Euh, just to chime in on the Cathars.
Ladurie's Montaillou is, by now, somewhat outdated. It's still a great read, but the original edition is from 1975 and that's not particularly cutting edge. A good work is Malcolm Lambert,
The Cathars (Malden 1998).
If you want a somewhat different take on the Albigensian Crusade and the Cathars, read: Mark Gregory Pegg,
A Most Holy War. The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (New York 2008). I've actually written a review of the latter during a course on religious violence a few years ago. His position on the Cathars is somewhat shaky, but the evidence allows for his interpretation and his book is otherwise quite well founded, though arguably a bit too evocative. For a short overview of the book read:
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/Medieval/?view=usa&ci=9780195393101
On the subject of religious warfare and violence a very good book is: Norman Housley,
Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400-1536 (Oxford, 2008). He makes a very convincing argument on the topic of an apocalyptic fear amongst Christians, the idea that a corruption of one of their members could spread and would thus endanger Christendom as a whole.
Edit: Heck I've been trying to edit my review into something somewhat shorter but...well, really, if anyone here is interested in Cathars, crusades, and religious warfare, it's actually one of my better pieces and, if I say so myself, quite an enjoyable read. So I've decided to just post the whole damn thing.
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As Dan Brown’s recent book, The Lost Symbol, once again makes clear, uncovering alleged esoteric knowledge remains as popular as ever; at least popular enough to support the tireless churning out of bestseller after bestseller. If we are to follow the reasoning of Mark Gregory Pegg in his latest monograph, A most holy war: The Albigensian Crusade and the battle for Christendom, the academic world has not been able to resist creating a similar stereotype on the subject of the Cathars. A secret Cathar church complete with bishops and its own anti-pope, gnostic beliefs, a Cathar Bible: all such elements are routinely mentioned in writings on the heretics of the Languedoc region.
Yet their organizational structure, their Manichean dualism, and even their name are, according to Pegg, all based either on evidence tainted by an inquisitorial spirit or on evidence that is dubious in nature and has perhaps even been falsified. Continuing the argument from one of his earlier works, he states that rather than finding these heretics, inquisitors, clerics and crusaders created the Cathars by fitting them into a pre-existing antique model which dictated what constituted a heretic. Those identified as heretics were by their own communities termed as ‘good men’ (bons omes) or ‘good women’ (bonas femnas), people who were living a somewhat more religious and puritanical life, and who were being honoured by their communities through cortezia (courtliness or decorum). Honouring these people was a process of reciprocal giving and receiving holiness, an act that inquisitors subsequently identified with heretical adoration. In short, according to Pegg the Cathars existed only in the minds of those who fought them while they were actually more like a church reform movement.
Elaborating on this idea, Pegg argues that the most prominent motive for crusaders committing themselves to the Albigensian Crusade was of a religious nature. Fired up by clerics and justified by popes, of whom especially Pope Innocent III was of crucial importance, crusaders became convinced that the Albigensian heresy was a poison spreading through the body of the Christian community. Seen as a gangrene limb that had to be amputated before it could, or rather would infect one’s own lands, heretics were to be killed as a precautionary measure. Being offered to ‘walk like Him’ the crusaders were called on to fight a Holy War for the very survival of Christendom itself. Within this dichotomy of a Christian world either divided and doomed or whole and healthy it was not just the Albigensians who fit the label of heretic. According to Pegg, the catholic cosmology of a sempiternal earth, created by God for Christians, rooted the belief that all time and space were Christian, which would eventually demand that Jews and Muslims were to be consistently classified as heretics as well, as no better than Albigensians. Hereticiziation, religious zeal, and an apocalyptical fear for the survival of Christendom as a whole thus ushered in the first European genocide: the Albigensian Crusade. Winning ground and credibility over time, this mixture became responsible for what Pegg argues to be the genesis of anti-semitism.
The author thus portrays the Albigensian Crusade as a true pivotal moment in world history. Earlier similar events were either not directed at fellow Christians (the massacre of Jerusalem in 1099) or had not been supported by the Pope (the sack of Zara in 1202, the capture of Constantinople in 1204). The decisions of the Third Lateran Council in 1179 and the subsequent summer campaign against the Albigensian lands in 1181 are considered merely as a prelude to later events. It was only during the Albigensian Crusade and under the guiding auspices of Pope Innocent III that the wholesale slaughter of Christian communities became legitimized by marking them as heretics. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 codified a set of anti-heretical regulations as canon and went on to specify a dress code for Jews and Muslims.
All the while politics are not entirely rejected as a motive either. The book carries a cynical undercurrent that frequently alludes to political motives playing a role in the background. There can be little doubt that the French kings ended up as the main beneficiaries by being able to greatly expand their territory southwards, although they are constantly portrayed as reluctant supporters of the Albigensian Crusade. Similarly, Simon de Montfort, mainly depicted as a religious enthusiast, unquestionably had much to gain and little to lose by participating in such a sanctified conquest.
Although controversial, Pegg’s book fits in well with recent trends of medieval research focused on heretics and religious warfare. For quite a while now it has been popular to problematize the definition of what actually constituted a heretic, moving away from the acceptance of a categorization dominated by the church’s final decision on the matter, and towards comparative analysis of religious movements and the processes that led either to their sanctification or hereticization. Pegg’s work takes this trend to its logical culmination, blurring the borders between the Cathars and other contemporary religious reform movements. Although this line of research is certainly fruitful, Pegg could have placed more emphasis on how this hereticization took place, according to what models the process played out, how these models came to be and changed, and most importantly how these models were used to deem one group heretical while another was sanctified. In that regard, we should certainly not forget or trivialize the doctrinal issues between the Albigensian heretics and the Catholic Church as if it was irrelevant to their hereticization. His work on the inquisitorial interrogation of 1245-1246 supports his argument, but it would be interesting to see a similar in-depth analysis of the period prior to and during the Albigensian Crusade.
Another trend aims to put religion back into the Middle Ages and, of particular relevance for Pegg’s book, to put religion back into medieval warfare. Crusades have for a long time been interpreted as primarily motivated by political reasons; a view which has been deteriorating for a few decennia now and has had to give more and more room to religious drives. Especially the penitential aspect of a crusade, the Christ-like suffering endured during an armed pilgrimage against heretics has been given much weight by Pegg as well as others. The earlier mentioned apocalyptic anxiety which drove crusaders to fight for a united Christendom has received much attention as well, both with regard to the crusades in particular and as an aspect of religious warfare in general.
Although the Albigensian Crusade can certainly be singled out as a fascinating process of religious warfare turning inwards, separating this event from the rest of history does not do it justice in light of its broader crusading context. The apocalyptic zeal has not been as exclusive to the Albigensian Crusade as Pegg would make it seem. It has been a consistent element of religiously inspired warfare, recurring before as well as after the Albigensian Crusade, and both within and outside of Christendom. Also, the focus on religious motivation sidesteps the political elements of the conflict. The author certainly does not deny their importance, yet the book would have benefitted from giving the political realm more explicit attention.
Pegg’s broad assertions, while attractive, sometimes do away with peculiarities that thus remain unexplained. If the Cathars did not differ much from a religious reform movement, and heretics were interpreted in a predetermined antique framework, why was this same framework not used for all the nascent religious communities of this time, such as the Humiliati, the Waldensians, and even the Franciscans? Likewise, the use of the term genocide would require a more consistent crusader policy versus the Albigensian heretics. Why were some castra (fortified villages) slaughtered and sacked, while others escaped a successful siege almost unscathed? Indiscriminate slaughter of heretics and believers alike was defended by reasoning that true Christian victims would merely be sped onwards to heaven by their unfortunate and untimely death, while killing heretics was virtuous, praiseworthy and a necessity. Still, there was a reluctance to exercise this policy in all cases. Pegg makes it clear that much depended on the circumstances, such as the duration of a siege, the mood of the crusaders, and even the environment and weather, but these elements do little to support his insistence to term the Albigensian Crusade as genocide, or even as a string of holocausts.
The often passionate style of the book makes for a stunning and gripping read, and it will undoubtedly draw the author much praise as well as flak. His use of the narrative comes with the dangers of a double edged sword. Sway too much in one direction, and the narrative cuts into the credibility of the academic argument, sway too much to the other side and the narrative becomes little else but sparkles of source material in a complex methodological structure. Pegg wields his pen with excruciating balance, weaving sources and argumentation together into a seamless account, and he certainly achieves his goal to leave behind a palpable taste of the past. He does however occasionally fill in gaps of information unsupported by source material, such as the exact time span of a conversation, or the mental state of some of his dramatis personae.
Regardless of arguments over style and focus, Pegg has definitely presented a highly interesting, lucid, and controversial work that will spark off renewed interest and debates on the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade, and heresy and religious warfare in general. Both entertaining and thought-provoking, readers might not entirely agree with Pegg’s conclusions, but neither will they find it easy to tear away from the book once a few pages have been turned.
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Just kidding. 
