A Most Holy War

[L]ively and fast-paced inaugural book in Oxford's 'Pivotal Moments in World History' series.... Drawing on numerous primary documents, Pegg's compelling history offers fresh glimpses, accounts of prophecies, answered prayers, and above all, forgiveness. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Pegg's work is terrific...exceptional in its subtlety and accessibility. --Times Literary Supplement Mark Gregory Pegg's A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom is a pathbreaking, iconoclastic account of the crusade that was mounted in 1209 to eliminate heresy from the French region of Provence.... it breaks new ground rather than synopsizing what is already known. --Austin American Statesman Pegg's is a wonderfully articulate, exciting, and very risky book. He boldly redraws the late twelfth-century political and devotional map of Provence and the Toulousain, identified as hotbeds of heresy in Cistercian rhetoric, and he meticulously plots the actions of the Cistercian-inspired Pope Innocent III and the armies he threw for two decades against the 'good men,' 'good women,' and quarreling nobles of the region. Pegg knows the landscape well, and his accounts of military enterprise are meticulous and vivid, his characters distinctive, and his final reflections on genocide offer ominous implications not only for the religious uses of coercion in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe, but for later times as well. --Ed Peters, University of Pennsylvania Mark Pegg's A Most Holy War is a bold, erudite, engaging, and superbly written study of what has long been one of the most central topics in medieval and Mediterranean history. By providing a vivid and detailed portrait of the Albigensian crusade and of the great trail of blood the crusaders left in their wake, Pegg offers to his readers a brilliant and lasting contribution to our understanding of one of the harshest and most critical moments in the history of the West. --Teofilo F. Ruiz, Professor of History, UCLA I can think of no topic in medieval history that makes such demands on the skills of the historian as the terrible and momentous tragedy of the Albigensian crusade. Mark Pegg's extraordinary achievement lies not so much in his rare command of the materials and the problems that surround them as the grace with which he embraces them in a flowing, deeply moving and beautifully written narrative. This is the first modern account that is worthy of the subject. --Robert Moore, Professor Emeritus, Medieval History, University of Newcastle upon Tyne and author of The Formation of a Persecuting Society Mark Gregory Pegg's A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom is a pathbreaking, iconoclastic account of the crusade that was mounted in 1209 to eliminate heresy from the French region of Provence.... it breaks new ground rather than synopsizing what is already known. --Austin American Statesman Pegg's is a wonderfully articulate, exciting, and very risky book. He boldly redraws the late twelfth-century political and devotional map of Provence and the Toulousain, identified as hotbeds of heresy in Cistercian rhetoric, and he meticulously plots the actions of the Cistercian-inspired Pope Innocent III and the armies he threw for two decades against the 'good men,' 'good women,' and quarreling nobles of the region. Pegg knows the landscape well, and his accounts of military enterprise are meticulous and vivid, his characters distinctive, and his final reflections on genocide offer ominous implications not only for the religious uses of coercion in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe, but for later times as well. --Ed Peters, University of Pennsylvania Mark Pegg's A Most Holy War is a bold, erudite, engaging, and superbly written study of what has long been one of the most central topics in medieval and Mediterranean history. By providing a vivid and detailed portrait of the Albigensian crusade and of the great trail of blood the crusaders left in their wake, Pegg offers to his readers a brilliant and lasting contribution to our understanding of one of the harshest and most critical moments in the history of the West. --Teofilo F. Ruiz, Professor of History, UCLA I can think of no topic in medieval history that makes such demands on the skills of the historian as the terrible and momentous tragedy of the Albigensian crusade. Mark Pegg's extraordinary achievement lies not so much in his rare command of the materials and the problems that surround them as the grace with which he embraces them in a flowing, deeply moving and beautifully written narrative. This is the first modern account that is worthy of the subject. --Robert Moore, Professor Emeritus, Medieval History, University of Newcastle upon Tyne and author of The Formation of a Persecuting Society