Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc (review)

Jonson, Multiple Patronage, and Strategic Exchange 161 Parergon 20.2 (2003) Reviews Arnold, John H., Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001; cloth; pp. ix, 313; RRP US$55.00, £38.50; ISBN 0812236181. The last few years have seen no shortage of monographs in English dedicated to Catharism and inquisition in Languedoc. Italy, arguably Catharism’s heartland and a more interesting area for research, remains more poorly served. In entering this crowded marketplace, scholars must carefully negotiate a niche for their work. Arnold does this principally by invoking Foucault’s themes of power and discourse as well as a third idea of ‘heteroglossia’. Of course, those familiar with the terrain will know that Arnold is not the first scholar to invoke Foucault in relation to inquisition in Languedoc. J. B. Given took a Foucauldian (and Marxist) approach to the same subject.Arnold, then, needs to distinguish himself one step further. He does this, so he states, by employing a different conception of ‘power’ (p. 235 n. 30), eschewing a linear/repressive model in favour of one that includes the ‘productive elements of power’ to bring to light how inquisition formed a knowledge of heresy and ‘constructed’ the ‘confessing subject’ (p. 11 & 101). The book is divided into two parts. Part One deals with the ‘creation of the discourse of inquisition’ and the production of the confessing subject. It covers topics such as the eleventh and twelfth century background, the use of penances and the creation and use of texts in the Church’s struggles with heresy. In so doing Arnold stresses that inquisition was something novel and contingent. Part Two is more concerned with ‘belief’, focussing on the depositions produced through inquisition. The issues raised here are treated both at the thematic level and at the individual as six cases are examined in detail. Arnold offers us ‘reading strategies’ for these depositions by examining ‘moments of excess’ rather than trying to elicit any authentic subaltern voice. Arnold’s focus is on the inquisitorial texts – the manuals and depositions – rather than on the individuals dealt with by them. This is not to say that he disregards those individuals – he stresses that the historian has an ethical obligation to them. Rather, he is problematising the endeavour of attempting to elicit the genuine voices of such deponents from the texts, a project embarked upon most famously by E. Le Roy Ladurie in his work on Montaillou. 162 Reviews Parergon 20.2 (2003) Throughout the course of the book novel treatments of various matters such as the Cathar ritual of melioramentum are offered, and fresh insights provided into such debates as the association between the family and Catharism, and the place and interaction of the vernacular, orality and literacy in Catharism and inquisition. Interesting positions are taken on a whole range of contested issues including whether we can talk about ‘the Inquisition’, a ‘Cathar church’, and ‘Catharism’. Curiously, according to Arnold, ‘the Inquisition’ can be used meaningfully (p. 78), but ‘Catharisms’ is preferred to ‘Catharism’ (p. 122), and Catharism as a church is an ‘area of inquisitorial assumption’ (p. 120). One notices a correlation here with the way in which it is stressed deponents must be treated as individuals but inquisitors can legitimately be treated as a group without regard for individual differences. Arnold’s treatment of the ‘confession’ of Béatrice de Lagleize [=Béatrice de Planissoles of Montaillou] in the context of autobiography is particularly insightful and thought-provoking. Less so is that of Arnaud de Verniolles, where we encounter what are increasingly becoming stock cant phrases such as ‘gender is not a natural or inescapable condition – but a construction of language and social practice…[which] take[s] on the appearance of stability through constant and contingent reiteration’ (p. 214). If this is so one wonders why Arnold insists on placing ‘sic’ before citations that do not use gender-inclusive terms – even when he is translating from medieval sources, as though our medieval authors slipped up in failing to conform to rules of inclusive language (e.g. p. 204 next to ‘man’ when translating from the confession of Béatrice). At times...