Crusade, Heresy and Inquisition in the Lands of the Crown of Aragon (c. 1167-1276) (review)

This is a very useful book, meeting as it does the author's goal of giving attention to the relatively neglected subjects identified in the title. Not neglected individually—crusade, heresy, and inquisition are always in fashion,and the Crown of Aragon can hardly be said to have suffered historiographically in recent decades. But as people who write on the themes in question usually focus on different regions, and people who write on the region in question usually focus on different themes, the book addresses several needs. The author recounts his histories and analyzes his key texts in a readable and occasionally stylish fashion, grounding his work firmly in intelligent readings of the sources, backed by reference to the most recent scholarship. The book's main weakness is that its various parts—strong individually—never really cohere. There is a bigger story here that remains to be told.

After a brief introduction that presents the book's subjects and addresses some of the sources and earlier scholarship, the book unfolds in five chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on political history, particularly the rhythms of the involvement of Catalonia-Aragon in the lands north of the Pyrenees and their dynamic relationship to peninsular affairs before, during, and after the Albigensian Crusade—how, in short,"the restoration of Christian Spain influenced the history of what was to become France" (p. 4). The author argues strongly for the significance of the Battle of Muret in 1212 as a real turning point in the shared history of northeastern Iberia and southern Francia. Indeed, the two chapters serve as an admirably lucid account of that complex history, one that offers equal time to Catalonian, Aragonese, and various Occitanian interests. Chapter 3 turns to religious history. The author analyzes the controversial evidence for the 1167 heretical council of Saint-Félix, with its apparent references to the Crown of Aragon. There follows a series of sub-regional analyses of heresy in the Crown in the thirteenth century, rounded out by a discussion of an antiheretical tract of Lucas, bishop of Túy. Chapter 4 focuses on the career and works (Liber Antiheresis, c. 1191-92; Liber contra Manicheos, c. 1222-23) of Durán of Huesca, an early associate of Valdes of Lyon and then leader of the Poor Catholics. He makes the point that the Waldensians were, in the Crown, both more of a concern and more of a real threat than the dualist heretics who attract all the attention. Chapter 5 turns to the early history of the papal inquisition in the Crown, from the earliest royal antiheretical legislation of the 1190s through the statutes of Tarragona in 1234 and 1242 that introduced the inquisition, to later evidence for the inquisition in practice. The author pays particular attention to the thought and direct influence of St. Ramon de Penyafort.

The political and religious histories told here are obviously intertwined, and clear points of contact appear throughout the book, but they do not ground an extended argument. The author was (and remains) in a position to make more ambitious claims about the impact of heresy on politics and politics on heresy in this region. His take would be important and novel precisely because of the skill with which he integrates historiographically distinct areas. A related merit of the book is the way in which the geographical framework decenters Barcelona: Urgell, Lleida, and Tarragona come across as more significant, a fact that other historians of the region would do well to keep in mind. Readers of this journal,however, are likely to find most valuable the fact that the book adduces unfamiliar evidence for some of the central themes in medieval church history.