Le "catharisme" en questions ed. by Jean-Louis Biget et al. (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Le "catharisme" en questions ed. by Jean-Louis Biget et al. Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel Le "catharisme" en questions. Edited by Jean-Louis Biget, Sylvie Caucanas, Michelle Fournié, and Daniel le Blévec. (Fanjeaux: Centre d'études historiques de Fanjeaux, 2020. €30,00. ISBN: 97829568972.) Since the publication of the first Cahier de Fanjeaux back in 1966, this series, a treasure trove for scholars of medieval culture and religion, has devoted four volumes—namely CF3 (1968), CF14 (1979), CF20 (1985), and CF55 (2020)—to what has come to be known as the "Cathar debate." Significantly enough, the only title where we can find the term "catharisme" surrounded with scare quotes is that of the most recent installment, as if, in keeping up with our times, the volume tried to distance itself from an uncomfortable concept. One must appreciate the refreshing candor of such an open display of skepticism, especially in a research area that has turned into something of a scholarly minefield to be navigated with the utmost care. This skeptical perspective gains momentum in the preface to the volume, where Michelle Fournié and Daniel le Blévec present Le "catharisme" en questions as a Festschrift to honor the work of Jean-Louis Biget, a French scholar widely renowned for his holistic approach to the study of heresy, as well as for pioneering the questioning of the 'Cathar paradigm.' In the Introduction (pp. 13–34), Biget himself criticizes what he considers to be the shortsightedness of historians who resist the revision of traditional views. He follows this up with a barrage of seemingly open questions whose rather rhetorical nature leaves no doubt as to his position in the debate. Arguing that the Albigensian Crusade marked a turning point for the perception of the religious groups known in French as the bons hommes and bones dames, Biget underscores how polemicists and clerics alike could only understand their religious expressions by shaping them to conform to the model of an alternative Church. His praise of the colloquia of Fanjeaux, the academic events that produce the Cahiers, is far from formulaic, and instead compares them favorably to previous [End Page 397] gatherings; more specifically, the 2013 conference that resulted in Cathars in Question,1 a volume that casts its long shadow over the one discussed here. Le "catharisme" en questions is made of four sections that present the Albigensian Crusade as a watershed moment. The first one, looking into the twelfth-century origins of this religious movement, gathers five chapters that run the gamut from outright rejection to willing embrace of long-standing views on the spread, hierarchical structure and, in sum, the existence of Catharism. Thus, Alessia Trivellone (pp. 37–63) argues that conclusions about Italian Cathars have been drawn from theoretical treatises with little or inconsistent use of factual data and calls for a deeper philological study of these; Edina Bozoky (pp. 65–80) does not question the sources of Italian treatises but takes these at face value. The reader almost wishes these two chapters were arranged in reverse order, as Bozoky, in her discussion of the circulation of the well-known Interrogatio Iohannis, makes the more traditional argument that Trivellone's piece questions. In keeping with the latter, Jean-Louis Biget, in his second contribution to the volume (pp. 81–110), torpedoes the cornerstone of pan-Catharism, that is, the infamous document known as the Charter of Niquinta, a 1167 record of a council that allegedly brought together the whole leadership of the alternative Cathar Church, including a Cathar pope and bishops, for the official establishment of Cathar dioceses. While few scholars still defend its authenticity, many argue for it being a thirteenth-century forgery. In contrast, Biget vindicates the erudition of Pierre de Caseneuve and Guillaume Besse, the seventeenth-century French scholars who respectively discovered and edited the documents, and their intellectual milieu, arguing that they produced the successful forgery themselves and rooting their motivations in their own political context and personal aspirations. In a more ecclesiological vein, Dominique Iogna-Prat (pp. 111–25) reflects on the "othering" of heresy as a means by which the Church, within the context of the Gregorian reforms, emphasized its unity...