Crusaders and Heretics, 12th-14th Centuries by Malcolm Barber (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 535 Crusaders and Heretics, 12th-14th Centuries. By Malcolm Barber. [Variorum Collected Studies Series, 498.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Company. 1995. Pp. x, 289. $77.50.) These essays were written over a period of more than twenty years, and they have stood the test of time well, for although the author has made provision for correcting and updating them, this has seldom proved necessary. They are arranged chronologically, which enables the reader to appreciate the way in which Malcolm Barber's scholarly interests have evolved. The first two essays are concerned with the foundation and suppression ofthe Knights Templar, but his interests soon widened to include other areas of Capetian intolerance. His "Women and Catharism," published in 1977, a careful piece of investigation based on the Inquisition records, is the earliest survey of a topic which has subsequently become very popular. His Cathar interests are further developed in a paper on the Occitan nobility which shows,with reference to three case histories , precisely how noble patronage of Cathars operated. He also wrote about the pastoureaux uprising of 1320, which resulted in a cruel persecution of lepers and Jews by PhilipV; and about the Shepherds' Crusade to free St. Louis in 1251, considering why that movement, which met with the approval of Queen Blanche, regent of France, was treated as a conspiracy by most French prelates and noblemen. But the Templars, as is to be expected from the author of The New Knighthood , occupy pride of place in this collection. There is an illuminating essay on why Philip IV did not disregard the Papacy when he brought the Templars to trial; and another which shows how ill-directed much contemporary criticism was which alleged that the Templars neglected their commitments in the East in order to profit from their extensive western endowments, by demonstrating how the Order dedicated its resources primarily to the needs of the Holy Land. But the most impressive essay is the address to the Royal Historical Society in which the Order is placed in its social context: welcomed at its foundation because it exemplified the ideals of knighthood which the Church had been vainly seeking to promote for almost 200 years, it was later criticized because, as it became more successful, it failed to observe those ideals. In "The Templars and the Turin Shroud" Barber brings exact scholarship to bear on a topic which seldom attracts it. Writing on a quite different theme, he argues that Frankish Greece after 1204 had no resonance in the minds of most western people, apart from some groups with special interests there, and suggests that this may explain why the Latin Empire was so ephemeral. The volume ends with an essay on the comparatively neglected Military Order of St. Lazarus. What struck me most strongly when reading these essays was the balanced way in which Barber approaches the past. He clearly feels sympathy for the poor and the persecuted, but this does not inhibit him from considering fairly the problems of their secular and ecclesiastical rulers. Equally, while giving due weight to economic trends and broad social developments, he never loses sight 536 BOOK REVIEWS of the importance of individual men and women and their often imperfect responses to the situations in which they found themselves. It is a balanced, humane and scholarly view of the past such as we might expect from the author of The Two Cities. Bernard Hamilton University ofNottingham Military Orders and Crusades. By Alan Forey. [Variorum Collected Studies Series , CS432.] Brookfleld,Vermont:Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Company. 1994. Pp. via, 318. $91.95 approx.) Few scholars have contributed as much to our knowledge of the military religious orders in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries as has Dr. Alan Forey. The present volume contains thirteen of his papers published between 1971 and 1991 , most of them in the 1980's. The first eight, devoted to the military orders as a whole, concern a wide range of important subjects which have often received only cursory attention in the historical literature: their emergence in the twelfth century,recruitment,novitiate and instruction oftheir membership, associated female orders, their role in the Spanish reconquest, in the ransoming of captives...