The Rise of Popular Heresies 3 of 6

Who Writes History?

There were many popular heresies during the period, many of them held by small groups of people marginalized in one way or another from society as a whole, but many others that gained widespread acceptance and so presented real challenges to ecclesiastical authority. Two of these, the Albigensians and the Waldensians, serve as examples of the different reasons for the rise of such anti-clerical movements. Before discussing either in any detail, though, you should be warned that most of the information that we have regarding these, and other such groups, were written by Church officers and preserved by the Church. This information is, then, the perceptions of orthodox clerics of the time, and we might view the situation quite differently if we were able to know what the heretics themselves had to say about the matter. If you are interested in such matters, you might look at Emmanuel LeRoy Ladourie, Montaillou, a book based upon the meticulous records kept by the Inquisition of interviews with the Cathari residents of a remote Pyrenean village in the fourteenth century.