My apologies to Claire Taylor, who deserves a less hasty response
than this. I agree with most of what she says, and plead guilty to
carelessness in my last. It is the Toulousain, rather than
Gascony, that I think Cathar ideas probably started to reach in the
'60s, filtering down from the Rhineland and Flanders (see my map in
Origins of European Dissent: without being stubborn about it I stil
find that the least problematic hypothesis). And it was, of course, a
region which had been resistant to ecclesiastical discipline and
authority for some time, and in which unlicensed preaching enjoyed a
warm reception.
I agree with Claire that there is no reason to
think that Gascony was ever a significant centre of Catharism in the
c. xii, so I should have thought more carefully about her question,
why no follow up? Or rather, perhaps, why use Gascony in the
rhetoric? Well, why not? I don't know the literature well enough,
but would it not serve pretty well in the context of a widely
employed topos (cf P the Venerable on P of Bruys) that wild and
mountainous regions were sources of heresy, against who
dissemination it is necessary to be vigilant now, apart from laying
a rationale for whatever you might want to to them later? The real
follow-up to the Council of Tours, I suggest, was the mission to
Toulouse in 1178,but I'm not suggesting that Henry was thinking
that far ahead. The Agenais is the most obvious immediate objective.
This suggests that what Henry wanted from the Council of Tours was a
general bogey rather than a specific threat.
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