Hérésie et inquisition dans le midi de la France (review)

The series in which this book appears, Les Médiévistes français, features key but revised articles by French historians who have proven themselves leaders in their fields, which Jean-Louis Biget certainly has. The volumes are all the more coherent for their analytical introductory chapters, thematic bibliographies, and full indices.

Biget’s focus is specifically on medieval dualist heresy—the belief in two gods. The volume contains related articles originally published between 1985 and 2003. Its central theme is a call for the historicizing of approaches to heresy. That is to say, he reads his sources in a sociological and period-specific sense. As such, even his earlier articles, which advanced his central theses, relate directly to current historiographical discussions and thus are still relevant.

Biget locates the origins of medieval dualism within the society in which it expressed itself, as an indigenous phenomenon. In chapter 1 he concludes that it originated in a generalized anticlericalism in the Midi, itself the result of dashed expectations arising from the reforms of the period c.1050 to 1120. Specifically, it spoke to the knightly elites dominating castra (fortified villages) and new mercantile elites in towns, offering involvement in a faith whose leaders neither demanded tithes nor condemned usury. As such, it was not connected to dualist movements in the Byzantine world. Indeed, he takes an either/or approach to this thorny issue in chapter 2. In both chapters 2 and 3 he takes an anthropological position on the nature of heresy in a more abstracted sense, establishing its essential relationship to orthodoxy as two elements inseparable from each other. Indeed, to him heresy was an “instrument de l’unité de l’Église” (p. 113).

Biget also challenges both medieval and modern approaches to the naming of dualist heresy, showing in chapter 4 that the designation Albigensian had political origins. Throughout his career he also rejected the term Cathar, used by medieval clergy from the 1140s and preferred by historians. Instead, he insists on the term bon homines (good men), which is how deponents appearing in front of inquisitors referred to dualist heretics.

In chapter 5 Biget maintains that the medieval Inquisition was not the only cause of the disappearance of dualism in the Midi. In this sense he disagrees with Inquisition scholars such as Henry Charles Lea. He demonstrates that the mendicant orders also undermined the foundations of dissidence through their pastoral work, in particular in towns, as discussed in chapter 6. He is in general agreement with most historians concerning the integrated nature of the Inquisition within medieval states.

There are a handful of issues that might have been resolved in a more satisfying way, given the opportunity this series offers the author for revision. Biget’s insistence that the Inquisition marks the only example of a faith being extinguished by force short of genocide (p. 228) is Eurocentric and could perhaps have been lost rather than covered in the introduction (p. 29) and chapter 6. His acceptance of the concept of a single dualist Church (“Église,” for example, on p. 21) could use more reference to new approaches. However, the inclusion of authors such as Régine le Jan, Dominique Iogna-Prat, and Guy Lobrichon make Hérésie et inquisition dans le midi de la France a significant work. This volume is essential reading, even for scholars already familiar with Biget’s work.