Clergy and crusade: The church in southern France and the Albigensian Crusade

At the turn of the 13th century the regional church in southern France was caught between the powerful forces of heresy, inquisition, and papal power. At this time southern France marked the locus of influential heretical movements. Parisian reformers and Cistercians blamed local church officials for the presence of this heresy, and finally responded with the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) in the attempt to rid the region of heresy. My dissertation uses this crusade as a window into the contested nature of the church at this time. It is common to think of a universal institutional church in Europe by the 13th century, and thus to see the church in southern France as inherently poor and to blame for the presence of heresy. My research offers an important revision of this picture. Drawing from and interweaving sermons, charters, troubadour poetry, letters, inquisitional records, and chronicles, I argue that the reality of the 12th-century church was more complex, and the crusade was the result of competing notions of the church. My work reveals this contested nature, and demonstrates that while 12th-century reform created a vision for a universal church within the church's hierarchy, it had not yet completely influenced all of Europe, and the Albigensian Crusade was the attempt to turn theory into fact. This work specifically examines the institutional aspects of the regional church (the episcopate), as well as the non-institutional aspects, or popular religion. In the latter I offer a paradigm shift to better understand popular religion in the medieval era. This dissertation brings the regional church to the forefront in the story of religious life in the Middle Ages, and will change the way historians study the church, reform, and heresy at the turn of the 13th century.