Topics deserving further exploration

These are some of the topics I'd greatly like to learn more about and which I intend to explore in my further reading and writing.


The biography of Simon de Montfort
I understand that there has been no English-language biography of the leader of the Albigensian Crusade.  Marvin, in "The Occitan War" points out an interesting-sounding PhD dissertation which worked on this.  It's on my list of things to find!
 

• What did he do before the Fourth Crusade?

I know that he heard the 4th Crusade preached at a tournament at Ecry-sur-Aisne in 1199 (according to Wikipedia)
I came across a passing reference to Simon de Montfort in McGlynn's "Blood Cries Afar" serving on the French side at the siege of Chateau Gaillard in the autumn of 1203.

• What did he do in the Holy Land after leaving the Fourth Crusade at Zara?

Simon de Montfort, it is often noted, parted ways with the Fourth Crusade when the decision was made to sack Zara, and went on to the Holy Land.  But I have yet to read any source which states what he did there.  He next reappears in the sources I have read five years later at the start of the Albigensian Crusade.

• What happened to his wife, Alice de Montmorency, after his death?

• What become of his children (other than Aimery and Simon)?

I believe he had seven children.  The younger Simon, of course, became even more famous than his father due to his career in England.  Aimery inherited the leadership of the Albigensian Crusade and was never terribly successful at it.  What became of the others?

The debates of the preaching campaign
Before the Crusade began, there were debates organized in many towns of the Languedoc between Church figures and their opponents, usually described as "good men."  The sources we have on these debates are, I believe, all ecclesiastical and the account of the good men's position informs much of what is described as "Catharism" in the Languedoc before the Crusade.  Yet Moore, in "The War On Heresy" points out that the highly influential Parisian school at this time was teaching a particular debate-like style of theological rhetoric which is visible in many Church texts relating to heresy.  The good men are traditionally understood to have been presenting and defending heterodox theology.  But could they instead have been facing Church opponents who reduced any disagreement with the authority of the Church into a series of theological tautologies which they then attributed to their opponents, the good men?  Is it possible that the Church's debaters formed a series of logical constructs from faith in the scriptures, through apostolic succession, to the authority of the Church and the validity of its current sacraments, so that any disagreement could be portrayed as radical heresy? 

The role of the Cistercians
I hadn't thought too much about this until I read Graham-Leigh's "The Southern-French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade." She points out that Innocent III's papacy was closely linked to the Cistercian Order and that the Legates to the Languedoc before and during the Crusade were exclusively Cistercian.  Lastly, she makes a fascinating point that Catholic orthodoxy was often attested to in terms of relations with the Cistercian Order.

My search for books about the Cistercians which might shed further light on these topics has not yet met with success.  I plan to keep looking.

The formation of the Inquisition in Toulouse

• To what extent was it based on previous ecclesiastical inquisitions?

• Who was involved in running it other than the Dominicans?

One of the figures who interests me here is Peter Seilha, a merchant who helped fund the Crusade and donated a house to Dominic and his brethren in Toulouse.  Seilha later became an Inquisitor himself.

• How did it engender and react to violent opposition, such as at Avignonet?

• What was its relation to the new University at Toulouse?

• How did it spread from Toulouse to other regions?

-- Sam Taylor