The Primary Sources

Although there are several other texts which provide useful information relating to the Albigensian Crusade, there are three (roughly) contemporary documents from which most of our knowledge originates.  These are the Historia Albigensis by Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay, the Canso de la Crozada by William of Tudela and the Anonymous Continuator, and the Chronicle of William of Puylaurens. The three texts are not always in agreement and are sometimes demonstrably in error.  Their authors often disagreed on facts and perspectives, and this allows the modern historian ample room to use the sources selectively to support particular narratives.  Collectively, however, they provide us with almost all of our information about the Albigensian Crusade. My previous posts, linked above, provide historians' views on the biography, style and reliability of each of the authors. 

As an overview, I would note the following:

Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay was a Cistercian monk closely linked to the leadership of the Crusade.  His chronicle can be read as the "official history" of the Albigensian Crusade from the Crusaders' point of view.  His Historia Albigensis has the earliest ending of the three sources, as the last events he records were in December of 1218.

The Canso de la Crozada is a truly remarkable document.  It is an epic poem in Occitan by two very different authors.  The eccentric priest William of Tudela began the story and wrote the first third of it, ending his story abruptly in 1213.  From there, an unnamed author (the "Anonymous Continuator") carried on the poem, literally in mid-sentence.  While William was a poor poet, the Anonymous was an inheritor of the Occitan troubadour culture and wrote brilliant vivid poetry.  What distinguishes his two-thirds of the story even more is that he wrote from the perspective of the southern opponents of the Crusade, thus providing our only surviving source of their views.  He ends his tale in the summer of 1219.  One bit of the Canso briefly references the death of Guy de Montfort in 1228, but it is not clear that it was an original part of the text.

William of Puylaurens was a churchman who looked back on the Albigensian Crusade from the 1270s.  Historians now debate his biography as there were several individuals of his name and it is not clear which, if any, he was.  His Chronicle includes much later information not available in either of the two previous texts.  However, he lacks the contemporary immediacy of the first three authors.