The War On Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe

Review This is a jaw-dropping book. Thrilling, unsettling, revelatory. -- Tom HollandMoore makes a very powerful case ... if only half of his revolutionary new claims are accepted, every encyclopedia entry on the Cathars will have to be completely rewritten ― Daily TelegraphBrilliantly told, profoundly thought-provoking. ― History TodayMoore's latest book is as good, and as provocative, as anything he has produced. The book is one of the finest accounts of medieval heresy that you are likely to encounter ... serves to enhance Moore's status as one of the finest historians of medieval heresy. ― BBC History MagazineElegant and intelligent. ― Literary ReviewWide-ranging, beautifully written, and compellingly argued, this is a book that overturns the traditional picture. ― Times Literary SupplementMoore's approach to Catharism is intriguing and provocative. [This is] an accessible and up-to-date history of the rise of heresy persecution in the medieval West. The book will inspire ample criticism and defenses among scholars. Amateur historians will find a pleasing expository style burnished with colorful details. ― AmericaA bold new vision. ― The HistorianAn intellectual thriller ... An absolute page-turner ... Startling, unsettling and revelatory, The War on Heresy is Homeland in cowls. -- Tom Holland ― Toronto Globe and MailThe The War on Heresy is an important and well-argued book that will force scholars to re-examine the history of medieval heresy and provides the methodological blueprint for the study of heresy in the Middle Ages. ― The Medieval ReviewA very impressive study, made all the more accessible by the author's admirably lucid writing style ― Church HistoryThe book under review here is a brilliant and sobering meditation on this theme ... The War on Heresy is a triumph. ― StandpointBeautifully written, measured, searching, and sublimely free from jargon. We are presented with eye-witness accounts that are not knocked into pre-conceived patterns. The effect is to draw the reader into not just the story but into how the story became a story in the first place. Inevitably this affords a double-take perspective, in which history and stories excitingly grow together and the reader becomes a participant. -- René Weis ― Professor of English, University College London, and author of The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars, 1290-1329The War on Heresy is social and religious history at its best, the fruit of many decades of intense engagement with one of the most complex and difficult problems of medieval history. With admirable clarity, R. I. Moore tells the deeply troubling story of how heretics became a persecuted minority, not so much because of their beliefs, but because of the anxieties, needs, and ambitions of their persecutors. This is a masterfully researched and deeply thought book that tells its exciting and still relevant story with verve and with sympathy for the victims of the war on heresy. -- Anders Winroth ― Professor of History, Yale University, and author of The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern EuropeFierce competition for power produces fierce discursive competition. In this grand and sane book, armed with many lights (intelligence, narrative skill, learning) R. I. Moore re-enters the territory of Europe's ferocious medieval competition for theological orthodoxy; wherever he ventures, he illumines what had been dark. -- James Simpson ― Professor of English, Harvard University, and author of Idolatry and Iconoclasm Product Description The war on heresy obsessed medieval Europe in the centuries after the first millennium. R. I. Moore's vivid narrative focuses on the motives and anxieties of those who declared and conducted the war: what were the beliefs and practices they saw as heretical? How might such beliefs have arisen? And why were they such a threat?In western Europe at AD 1000 heresy had barely been heard of. Yet within