All this discussion about Cathars has brought me shamefaced from the shadows.
I am completing a thesis at the University of York on women's involvement
in Catharism in the Midi (almost there, but not quite yet!). My concern
is with 2 areas (1) the historiographical and popular presentation of
Cathar women ( and more generally Catharism), namely the diverse sense
that women achieved a degree of equality within the heresy unrivalled in
the orthodox sphere and the stringent critique of this view. My take on
this is that such a background has established a prism through which
women's involvemtn in Catharism is often forced. (2) The main body of my
thesis is concerned with the networks in which women of varying shades of
allegiance encountered Catharism in the Midi, in an attempt to move
slightly away from the confines of those historiographical prisms.
I hope that makes some sense as a distillation of my interests!
As a visitor to the "Cathar region", I too was struck by the popular
concern to reinforce the links with the heretics - at Limoux, for
example, there is a kind of single-screen cinema called Catharama which
graphically portrays the events of the Albigensian Crusade and the fall
of Montsegur.As i think John Arnold has already pointed out, part of the
problem of such a popular image of Catharism in the region is the
chronological concentration on a very early and "succesful" period in
Cathar history, that of the early 13th century, rather than the following
period into the early 14th century, in which Cathar pockets survived or
re-emerged.
More generally, the period of a more public Catharism in the Midi has been
interpreted within the context of the incorporation of the region into
Capetian France and the concern to reclaim a separate history of the Midi
in 20th century Occitan cultural and political movements. (The scholarly
centre of the Centre d'Etudes Cathares mentioned by John was a descendant
of the group founded by Deodat Roché and others to live essentially as
modern Cathars.) The focus has been on a destruction of an Occitan
culture, not eroded but destroyed at a stroke by the Albigensian Crusade.
Such a focus encourages a rather polarised view of pre-crusade Occitan
society, based around the twin pillars of heresy and courtly society,
compared to the northern French Catholics. Here part of the link is seen
to be in terms of the treatment of women - seen as having greater roles
and power within heresy and the court than their comprable roles in the
world of the north..
I don't agree with this view, but it has created a "prism" through which
Catharism is presented in some historical work but also in popular
fiction - such as Guy Gavriel Kay's A Song For Arbonne and Robert Shea's
All Things Are Lights. (I read these for scholarly purposes you understand!!)
Anyway, enough of a ramble, I think I've introduced myself now, so I
shall lurk no more ;-)
Felicity Jones
Institute of Historical Research
University of London
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