Mountaillou’s randy priest – and secret Cathar. I had met her and Pierre and the 200 other residents of the mountain village in the pages of a book by the French historian Emmanuel Le Roy ...

Burnham—known for her nonfiction work A Book of Angels—paints a vivid picture of the Cathars’ struggles. Despite doses of Hollywood melodrama—one minute Jeanne can’t live without William; the next she ...

Cathar books were destroyed, and so almost all that we know of Catharism comes from the meticulous documentation of Dominican inquisitors. The Cathars themselves went into the flames or were ...

I'm pretty happy on six hours." Various interests led to the book's genesis. Mosse became fascinated with the history of Carcassonne as a Cathar stronghold. A Christian sect, Catharism had ...

Cathars also didn’t believe in the paying of tithes, which, of course, infuriated the church. Why feature them in a whodunit? My editor in London, Peter Carson, to whom the book is dedicated ...

Who were the Cathars, and what was daily life like for them? In this video, we explore the beliefs and lifestyle of this medieval Christian sect that challenged the power of the Catholic Church.

Catharism sprang up again 100 years later, a little to the south, in and around the Pyrenean village of Montaillou. It was made famous by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's 1978 book, based on the ...