A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom by Mark Gregory Pegg is an attempt to address misconceptions regarding the Cathar heretics and modern portrayals of them. Pegg makes a strong case that the Cathars never existed, and that the twenty year long crusade in Southern France was a crusade against Albigensian heretics in a very specific geographic area. He has a very negative view towards past histories of these events, and he criticized the sources used in previous scholarship.

Pegg wrote that the Albigensian Crusade was a central event in the Middle Ages. It was the first time a pope called a crusade against Western Christians by declaring them heretics. Christians fought Christians, those who fought for the Pope were promised salvation and the heretics were killed for their unorthodox beliefs. He links the brutal crusade with the medieval mindset, propagated by the Church, in which heretics should be feared and hunted down because they appear so similar to orthodox Christians as to be indistinguishable but in reality they are a dire threat all of Christendom. Crusaders no longer had to travel to the Holy Land in order to receive absolution for sins; a campaign in France was an easier route to the same objective.

While Pegg states that there was a “moral obligation for mass murder,” the Pope was not telling everyone to go to France and kill heretics. There actually seemed to be some hesitation by the public to join this crusade, as Simon de Montfort had to resort to using mercenary armies. Pegg also tries to link the Albigensian Crusade with Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, and that those who fought fellow Christians were imitating Christ. That connection was a stretch considering that Christ did not advocate violence, especially not against one’s co-religionists. Pegg also stated that, “The Albigensian Crusade ushered genocide into the West by linking divine salvation to mass murder.” He then went on to describe six narrow categories with which to define genocide so that it fits his concept of the Albigensian Crusade.

The chapters where Pegg described the heretics and some of their practices might be difficult for some readers to follow. Those sections seemed overly repetitive and drawn out to ensure the reader got the point. Good men and women were named and their societal and religious practices were explained. Stylistically the rest of the book flowed rather well and the reader will not get slowed down even though there is twenty years of history to read through before the end.

Pegg provides a book which is easy to read and which sheds some new light on the subject of the Albigensian Crusades. He provided sources which support his thesis and does not utilize contradictory evidence. However his strong reaction to past scholarship and inability to remain unbiased in his writing, his emphasis on genocide, and calling the crusade an imitation of Christ partially detracted from the credibility of the book. A good read once I got past the first couple of chapters. ( )

Pegg's stance on the history, even the existence of the Cathars (he contends they never existed) is controversial, at best. He writes vividly, if in sometimes exhaustive detail, about the events of the Albigensian Crusades. However, in his desire to engage the reader he takes liberties, such as inserting dialog, facial expression, gestures into his narrative. The 'docudrama' approach is hardly new, but unlike other histories to employ it (such as Hatcher in this "Black Death: A Personal History") Pegg never owns up to his embellishments, which strikes me as disingenuous.

The biggest problem with this work is his claims regarding the nature and causes of the Albigensian Crusades, namely that they were purely political in nature, the Cathars never existed, and the entire question of Heresy in the Languedoc is a retroactive gloss on a political power play. However, these claims simply don't hold up under the weight of the evidence.

However, possibly his most egregious statement is that "Anti-Semitism (rather, anti-Judaism) in the Middle Ages only occurred after the Albigensian Crusade" (p. 190) While I appreciate the distinction between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, as it is a commonly misunderstood difference, to claim that violence against Jews, as Jews transpired only after this period is ludicrous on its face. The Rhineland Crusade massacres of 1096 stand as only one of many counter-examples to this claim. Pegg never comments on this disparity. ( )

In A Most Holy War, Professor Mark G. Pegg offers an articulate and new approach to the understanding of the Albigensian Crusade which spanned twenty years between 1209 and 1229. Having assumed that this was a war against the Cathars, generations of historians and novelists have misunderstood the true intention and circumstances of this genocidal fervor. Pegg argues that not only was this war not against the Cathars, but that everything about the Cathars is ‘utter fantasy, right down to their name’ (x). Rather, this was a crusade born out of fear and hysteria which originated from the Roman Catholic Church, and more specifically, Innocent III. Pegg’s focus is evident in the slew of primary sources he uses in conjunction with testimonies collected by inquisitors between 1235 and 1245. He uses these sources to extrapolate evidence of the nonexistent Cathars and to argue how this crusade transformed the entire south of France as well as all of Latin Christendom.
Of all of the arguments that Pegg clearly desires to advance in this work, perhaps the most compelling and the most daring is that the Albigensian Crusade ‘reconfigured the relationship of divinity and humanity throughout Christendom—indeed, it redefined Christendom itself’ (5). By integrating the lifelong struggle of Innocent III to create a Christ-like world with the necessity to eliminate heretics, Pegg elucidates how the Albigensian crusade ushered genocide into European culture. For Pegg, this was the turning point. This act of coupling divine salvation and mass murder made carnal annihilation as loving a sacrifice as Christ’s death on the cross. ‘This ethos of redemptive homicide is what separates the crusade massacres from other great killings before the thirteenth century’ (188). In addition, and perhaps more boldly, Pegg seems to attribute the creation of the inquisition, the rise of anti-Semitism, and the Reconquista in Spain to the divinely sanctioned slaughter of the Albigensian Crusade. Although his intentions are commendable, it would have been beneficial to see more development for these interpretations.
Catharism has been traditionally interpreted as a dualist heresy which was highly organized. This sophisticated organization consisted of a hierarchy of bishops and deacons, as well as links to other heretical groups in the Byzantine Empire and the Balkans. Pegg dispels these claims and affirms the belief that the Cathars were not heretical at all, but rather local holy men and women. While the prelates created a high and prodigious interpretation of the Christian life, the local communities of Christians scattered throughout Europe often worshipped in very different ways. As Pegg argues, Innocent III was well aware of this. Launching a crusade against such a group was the means by which he intended to ‘remake Christendom’ in a unified image. On the community level, these people practiced a Christian life that did not mesh well with the attitudes and structures which became prevalent in the post-Gregorian reformed church. Indeed Pegg ascertains that it was the inquisition itself which transformed these holy men and distorted their own image of self into the very thing of which they had been accused. ‘The art of living in the world formerly embodied by the holy good men, an aesthetic precisely shaped by moderation and melioration, was now garish and conceited’ (168). If Pegg is correct in his intrepid analysis, then much of medieval heresy needs to be re-evaluated and revised.
The manner in which Pegg has structured the text is congruent to the overall writing style of the author. The first section of the book is dominated by the ‘Dramatis Personae’ which enumerates key persons who traipse across the landscape of his narrative. Although his unique prose and style may be heralded as one of the book’s major strengths, it is at times one of its flaws. His description of an Englishman who accosted him in a bar in Fanjeaux as a ‘goldfish in white slacks’ (xiv) is an example of his knack for humor. Yet throughout the book, it is this same vivid approach which leads him to exceed poetic license to assert things that cannot be known. For instance, when describing Arnau Amalric, Innocent III’s legate on the crusade, he writes ‘a sacred egoism defined the man; he knew better than Him how His war was to be waged and, as his influence was waning after 1220, he wallowed in sanctimonious insouciance’ (175). In this way, Pegg surrenders to the temptation of demonstrating thoughts and emotions to which he has no access.
In A Most Holy War, Professor Mark G. Pegg offers a new perspective on a pivotal moment in European history. Although his arguments are at times quite adventurous, his claims for the foundational capacity of the Albigensian Crusade as the first divinely sanction slaughter of the Catholic Church are insightful. Pegg’s passion for the crusading phenomena is contagious. His book is a pleasurable read and deserves a distinguished berth within medieval scholarship.

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