This paper endeavors to examine the mechanisms by which the crown of France was able to subsume the region of Languedoc in the wake of the Albigensian Crusade in the thirteenth century. The systematic use of Catholic doctrine and an inquisition run by the Dominican Order of Preachers allowed France to dominate the populace of the region and destroy any indigenous social, economic, and political structures.

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Trinity International University, 1999. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 119-125).

In considering the increasing interest in the study of a global Middle Ages, there seem to be few individuals, either fictional or actual, that had a more powerful cosmopolitan currency than the figure of Prester John and the legends surrounding his kingdom. As a product of cultural imaginings and questionably recounted historical events, the search for and legitimization of Prester John has commanded consistent interest, both popular and scholarly, almost continuously since first mention of the figure of John in 1145. The now infamous Letter of Prester John, which details the magnificent Christian kingdom lying somewhere in the East, beyond the approaching threat of an ever-expanding Islam, has long catalyzed a hunt, by both adventurers and scholars, to seek the elusive patriarch. The very indeterminacy of the geographic location of Prester John allowed the European imagination to consequently imagine him everywhere precisely because he could neither be confirmed nor denied existence anywhere. This report will explore the ways that a reading of the Prester John legend reveals competing ambitions of enclosure and expansion within twelfth and thirteenth-century Latin Christendom, specifically around the time of the Fifth Crusade. This report will trace the ideational tensions within a presumed Christian Crusading West trying to legitimate itself against the dialectical buttress of what was increasingly professed as its heretical other, Islam. The Fifth Crusade, especially, seemed to hinge on the possibility of the harmonious convergence of Eastern and Western Christian powers, literalizing the sense of Christian enclosure around all of Islam. Prester John’s kingdom thus served two functions: first, to comprise the other half of the Christian enclosure, and secondly, to mark a phenomenological limit point of human experience that domesticated alterity under the banner of a sovereign priest-king. / text

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

One of the great paradoxes of the medieval period is the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1225), in which monks of the Cistercian Order took an active and violent role in campaigning against the heretics of the Languedoc. Why, and how, did this order officially devoted to prayer and contemplation become one of the prime orchestrators of one of medieval Europe’s most gruesome affairs? This thesis seeks to answer that question, not by looking at the crusading Cistercians themselves, but at their predecessor Bernard of Clairvaux, who—I will argue—made the Albigensian Crusade possible by making it permissible for monks to intervene in the world outside the cloister. The logic of this thesis is as follows. Bernard of Clairvaux lived in a world in which monastics had a certain spiritual authority that granted them special privileges over ecclesiastics (Chapter II). The Cistercian Order itself, even before Bernard became their prime mover and shaker, used these privileges to cultivate contacts beyond monastic borders (Chapter IV), and once Bernard became a prominent abbot himself, his desire to do good and criticisms of the outside world (Chapter VI) led him to intervene in various endeavors (Chapter V). These interventions drew backlash from other monastics and ecclesiastics, which then required justification in order to reconcile the vita passiva and Bernard’s active lifestyle (Chapter VII). These justifications, along with Bernard’s justifications of violence (Chapter VIII), came to more broadly characterize the Cistercian Order as a whole (Chapters I, IV), and thus the ideological material to justify monastic holy war was all present in eloquently defended and rapturously accepted form by the time Henry of Clairvaux took a castle during his 1281 preaching mission turned mini-crusade (Chapter IX). With all of this built into the Cistercian DNA, Arnaud Amaury found it very easy to lead a crusade in 1212. Could he have done this without Bernard’s example paving the way and ingraining such lessons in Cistercian thought? It is my contention that he could not have.

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-110).

Thesis (M.A.)--International School of Theology, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-60).

Thesis (M.A.)--International School of Theology, 1990. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-129).

Thesis (M.A.)--International School of Theology, 1988. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-136).

Thesis (M.A.)--International School of Theology, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-60).