Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but shallow
Review: Stephen O'Shea has written a fast-paced and absorbing, though somewhat superficial, book on the crusades against the Cathars and the start of the Inquisition. Despite the title, the book is not really about the heresy. Instead, it is about the wars of conquest that were inspired in the name of stamping out heresy. O'Shea quite reasonably portrays the crusade as a land-grab by Northern barons and in particular the King of France. He sees the whole sorry business as being also an assertion of the temporal as well as spiritual hegemony of the papacy.As such a history, the book is well done, but don't look here for any detailed exposition of the origins of Catharism and its doctrinal development, analysis of where Cathar beliefs differed from orthodoxy or how these beliefs were related to standard heresies going back to the early Church. More puzzling is a lack of discussion in the book about why the crusade and apparently the geographical range of Catharism were limited to Languedoc. The conditions that O'Shea believes fostered the growth of Catharism surely were as prominent in Aquitaine as in Languedoc in the 12th century. Also missing is much discussion of why the English-Aquitaine crown essentially stood idle while areas (especially Toulouse) claimed as theirs fell into the hands of their principal rival. O'Shea has written a very one-sided book. It starts with a description of the looming threat of the Cathedral of Albi, with its tiny entrance and castle-like buttresses, but O'Shea fails completely to mention the astonishing interior, with a totally different atmosphere and a concrete, positive portrayal of what the Church could offer to those within it. This aspect of the Cathedral is one of the wonders of medieval architecture, and its neglect here is symptomatic of the neglect of any arguments that might be made in favor of traditional religion. (There must be some - it did after all inspire in the 13th century some very good minds and some very good people as well as some appallingly venal ones.) I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it as light reading. It raises more questions than it answers, even about things it seems to answer. But with a light style and engaging presentation, there is much to be said in favor of one-sided and unbalanced, but straightforward, historical accounts-and O'Shea has produced a fine example.
Rating: 
Summary: Clever title!!!!
Review: the PERFECT Heresy - yes, a play on words about the Cathar Perfecti - the initiated into the higher teachings of Cathar belief and spirituality. In a short concise easy to comprehend manner, this writer delivers the background of the Albigensian Crusade, the tragedies and culminates in the last stand at Montsegur. So driven was I by this writing that I just returned from a pilgrimmage to the very locations mentioned in the book. He ends the book by delineating the myths long associated with the Cathar story - which unfortunately were created at the early 20th century by Occult and Esoteric wannabees - seeking the location of Cathar treasure - and aides the reader in undestanding the truth of these remarkable men and women who would rather die happily for their faith in the fires of the Inquisition - that renounce their beliefs. Well done!
Rating:
Summary: Not quite
Review: This is a pleasant book that presents the Albigensian Crusade in the Languedoc for those who do not know much about the period. But there are some problems with accuracy On Cathar doctrines and practices he makes a few small errors, for example what a consolamentum was. He glosses over Cathar attitudes to women, with the intent one assumes of a whitewash. He gets at least one date wrong -- quite a spectacular one, the 'global arrest' of Montaillou in 1308 he places in 1309. These are just the errors I recall; there may be more. The last chapter, on the mythologization of the Cathers, is a treat.
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