To Richard Landes. I think I generally agree with you on Moore's essai
de synthese.
But I don't believe it can be shown that divergent thought was always
"apostolic," intentionally "reformist" in a religious sense or that it was
necessarily precipitated by poverty or by a deteriorating economic or
social position. The Cathars I have dealt with are of every class and
level of wealth, with a heavy concentration of the wealthy. That
indicates to me that the divergent among the rich and powerful are like
such people today: they want to do what they want to do or, to put it in
too generous a framework, they want to be "free" in terms of religion. The
"reformist" propaganda spread so widely since the Gregorian "excesses"
seems to me to be useful for such people as weapons because of their
obvious polemical appeal to all classes in order to bludgeon the clergy.
This does not imply that Toulousan gentlemen and those of the Midi did not
believe in what they said they did. They did, sometimes enough to face
the fire. What that final sacrifice meant, however, is that their lives
and loves were committed at a certain point to a path from which there was
no longer any turning back. Others, like Olivier de Termes, had been able
to avoid that fate without betraying too many past (or perhaps any!)
companions.
Reform and causes aside, why then not take one's hat off to them? Surely,
that's about as good as we're ever likely to get here below! Yours, John
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