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Reviews 241

are attractively printed and well supported by the notes and glossary.
The notes conveniently repeat s o m e major details from the introductions
just as the glossary provides alternative access to the meaning of words
glossed in the notes. A s Knight makes clear, the original manuscript
was a well edited, well selected and well shaped collection and, through
the m e d i u m of this excellent edition, it can still be enjoyed by modern
lovers, academic or not, of the Robin H o o d story.

Graham Tulloch
Department of English
Flinders University

Lambert, Malcolm, The Cathars, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1998; paper

pp. 344; 11 maps, 10 b / w illustrations; R.R.P. AU$S59.85.

Malcolm Lambert's brief 'Introduction' indicates the importance of

rise and fall of the Cathar heresy for Western Europe, noting that it
motivated the reformist Franciscan and Dominican orders; diverted
papal policy toward heresy and influenced the founding of the
Inquisition; and had extensive and lasting influence in at least three
regions: southern France, northern and central Italy, and Bosnia. His
book is the first comprehensive survey of Catharism in English, all
previous studies generally concentrating on one geographical region
or historical period.
Chapter O n e examines the ignorance of leading churchmen of the
eleventh century regarding heresy, and the w a y in which Augustine of
Hippo's writings on Manichaeism and Donatism influenced high
medieval typologies of 'deviant' beliefs. The movements which began
appearing in the early eleventh century were historically quite separate
from Mani and Manichaeism, and most did not survive the end of the
century. The second half of the eleventh century w a s dominated by the
Gregorian reform, which 'awakened in the laity a n e w sense of
responsibility for reform and a higher expectation of moral standards
from their clergy' (p. 13). In the twelfth century heretical preachers
became m o r e aggressive, with the best-known leaders (Arnold of
Brescia, Tanchelm, Peter of Bruys) springing from the clergy. Most of
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these movements were reformist, but not Cathar, and the persistent
confusion by churchmen of the different groups (Waldensians, Patarines
and so on) hampers the certain identification of particular heretical
communities.
Chapter Two, "The First Cathars', narrows Lambert's canvas from
heretical movements in general to the Cathars, beginning with
Hildegard von Bingen's vision of the Cathars in 1163. Her contacts
included Ekbert, brother of her fellow mystic Elizabeth of Schonau,
and a leading opponent of Catharism. He, and Everwin (another monk
of Steinfeld), noted that the heresy sprang forth as a fully-formed
alternative 'church' in the Rhineland. Lambert then considers the
parallels between Bogomilism and Catharism, and notes that while
not much is known about h o w the movement was diffused at this early
stage, the Cathars of the Rhineland were not foreigners, but natives, so
local leadership had emerged.
Chapters Three and Four consider the lineages of Cathar initiation
through the personality of Nicetas of Constantinople, w h o arrived at a
great council at S. Felix de Caraman in Languedoc in 1167 and
persuaded the Western Cathars that the ordo of Bulgaria, which they
had received, was suspect, and that they should accept the ordo ot
Dragovitsa or Drugunthia. The spread of Catharism in Western Europe
had resulted in divisions: by the later twelfth century there were six
Cathar churches in central Italy, and the growth of the movement was
dependent on the patronage of the nobility and the petty nobility.
Lambert provides evidence of the attractions of Catharism, particularly
for aristocratic w o m e n in the Languedoc, and he indicates that the
slowness of the Catholic Church to respond to the Cathars assisted
their growth. However, he is anxious to dispel false beliefs about the
numbers of female perfect, insisting that 'notions of a special appeal of
Catharism to w o m e n must n o w be definitely abandoned' (p. 152). The
different environs of the southern French and Italian Cathar churches
are intriguing, with the Italians being primarily urban and the French
rural.
Chapter Five examines the official Church response under Innocent
III, the Albigensian Crusade and the Fourth Lateran Council, and
Chapter Six profiles the first inquisitors. Chapter Seven, 'The Cathars
of Languedoc', contains the lengthiest exposition of Cathar doctrine
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(from modified to radical dualist positions), with descriptions of the

observant life. The centrality of the perfect is emphasised. The key
rituals of the consolamentum (becoming a perfect), apparellamentum
(monthly collective confession) and melioramentum (prayer to the
perfect, w h o responded with a blessing) are discussed, as is the high
status of the perfect in the community. T h e unique position of
Montsegur, perhaps the only all-Cathar c o m m u n i t y to develop, is
expounded, and the grim conclusions d r a w n after its fall in 1244
directed the remainder of Cathar history: that Cathars could survive
only by stealth and not by open defiance of the Catholic orthodoxy.
Chapter Eight, 'The Battle for Souls in Italy', parallels the previous
chapter and describes the Catholic reaction to Italian Catharism.
Dominicans initially intended to refute Catharism b y scriptural
arguments; Francis of Assisi had urged the lived refutation of heresy
by moral example to his followers. It is fascinating to observe that
despite the denunciations b y popes and occasional inquisitorial
activities, Italian Cathars were still able to m o v e freely and offer
sanctuary to their Languedocian co-religionists in the mid-thirteenth
century (p. 180). Lambert disentangles the w a y s in which the Cathar-
Catholic conflict interacted with the Guelf-Ghibelline dispute, and
discusses Cathar spiritual writings from the dominant Albanensian and
Concorezzan camps.
Chapter Nine returns the reader to Languedoc, and Chapter Ten,
'The Last Missionary', details the revival (1299-1310) of Catharism due
to the preaching of Pierre Autier in the county of Foix. This material is
familiar in parts due to the success of Le R o y Ladurie's Montaillou, and
Lambert's m o r e rigorous approach draws from the material far greater
insights. His analysis of the importance of the Autier family as a base
for Pierre's evangelism, his refutation of Ladurie's claim that there were
'Catholic' households which resisted the Cathars, and his penetrating
insights into the reasons for the recommendation of the endura (fasting
to death after receiving the consolamentum) by these last perfect (Pierre,
Guillaume and Jacques Autier, Prades Tavernier, and Philippe
d'Alayrac) m a k e wonderful reading. There is an intimacy in hearing
the voices of the heretics from Fournier's inquisitorial records which is
compelling. Lambert also resists Wakefield's (1974) conclusion that the
Autier revival had little significance. H e concedes that politically little
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w a s w o n , yet the enthusiastic response to Autier and his perfects

indicate that the doctrine w a s still highly attractive. The last two
chapters deal with the decline of Italian Catharism and the curious
case of the Bosnian Church, which w a s not fully proscribed until 1459.
Lambert wryly observes that 'it w a s an anti-climactic ending to the
heroic story of European Catharism' (p. 312).
The Cathars is a marvellous book and highly recommended. There
are a few problems: there is n o bibliography of secondary sources, so it
is necessary to c o m b the footnotes to source material; the 'Epilogue'
(two pages) does not function effectively as a conclusion to such a dense
work; and the real attractions of Cathar doctrine are insufficiently vivid,
but these are minor concerns.
Carole M . Cusack
School of Studies in Religion
University of Sydney

Lowe, Ben, Imagining Peace: A History of Early English Pacifist Idea

1560, University Park, Pennsylvania, Penn State University Press,
1997; paper; pp. xiv, 362; R.R.P. US$19.95, £17.90.

At its more serious end, the internet can be a remarkable research t

Follow u p references to 'humanism', for example, and you can piece
together a more or less scholarly history of this contested word from
its classical usage u p to the present day. However, the net can also
reflect broad inadequacies in research. Search for 'pacifism' and you
will find very little that is systematic, historically based or coherent.
Pacifism emerges as little more than a belief held by a small group of
Quakers and by Gandhi. Even amongst scholarly books there appears
to be no comprehensive history of pacifism extending from Cicero's
'The worst peace is preferable to the best (or most just) war' to the
present day. There has been s o m e good w o r k on 'war' and/or 'peace'
in medieval English writings, by V. J. Scattergood, John Barnie and R.
F. Yeager, amongst others, but the book under review m a y be the only
broad-based study specifically on pacifism to cover the early English
periods. In fact, for the medieval and Early M o d e r n periods at least,
the propaganda for chivalric glamour and holy wars is still often taken