Download PDF | Laurence W. Marvin - The Occitan War_ A Military and Political History of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209-1218-Cambridge University Press (2008).
356 Pages
In 1209 Simon of Montfort led a war against the Cathars of Languedoc after Pope Innocent III preached a crusade condemning them as heretics. The suppression of heresy became a pretext for a vicious war that remains largely unstudied as a military conflict. Laurence Marvin here examines the Albigensian Crusade as military and political history rather than religious history, and traces these dimensions of the conflict through to Montfort’s death in 1218. He shows how Montfort experienced military success in spite of a hostile populace, impossible military targets, armies that dissolved every forty days, and a pope who often failed to support the crusade morally or financially. He also discusses the supposed brutality of the war, why the inhabitants were for so long unsuccessful at defending themselves against it, and its impact on Occitania. This original account will appeal to scholars of medieval France, the Crusades, and medieval military history.
LAURENCE W. MARVIN is Associate Professor of History at the Evans School of Humanities, Berry College, Georgia.
Preface and acknowledgments
‘‘But hasn’t that been done before?’’ was the question put to me by a colleague as we sat at dinner after the last session for the day at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a few years ago. Like her, those familiar with the Albigensian Crusade will wonder how this book adds to what anglophone scholars such as Walter M. Wakefield, Joseph Strayer, Jonathan Sumption and Michael Costen, and multi-volume accounts in French like Michel Roquebert’s, have said in the last thirty-five years.
That does not even count the contributions of popular authors like Zoe´ Oldenbourg, Stephen O’Shea, other novelists and rapidly growing Internet sites on the Cathars and the Crusade. The Crusade is certainly not unexplored territory, which is what my dinner companion really meant.
Her question was a valid one, and she listened patiently as I explained the necessity of one more book on the Albigensian Crusade. The crusades to the Middle East have always had their long-view adherents, like Hans Eberhard Meyer and Jonathan Riley-Smith. They have also been the subject of multivolume projects like those edited by Kenneth Setton.
These long looks remain essential to understanding how the crusading concept began and evolved, the outline of political and military events, the individuals involved, and to tracing the development of East–West relationships over two hundred years.
At the same time, the perennial interest both scholars and the general public have shown in the crusades has allowed historians to take the shortterm approach to individual crusades such as the First, recently the Second, the Fourth, and the Fifth (the Third Crusade still eludes its monographer), events which by themselves took place over only a few years. Discussing these individual crusades in depth allows us to understand one distinct crusade as it unfolded over a couple of years without compressing the information and losing nuance in order to get through hundreds of years of history.
The Albigensian Crusade has not received the same treatment. Almost always it has been written about in the long view. The works of Wakefield, Strayer, Sumption, Costen, and Roquebert discuss the crusade from the mid-twelfth century, long before it began, to at least 1271, when the Count of Toulouse’s lands escheated to the French crown. While this is historically sound, all of these accounts miss two important things. First: their emphasis is so broad that the military campaigns appear as a sideshow to two main events: the birth, development, and description of Catharism, and the Inquisition which eventually destroyed it.
Recent scholarly accounts of the Albigensian Crusade like those of Malcolm Barber and Michael Costen relegate the military aspects to little more than a chapter. The historians mentioned thus far wrote the history they thought needed to be told. Their works remain pivotal to understanding the time, era, and historiography of the Albigensian Crusade, and my debt to all of them remains considerable. Still, make no mistake: particularly between 1209 and 1218, the Albigensian Crusade was a war, and some believe a very nasty one even by medieval standards. It does not take much of an imagination to see that for the people who participated or lived through it, the war took center stage over every other consideration. Yet we tend to de-emphasize it in accounts of the crusade. The second limitation of scholarship on this subject is of this long view and broad brush.
The Occitan War was a complex series of military campaigns and not as easy to understand as some would have us believe. It is a story that deserves to be told without the obligation to tell it as part of a severalhundred-year period and in conjunction with innumerable other factors. The years 1209–1218 were by far the most militarily active, and the period when the political and military situation was most fluid. It is also for these years that the sources for the war are at their best. In other words, just as individual crusades to Outremer have their ‘‘numbers’’ or phases, so does the Albigensian Crusade.
The beginning of active military operations, in 1209, to Simon of Montfort’s death in 1218 definitely constitute a distinct phase. Although warfare continued for some years after the sustained entrance of the French crown into the mix, the war changed from what it had been since 1209 into a more purely secular political struggle. This book then, is the history of a nine-year span, when war and all its attendant misery engulfed a region and captivated historians and novelists forever after. The Cathar heresy, the darling of those who study ‘‘the other,’’ plays a very small role in this account, just as it did once the broadswords were withdrawn from their sheaths and the first crossbow bolt shot before the walls of Be´ziers in 1209.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the various people and institutions who made both direct and indirect contributions to this work. A Berry College international travel grant allowed me to travel to southern France and walk most of the places described in this book, while later a small faculty development grant helped me complete it. Jonathan Harwell, Judy Thompson, Xiaojing Zu, and Casey Roberson, the interlibrary loan librarians at Berry College, procured things I never thought possible to stick in the mail. I thank Cambridge University Press for agreeing to take on the project, especially Michael Watson and Simon Whitmore, as well as the anonymous readers who read the manuscript for the press. One reader in particular was generous with their criticisms and saved me from some embarrassing errors. Louis Haas, Thomas F. Madden, the late Donald E. Queller, Kristine T. Utterback, and Roger L. Williams have served as mentors, friends, and inspiration for many years. John A. Lynn and Kelly De Vries first suggested a military history of the Albigensian Crusade might make a good book. I never forgot their suggestion and thank them for their support in a tough spot. Michael Frassetto graciously agreed to read the entire manuscript late in the writing and offered both encouragement and criticism on this and earlier projects.
Diane Land of Berry College and Rosemary Williams of Cambridge University Press provided invaluable copy editing assistance. C. Derek Croxton critiqued some of the early chapters. Heather Henderson and Alex Fordney made many copies and ordered dozens of books for me. My friends and colleagues in the Berry College department of history, Jonathan M. Atkins, Christy J. Snider, and the late Amy J. Johnson supplied constant support, read the early chapters and forced me to address my ideas to a wider audience. Amy’s editorial expertise was particularly helpful, and I still mourn her loss to Berry and the profession. I also thank the First Floor Evans lunch group, especially Peter Lawler, Michael Papazian, and Kirsten Rafferty for providing many years of socializing, laughter, and gossip.
Joseph Gaygi, Louis A. Le Blanc, David J. Snyder, Daniel A. Swan, and Sean M. Tyson earn my gratitude not only for their long friendship with me but also for never taking me too seriously. I offer my greatest thanks for the support and example of my family. I dedicated this book to two people though I acknowledge three here. My father showed me the nobility of hard work no matter what the task. My son showed me the virtue of pursuing a noble goal even in the face of adversity. Not only did my wife Alicia draw the maps for this book but more than twenty years ago she took a leap of faith to follow me from a small town in Wyoming to the Ivory Tower. I thank her for more than two decades of marriage and the love and confidence she has given me. ROME, GEORGIA August 2007
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