A New Book by Dr Claire Taylor

The School of History would like to announce that Dr Claire Taylor has recently published a new book, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Medieval Quercy by York Medieval Press.

The medieval county of Quercy in Languedoc lay between the Dordogne and the Toulousain. It played a significant role in the history of Catharism, of the Albigensian crusade launched against the heresy in 1209, and of the subsequent inquisition. Elsewhere in Languedoc it was in the later twelfth-century that Cathars began to dominate religious life. However, in Quercy in these decades local abbeys and also Cistercian Obazine formed the focus of devotional activity. Yet inquisitors of the 1240s discovered that Catharism and also the Waldensian heresy had taken a firm hold on Quercy over the previous twenty years, most dramatically in its far north. This study deals with the cultural and political origins of this confessional shift. It does so rooting its analysis in its significant re-evaluation of the nature and social significance of religious dissidence, and of its protection and persecution in both the history and historiography of Catharism.