Between May 1, 1245, and August 1, 1246, more than five thousand people were intensively questioned in Toulouse about the "heresy of the good men and good women" (commonly, though incorrectly, known as Catharism). Mark Gregory Pegg examines the sole surviving manuscript of this great inquisition with unprecedented care--often in unexpected ways--to build a richly textured understanding of life in southern France in the early thirteenth century. This book is a passionate evocation of the vibrant rhythms by which thousands of medieval men and women lived their lives through half a century of holy war and religious persecution.
