Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- List of maps and plans
- Translation of names and places; calculation of distances
- Preface and acknowledgments
- Maps and plans
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The campaign of 1209
- 3 Simon of Montfort and the campaign of 1210
- 4 The campaigns of 1211
- 5 Drawing the noose: the campaign year of 1212
- 6 The athlete of Christ triumphs: late 1212 through Muret 1213
- 7 From Muret to Casseneuil: September 1213 to December 1214
- 8 The two councils and Prince Louis's crusade, January–December 1215
- 9 The southern counter-attack begins: February 1216 to fall 1217
- 10 The second siege of Toulouse and end of the chief crusader: 1217–1218
- Aftermath and epilogue
- Select bibliography
- Index
Preface and acknowledgments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- List of maps and plans
- Translation of names and places; calculation of distances
- Preface and acknowledgments
- Maps and plans
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The campaign of 1209
- 3 Simon of Montfort and the campaign of 1210
- 4 The campaigns of 1211
- 5 Drawing the noose: the campaign year of 1212
- 6 The athlete of Christ triumphs: late 1212 through Muret 1213
- 7 From Muret to Casseneuil: September 1213 to December 1214
- 8 The two councils and Prince Louis's crusade, January–December 1215
- 9 The southern counter-attack begins: February 1216 to fall 1217
- 10 The second siege of Toulouse and end of the chief crusader: 1217–1218
- Aftermath and epilogue
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
“But hasn't that been done before?” was the question put to me by a colleague as we sat at dinner after the last session for the day at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a few years ago. Like her, those familiar with the Albigensian Crusade will wonder how this book adds to what anglophone scholars such as Walter M. Wakefield, Joseph Strayer, Jonathan Sumption and Michael Costen, and multi-volume accounts in French like Michel Roquebert's, have said in the last thirty-five years. That does not even count the contributions of popular authors like Zoé Oldenbourg, Stephen O'Shea, other novelists and rapidly growing Internet sites on the Cathars and the Crusade. The Crusade is certainly not unexplored territory, which is what my dinner companion really meant.
Her question was a valid one, and she listened patiently as I explained the necessity of one more book on the Albigensian Crusade. The crusades to the Middle East have always had their long-view adherents, like Hans Eberhard Meyer and Jonathan Riley-Smith. They have also been the subject of multivolume projects like those edited by Kenneth Setton. These long looks remain essential to understanding how the crusading concept began and evolved, the outline of political and military events, the individuals involved, and to tracing the development of East–West relationships over two hundred years.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Occitan WarA Military and Political History of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209–1218, pp. xiii - xvPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008