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Secrecy and the Social Construction of Heresy in Medieval Languedoc John Bilodeau A Thesis in the Department of Religion Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada August 2010 ©John Bilodeau, 2010 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre r6f6rence ISBN: 978-0-494-71132-3 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-71132-3 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lntemet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1*1 Canada iii ABSTRACT Secrecy and the Social Construction of Heresy in Medieval Languedoc John Bilodeau, Ph.D. Concordia University, 2010 Secrecy is a powerful tool in religious conflict. The careful manipulation of information is critical to the strategic success of a religious group in its attempt to gain recognition of its legitimacy and status in a community or region. This work uses the historical context of the encounter between the Church and the Good Men and Women of Languedoc in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to analyze the use of secrecy the discourse of religious conflict. Reports from Languedoc describe communities who have left the institutions of the Church behind, and fallen into what the Church interprets as dangerous heresy. The "dangerous heresy" are the beliefs and practices of people who self-identify as "Good Christians". The encounters between the representatives of the Church and the Good Christians begin with debate and argumentation and proceed into war and physical coercion. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the allies of the Church assemble armies in order to extirpate the heresy from the lands around Toulouse. Following the Albigensian crusade, the Inquisition is founded to finish the work of reconciling the people of the region of Languedoc to the rest of Christendom. This thesis looks at the role played by secrecy in the conflict and its overall impact on the outcome. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Outline 4 CHAPTER ONE: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SECRECY 10 Part I: Secrecy and Suspicion: Interactions 12 Part II: Secrecy, Society and Religion 23 Part III: Applications to the Historical Context 32 Part IV: The Social Constructionist Model 38 CHAPTER TWO: DISCOURSE COMMUNITY OF LANGUEDOC 48 Part I: Power and Authority in Languedoc 51 Part II: Authority and Information in Languedoc 60 Part III: the Strategic Uses of Information 72 CHAPTER THREE: REPRESENTATIONS OF HERESY 77 Part I: Ancient Errors — Cathars, Albigenses and Manichaeans 79 Part II: Enemies of saints 95 Part III: a "Good Man" is hard to find 101 CHAPTER FOUR: DEVELOPMENT OF INQUISITION 109 Part I: Twelfth Century: Local 'inquisitio' and the Agents of the Papacy 110 Part II; Early Thirteenth Century, the Albigensian Crusade 128 Part III: The Effects of Inquisition on Social Order 133 CHAPTER FIVE: EXPECTATIONS AND SUSPICION 146 Part I: The fundamentals of suspicion (expectation and discourse) 150 Part II: Expectations and suspicion — orthodoxy and heresy as reactions 157 Part III: Norms of Public Communication 165 Part IV: Popular Opinion in a land of heresy 170 CHAPTER SIX: RECORDS, COERCION AND DUPLICITY 178 Part I: Secular power and the new Southern France 178 Part II: Inquisition and the Culture of Resistance 187 Part III: Muddy Waters and Mysterious Apples 199 Part IV: Secrecy, Narrative, Discourse Community 216 CHAPTER SEVEN: DECLINE, LEGACY AND EMPTY SPACES 220 Part I: Montsegur: refuge and treasure 220 Part II: Belibaste: lineage and lifestyle 225 Part III: Monarchy's aid: authority and participation 232 Part IV: The Potential of Secrecy 237 CONCLUSION 244 BIBLIOGRAPHY 254 1 INTRODUCTION This work is about the dangerous power of secrecy and suspicion. The idea of hidden truths appeals to those dissatisfied with appearances and superficial resemblances. Critical minds, trained to examine topics according to rigorous standards can not only find failures, but can hypothesize about the reasons for those failures. The truly secret can only survive behind a flawless facade of normalcy. In the area of religious information, the power of secrecy is even greater, if only because the religious sphere, in the historical context we will examine in this work, expresses some of the more important and sensitive concerns of people's lives, and provides a meaningful story about their community, its relation to other communities, and its larger significance in the cosmos. In the lands of Languedoc in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, religious experts serve the sociological role of providing a grand narrative into which each person can situate themselves. The power to control religious information includes the power of defining "good" religion and "bad", of distinguishing between the correct teachings and the false ones. It also includes the power to teach and spread the information. The conflict in this work is between two competing coteries of religious experts each with their own understanding of how religious authority is acquired, and what a religious life entails. Secrecy appears in a variety of ways in this work: opponents accusing each other of secrecy, withholding information about themselves for their protection, deceiving others in an attempt to gain advantage, controlling and manipulating events and the record of events to suit their personal perspectives or to present a particular image to others. The legitimacy of these acts also varies, depending on the reader's perspective and historical bias. The rival coteries of religious experts in Languedoc in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are either representatives of the Church or their opponents, these opponents are "heretics". This label has a kind of de facto appropriateness to it, but it rests on a false dichotomy. The contents of Church "orthodoxy"alter over time, its authority and powers change.' One of the central theme of this work is the strategic use of information and power by the Church to construct the "heretics" of Languedoc and thereby reinforce their position as the source for right teaching and practice. The two things, orthodoxy and heresy, are bound together.2 In the context of this work we examine how secrecy, the concept of secrecy, accusations of secrecy, and actual deception and obfuscation contribute to the outcome of the conflict between the Church on one side, and "heretics" on the other. The historical range of this work includes the development of the idea of "popular heresy" as it relates to the region of Languedoc, tracking the important elements in the identity created for the "heretics". It then follows through the historical application of the Church's ideas showing how the heresy is created to then be eradicated. This work is about the social construction of heresy and the contribution made to this construction by the notion of secrecy. The utility and power of secrecy in religious conflicts will be explored with conclusions that can be applied outside the historical context of Languedoc. The power of the idea of secrecy in this conflict cannot be ignored. Before turning to an outline of the argument made in the chapters that follow, I would like to provide an 1 A number of Church councils and Papal writings that established new elements of the "orthodox" position will be addressed throughout this work where appropriate. 2 For an excellent analysis of the Christian history of creating orthodoxy through the rejecting of heretical positions see Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971). 3 example of the types of statement that drew me to this subject. The fascinating use of the idea of secrecy in the representation of the heretics around Toulouse in the year 1209, by a young monk named Peter des Vaux-de-Cernai who writes an account of the war called the Historia Albigensis, which begins