The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246

by Mark Gregory Pegg

On two hundred and one days between May 1, 1245, and August 1, 1246, more than five thousand people from the Lauragais were questioned in Toulouse about the heresy of the good men and the good women (more commonly known as Catharism). Nobles and diviners, butchers and monks, concubines and physicians, blacksmiths and pregnant girls--in short, all men over fourteen and women over twelve--were summoned by Dominican inquisitors Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre. In the cloister of the Saint-Sernin abbey, before scribes and witnesses, they confessed whether they, or anyone else, had ever seen, heard, helped, or sought salvation through the heretics. This inquisition into heretical depravity was the single largest investigation, in the shortest time, in the entire European Middle Ages.


Mark Gregory Pegg examines the sole surviving manuscript of this great inquisition with unprecedented care--often in unexpected ways--to build a richly textured understanding of social life in southern France in the early thirteenth century. He explores what the interrogations reveal about the individual and communal lives of those interrogated and how the interrogations themselves shaped villagers' perceptions of those lives. The Corruption of Angels , similar in breadth and scope to Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou , is a major contribution to the field. It shows how heretical and orthodox beliefs flourished side by side and, more broadly, what life was like in one particular time and place. Pegg's passionate and beautifully written evocation of a medieval world will fascinate a diverse readership within and beyond the academy.

Genres: History, Religion, Medieval History, Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Useless Mathom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vacillating between a 3 and a 4 for this one.

Though I'm wary of criticising a book for what I would have liked for it to say, rather than what it does, I have to admit that I found myself quite disappointed with how quickly some of the more controversial points of Pegg's view of the Cathar Question are put to bed, especially because I arrived to the book expecting to see the orthodox view of such questions (e.g. the Charter of Nikitas and the St. Félix rendezvous) pushed back against more fervently. Pegg is, no doubt, quite definitively dismissive of them, and directs us to some other reading, though he doesn't delve into the weeds of it all himself. Might be a Hitchens' razor situation because he considers the supposed gnostic roots of the Good Men and Women of Languedoc simply an intellectual fallacy (fair enough, I suppose), but in certain other cases his assertions cause a cascade of other questions on the matter that simply beg to be addressed.

For example, how is it possible that this simply misconstrued, fundamentally anodyne local tradition ends up a casus belli for a bloody, decades-long Crusade? Other skeptic sources lead me to believe that it has to do with the coinciding tightening reforms in the Papacy, but I can't believe this gaping hole in the narrative was simply sidestepped in this book.

Another one: several accounts of the interrogations digested and presented by Pegg seem to indicate more than one of the Good Men or their adorers did have beliefs on cosmogony and nature of the corporeal world (e.g. reproduction, diet) that plainly align with the traditionally presented views of the "Cathars", the "crezens" even appear to consciously see themselves as being apart from the "normal" Catholics, even if those beliefs don't in reality derive from gnosticism or Bogomilism and the heretics don't constitute a hierarchical Church, yet this thread is simply left dangling. This confuses me in the light of the author's steadfast attitude that Catharism never existed, when to my mind the evidence presented in this book seems to say it *did* exist, but was in many ways different than what the traditional narrative holds it to be. This, peeks at his other work lead me to believe, Pegg would call "goalpost moving", no doubt the situation in the Academy being quite a bit more frustrating and heated for someone with his position.

This criticism now stated, "The Corruption of Angels" remains an interesting, doubtlessly well researched book somewhere in between Big Ideas™ and Ginzburgesque microhistory. It did provide some tremendous insight, certainly of the "Inquisition" after the war, the Lauragais village life, as well as much needed corrections regarding the actual terminology, and one can't say Pegg doesn't know how to inhabit his subjects. But, to borrow one of his nonchalantly curt phrases regarding a document, "I remain unconvinced".

[Anatolikon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through the use of inquisitorial records, Pegg demonstrates the destruction of local religiosity in Languedoc following the “Languedocian” crusade. A major contribution of this book is that Pegg demolishes the idea of a Cathar church, based on the lack of a systematic set of beliefs and shortage of evidence for anyone actually knowing much about the heretics. Pegg also targets the popular conception of the inquisition as stemming from the early modern period, and argues that there was no torture here and that it was mostly being carried out by a few Dominicans. No documents from the punishments assigned survive, however. Pegg lets the material speak for itself and numerous interesting things come forth: plenty of daily life is visible and competing conceptions of reality between the inquisitors and the locals can be seen.

[Celeste · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pegg examines a manuscript, known as "manuscript 609", which is a partial copy of the transcripts from the Inquisition in Toulouse. He argues that the inquisitors defined people's identities based on actions rather than beliefs, and that thus identity was seen as relational; that through their questions they redefined how people saw themselves; and that to talk of any international heretical "Cathar" church in the thirteenth century is ridiculous. However, while he pays lip service to the problematics of writing history, he doesn't fully address them. For instance, he acknowledges that the scribes transcribing the answers people gave in the vernacular translated them into Latin, transforming their statements into stock phrases in the process. But then he goes on to draw conclusions from the similarity in different people's responses to the same questions. How can you know this similarity exists in anything other than the scribes translation?

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well researched and detailed exposition of the inquisition of residents in the Lauragais in Southern France in1245 and 1246.
For the student and researcher rather than the general reader the book provides a window onto the world of ordinary people at a time of religious dissent and intolerance.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

It may not be the best study of heresy but it is a great read with great stories.

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://jenninsf.wordpress.com/2006/0...

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Amazon review -

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3D6Z2KQ...