If there were a book version of a scholastic WrestleMania, this book might be it.

Cathars in Question, the fourth volume in the Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages series, represents a series of essays associated with a 2013 conference on the Cathars.

The traditional story has been that the Cathars were the western Mediterreanean flowering of Bogomil-influenced dualist theology which developed in the twelfth century and flourished in the thirteenth century until violently suppressed by the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade. “Cathar” meant “the pure,” and they were also known as the Albigensians.

The way the editor introduces Cathars in Question would lead a person to believe the entire existence and concept of the “Cathars” is under significant argument and dispute, and the various scholars who wrote essays are the main disputants between the “traditionalists” who affirm all of the above and the “skeptics”. Yet the penultimate essay, written by one of the said “skeptics,” does the best job of laying out the land and the nature of the dispute: the existence of the Cathars as a coherent group with some kind of ecclesiastical infrastructure, a dualist theology, and significant influence in the Languedoc of France and parts of northern Italy by the middle of the thirteenth century is not under question. What is under dispute is whether the evidence is sufficient to say such was true of the “good men” and others written about in the twelfth century, or whether the inquisitors were making more of something than actually existed. In this “skeptical” view, there might be some dissenters, but the issues of dissent were as political as they might be religious, a southern French extension of the spiritual vs. secular power struggles of the High Middle Ages.

As a generally disinterested outsider, it was interesting to consider the various arguments and how they were argued, although I would have definitely appreciated the insights from the penultimate essay far earlier. Admittedly I did set forth something like the traditional story in the Historical Overview of A Study of Denominations, and apparently was a bit too early in dating (no one would put them at the beginning of the twelfth century, apparently), but nothing in that story is terribly different if they come a bit later.

The earliest and last essays seem to come from the main “skeptic” vs. “traditionalist” advocates; essays in-between tend to cover all sorts of other related grounds, many of them quite interesting. The essay considering Bogomil literature and the prevalence of Old Testament pseudepigraphal documents was fascinating: why, indeed, are so many of the Old Testament pseudepigraphal stories preserved in Old Slavonic, and often only in Old Slavonic? Historical discussions about what it meant to be a “good man” or “good woman” were also interesting, and how what had been a kind of term for gentry ended up getting somewhat associated with the heresy, and perhaps not for the best of reasons. It was ironic to learn how “Cathars” themselves seemed to describe each other as “good Christians,” and not as “Cathars” or as “good men/women.”

When it was all said and done, it seemed to me the “skeptics” relied more on bombastic rhetoric and substance, and their concerns overstated. “Traditionalists” may not be accurate on everything but had far more documentation and substance to underlie their claims. While perhaps what is later called “Catharism” may not be as fully developed in Languedoc, etc., in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, since all agree there is such a group with such an organization by the second half of the thirteenth century, a little bit of Occam’s razor would suggest it is not treasonous to the primary sources to infer dualist theology, Bogomil influence, and some level of ecclesiastical structure before 1250. Sure, inquisitors have their purposes and ideologies when they report on what they are up against; but assuming they have overstated their case entirely seems unwarranted. I ultimately found myself in agreement with the final essayist and his lament: it seems that research in the Waldensians was far better managed with critical insights into primary sources in ways which the “skeptics” vs. “traditionalists” polemic and argumentation has made nearly impossible for Catharism.

But, yes, in the pages of this book is a full on scholastic wrestling match. Fun times.

I read the e-edition from Net Gallery.

A collection of scholarly essays from the 2013 conference "Catharism: Balkan Heresy or Construct of a Persecuting Society". A scholarly tome for the student of religious heresies and the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.