The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade

Catherine Léglu is Professor of French and Occitan Literature at the University of Reading. She has published extensively on troubadour poetry and related literary works of the High and Late Middle Ages. She has published two monographs, respectively on satirical poetry (2000) and the theme of multilingualism in Occitan, French and Catalan literature (2010).

This book brings together a rich and diverse range of medieval sources to examine key aspects of the growth of heresy and dissent in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the Church's response to that threat through the subsequent authorisation of the Albigensian Crusade.

Historical Introduction. Section 1: Papal Letters. Introduction. Part 1: Innocent III. Part 2: Honorius III. Part 3: Gregory IX. Section 2: Troubadour Poems. Introduction. Part 1: Political Poems. Part 2: Religion Section. Section 3: Inquisitors. Introduction Part 1: Extracts from Summaries of Crimes and Sentences. Part 2. Extracts from Depositions of Witnesses Interrogated. Part 3: Extracts from Depositions after the Siege and Fall of Monts. Part 4: Extracts from Depositions in the Processus against Peter Garcias. Part 5: Extracts from Depositions Relating to the Circle of Raymond Unaud of Lanta. Section 4: Chronicles and Narratives. Part 1: Extracts from the Song of the Albigensian Crusade by William of Tudela and the Anonymous Continuator. Part 2: Extracts from the Chronicle of Peter of Les-Vaux-de-Cernay Introduction. Part 3: Extracts from the Chronicle of William of Puylaurens Introduction. Part 4: Extracts from the Chronicle of William Pelhisson Introduction. Part 5: Extracts from The Tale of the Heretic. Further Reading.