Crusades Against Cathars, c.1207–1229

During the thirteenth century popes authorised military action against a new target in western Europe. For the first time they called for crusades not against Muslims in the Holy Land or Spain, nor against pagans in the Baltic, but against people in the south of France whom the Church regarded as heretics. Heresy had long been a concern of the Church, but in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries fear centred on one particular group of heretics we call Cathars. From the mid-twelfth century onwards, these heretics were to be found in Flanders, Germany, and Italy and in particular in the south of France. The Cathar heresy, especially in its absolute dualist form, was seen as a significant threat to Catholicism because its theology was so radically opposed to Christianity. In addition to providing a historiographic overview of crusading against the Cathars, this chapter will explore who the Cathars were and what they believed, why popes called for the Albigensian Crusades in the south of France, how the papacy sought to inspire the Christian faithful to take part in these crusades, the ways in which crusades against Cathars were both similar to but also different from crusades to the Holy Land, and how papal crusading policy developed to include crusades against heretics.