polemics written against heretical doctrine, chronicles narrating the successes of orthodoxy, or the complex and problematic records of inquisitors. Although Barber makes effective use of particular sets of inquisitorial depositions, he also relies fairly heavily upon narrative accounts (chronicles and polemics). This makes for a clear exposition; but it would be nice to have greater discussion of the problems with these sources. For example, Barber chooses to base his section on the 'moral and ethical teaching' of the perfects on the polemics addressed against them by writers such as Peter of Vaux-les-Cernay, Rainier Sacconi and James Capelli. What he draws out from these sources is perfectly sound, but it is a shame firstly that the details one can pick out from the less directly hostile inquisitorial depositions are not used to supplement these overviews; and secondly that the sources themselves are not brought more closely under question. That is, one might like to draw students' attention more clearly not only to the fact that these are polemics (something that Barber does note in passing), but that the way in which they think about (and hence present) Catharism - as a sect, with rules, with a hierarchy, something with boundaries and structure - is implicit in their accounts. One can contrast this image with the more fluid and heterogeneous picture of the heretical faith drawn from inquisitorial depositions - a picture that Barber also provides in part - but it would be good to have the differences of viewpoint pointed out more clearly. None of this is to suggest that Barber uses his sources naively; only that the process of evaluating and questioning source materials (many of which are readily available in English) might also be displayed to good pedagogic effect.
Overall, however, this is an excellent starting point for teaching the Cathars to a student audience. It does not provide quite the density of information, or as wide a synthesis of secondary material, as its main competitor (Lambert's The Cathars); but in some ways it is all the better for that, as it provides a clearer and more accessible text for new readers. It also handles the shadow of Montaillou well, by ignoring most of the characters who so charmed Le Roy Ladurie in favour of a few more pertinent witnesses from the Fournier register who provide key details about Catharism (as opposed to sex and society) in the early fourteenth century. Also worthy of note are the helpful tables, maps and 'Further Reading' sections that bring the book to its conclusion. The newest entrant to the Cathar arena is a most welcome combatant.
Notes
General collection of sources: Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 2nd edition (Columbia University Press, 1993). Waldensians: Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c. 1170-c. 1570 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Euan L. Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Blackwell, 2000), Peter Biller, The Waldenses, 1170-1530 (Variorum, 2001). Inquisition: James B. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline and Resistance in Languedoc (Cornell University Press, 1997), Alan Friedlander, The Hammer of the Inquisitors: Brother Bernard Délicieux and the Struggle against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century France (Brill, 2000), John H. Arnold, Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Cathars: René Weiss, The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars, 1290-1329 (Viking, 2000), Stephen O'Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (Walker & Co., 2000), Michael Costen, The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade (Manchester University Press, 1997), Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford University Press, 1998), Mark Pegg, The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246 (Princeton University Press, 2001). Albigensian Crusade: Janet Shirley, trans., The Song of the Cathar Wars (Ashgate, 1996), W. A. Sibly and M. D. Sibly, trans., Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay: The History of the Albigensian Crusade (Boydell and Brewer, 1998). Eastern sources: Janet and Bernard Hamilton, ed. and trans., Christian Dualist Heresies in the Byzantine World c. 650-c.1450 (Manchester University Press, 1998).Back to (1)
I am grateful to John Arnold for his thoughtful and empathetic review of my book which I am pleased to accept.
October 2001