In 1300, the French region of Languedoc had been cowed under the authority of both Rome and France since Pope Innocent III 's Albigensian Crusade nearly a century earlier. That crusade almost wiped out the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians whose beliefs threatened the authority of the Catholic Church. But decades of harrowing repression-enforced by the ruthless Pope Boniface VIII , the Machiavellian French King Philip the Fair of France, and the pitiless grand inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui (the villain in The Name of the Rose)-had bred resentment. In the city of Carcassonne, anger at the abuses of the Inquisition reached a boiling point and a great orator and fearless rebel emerged to unite the resistance among Cathar and Catholic alike. The people rose up, led by the charismatic Franciscan friar Bernard Délicieux and for a time reclaimed control of their lives and communities. Having written the acclaimed chronicle of the Cathars The Perfect Heresy , Stephen O'Shea returns to the medieval world to chronicle a rare and remarkable story of personal courage and principle standing up to power, amidst the last vestiges of the endlessly fascinating Cathar world.Praise for The Perfect Heresy : "At once a cautionary tale about the corruption of temporal power…and an accounting of the power of faith …It is also just a darn good read."-Baltimore Sun "An accessible, readable history with lessons …that were not learned by broad humanity until it saw 20th-century tyrants applying the goals and methods of the Inquisition on a universal scale."-New York Times

The author of The Perfect Heresy traces the parallel evolution of two powerful religions--Christianity and Islam--in the medieval Mediterranean world, describing their changing relationship--disastrous clashes and periods of peaceful co-existence and mutual enrichment--in light of the conflict of today. Reprint.

Product Description: World War I is beyond the memory of almost everyone alive today. Yet it has left as deep a scar on the imaginative landscape of our century as it has on the land where it was fought. Nowhere is that more evident than on the Western Front-the sinuous, deadly line of trenches that stretched from the coast of Belgium to the border of France and Switzerland, a narrow swath of land in which so many million lives were lost...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Chronicles the life & death of the Cathar movement, led by a group of heretical Christians whose brutal suppression by the Catholic Church unleashed the Inquisition. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Describes the growth of the Cathars, a group of thirteenth-century Christians with revolutionary ideas regarding women and sacraments, and discusses how the Church's response radically affected all of southern France. (view table of contents)