1 William of Newburgh and the Cathar mission to England William of Newburgh was born at Bridlington in 1136, and was

educated at an Augustinian priory a few miles north of York, Newburgh, where he became a canon and probably lived the rest of his life; the only evidence of travel outside Yorkshire is one visit to Finchale, near Durham. He died between summer 1199 and autumn 1201, leaving three extant writings. The preceding outline of his life is based on John Gormans introduction to the only writing by William which has received a modern critical edition, his commentary on the Song of Songs.1 Williams other writings are sermons, and the Historia rerum Anglicarum 2 (hereafter History). Yorkshire Cistercian patronage envelopes two of the works. The commentary on the Song of Songs is dedicated to Roger, abbot of Byland, while the History is prefaced by a dedicatory letter to Ernald, abbot of Rievaulx (1189-99), which states that Ernald had requested the work. Twice in the History a chapter is devoted to an incidence of heresy and its repression. Chapter nineteen of the first book deals with the Breton Eudo of Stella and his followers, who were examined at the Council of Rheims in 1148, while chapter thirteen of the second book recounts the appearance of a group of Cathar heretics in England in 1160s and their subsequent fate.3 In the following I offer a reading and interpretation of Williams description 1. William of Newburghs Explanatio Sacri Epithalamii in Matrem Sponsi, ed. J.C. Gorman, Spicilegium Friburgense, 6 (Fribourg, 1960), pp. 4-17; pp. 18-35 on Williams writings. Accounts of William as chronicler and historian include J. Taylor, Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire (York, 1961), pp. 10-12, A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550-c.1307 (London, 1974), pp. 263-68, and N.F. Partner, Serious Entertainments. The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago and London, 1977), pp. 51-140. I am very grateful to Christopher Brooke, Barrie Dobson, Richard Fletcher, Beverly Kienzle and Sarah Rees Jones for their comments and help. 2 . William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I., ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols, RS 82 (1884-9), 1-2; translated by J. Stevenson, Church Historians of England, 5 vols. (London, 1853-58), 4 part 2, pp. 397672. 3. Historia, ii, 13, ed. Howlett, 1, pp. 131-34. The passage is also edited in Councils & Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church, I, A.D. 871-1204, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C.N.L. Brooke, 2 parts (Oxford, 1981), part 2, pp. 923-25 (see introduction and notes on pp. 920-21) [hereafter Councils & Synods], and in part in MGH Scriptores, 27 (1885), pp. 231-2. Among English translations are Stevenson, Church Historians, pp. 460-61; EHD, 2, 1042-1189, ed. D.C. Douglas and G.W. Greenaway, 2nd ed (London and New York, 1981), pp. 355-57; and Heresies of the High Middle Ages, ed. W.L. Wakefield and A.P. Evans (New York, 1969), pp. 245-47 (with considerable annotation). See the discussions in C. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares ou Albigeois, 2 vols (Paris, Geneva, 1848-49, 1, pp. 97-8; A. Borst, Die Katharer, Schriften der MGH, 12 (Stuttgart, 1953), pp. 93-4 and 94 n. 18; H. Maisonneuve, tudes sur les origines de linquisition, 2nd ed (Paris, 1960), pp. 114-15; J.B. Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Ca., 1965), pp. 224-27 and 309-10 nn. 79-80; J. Duvernoy, LHistoire des Cathares (Toulouse, 1979), pp. 112 and 149. One remarkable

2 of this Cathar mission. At first sight both the episode itself and Williams attention to Cathars entering England seem peripheral oddities: interesting, certainly, but far away from the main scene of heresy and the Churchs anxiety about heresy. In fact, English writers notices of the Cathars constitute a historical phenomenon worthy of analysis in itself, so numerous are they. They are found in the pages of Adam of Eynsham,4 Walter Map,5 Gerald of Wales, Ralph of Coggeshall, Roger of Howden, Roger of Wendover,6 and Matthew Paris,7 and the annals or chronicles of Dunstable, Margan, Southwark, Tewkesbury, Waverley and Winchester.8 Some of the material on the Cathars is more richly represented in these English writings than anywhere else, and occasionally it is unique. Languedoc is well-represented. English chronicles include, for example, an account of the council of Lombers of 1165 (a Cathar-Catholic debate), an account and two letters relating to a legation to Toulouse in 1178 to suppress Catharism, and the text of a papal legates letter about a Cathar splinter-group led by Bartholomew of Carcassonne, while the crusade against the Albigensians is well-covered. English interest may have been fuelled by the strength of Cathars in Gascony, and in the particular case of 1178 there was particular involvement: on the one hand Henry II acted alongside Louis VII in instituting a mission to Languedoc, and on the other hand an English bishop, Reginald of Bath, was one of the leaders of the resulting legation, which interrogated Cathars in Toulouse. English writers also noticed Catharism elsewhere in southern Europe. Gerald of Wales had learnt from a cleric in Italy about the Cathars internal divisions and expressed the view that but for these the Church would have succumbed in Italy and Provincia,9 while Matthew Paris took great interest in Cathars in Lombardy.10 Through Matthews inclusion of a letter written by a Bordeaux cleric who spent some time among Lombard Cathars, his Chronica majora becomes the unique direct source on one aspect of Italian Cathar education, their sending of imaginative recreation of the episode is to be found in the picture drawn by the Quaker and historian Edward Backhouse (1808-79), which shows the German Cathars dying in the winter snow outside Oxford; it is reproduced E. Backhouse and C. Tylor, Witnesses for Christ and Memorials of Church Life, 2 vols (London, 1887), 2, facing p. 481. 4. Magna vita sancti Hugonis, iv, 13, ed. D.L. Douie and H. Farmer, 2 vols (London, etc., 1961), 2, pp. 65-6. 5. De nugis curialium, i, 30, ed. M.R. James, revised C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), pp. 118-22. 6. Flores historiarum, ed. H.G. Hewlett, 3 vols., RS, 84 (1886-89), 1, p. 118; 2, pp. 87-93, 252, 271-3; 3, pp. 74-75. 7. Chronica majora, ed. H.R. Luard, 7 vols., RS, 57 (1872-83), 2, pp. 310, 555-7, 566-8; 3, pp. 57, 78-9, 105-106, 110-111, 267, 361, 375, 520; 4, 63, 226-7, 231, 271-72, 434; 5, pp. 4, 23, 195, 357-8. Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols., RS, 44 (1866-69), 1, pp. 340, 412; 2, pp. 143-4, 239-40; 3, p. 94 and (Matthews Abbreviatio) pp. 254, 318. 8. Annales monastici, ed. H.R. Luard, 5 vols., RS, 36 (1864-69), 1, pp. 32 and 49; 2, pp. 61 and 266; 3, pp. 19, 55, 61, 74, 75, 79-80, 100-101; MGH Scriptores, 27 (1885), p. 431. 9. 10. De principis instructione, i, 17, ed. G.F. Warner, RS, 21 (1891), 8, p. 70. Chronica majora, 3, p. 375; 4, p. 63; 5, p. 195; and passage cited in the next note.

3 apt scholars to the schools in Paris.11 English chroniclers also noticed Catharism in northern Europe. Alluding to events around 1176-80, the Cistercian Ralph of Coggeshall wrote about the spread of Cathars in Francia and Flanders, illustrating their repression with an anecdote set in Rheims.12 Gerald of Wales wrote about their abundance on (or within) the borders of Flanders,13 and there are mentions of them in Gaul - their existence there in 1178 in the Winchester annals, and their burning there in 1182 in Matthew Pariss Flores Historiarum.14 Matthew wrote twice in his Chronica Majora (under 1236 and 1238) about the heretics great strength in the kingdom of Francia, particularly Flanders and their repression by Robert le Bougre.15 Before Matthew Paris the most notable chronicler of the Cathars was Roger of Howden. Roger included the 1165 and 1178 material mentioned above,16 and a remarkable note about the execution of Cathars in the kingdom of Francia in 1182, to which I shall return. This phenomenon, the considerable interest in Catharism which was evinced by English writers and chroniclers, including a Yorkshireman, between the 1180s and around 1250, is something of which William of Newburgh was a constituent element. Upon what sources could William draw? Analysis of Williams accounts of early Cistercianism has led Nancy Partner to point to the high probability of his reading and use of early Cistercian documents17 - and where more likely than in the library of one of these houses? The surviving catalogue of Rievaulxs library18 post-dates William - it is thirteenth century. However, if an utterly commonplace or very popular work, whose date of composition is earlier, appears in this catalogue, its inclusion makes its availability to William highly likely. In Rievaulx as in any monastic library there were, obviously, manuscripts of books of the bible. The bible provided a providential framework for heresy: there should be heresies (I Corinthians 11.19), and it supplied a vocabulary for writing about it. Foxes or 11. Chronica majora, 4, pp. 271-2. The authenticity of the letter is discussed in P. Segl, Ketzer in sterreich. Untersuchungen ber Hresie und Inquisition im Herzogtum sterreich im 13. und beginnenden 14. Jahrhundert (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich, 1984), pp. 76111. 12. 13. Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, RS, 66 (1875), p. 122. Gemma ecclesiastica, i, 11, ed. J.S. Brewer, RS, 21 (1862), 2, pp. 40-41.

14. Annales monastici, 2, p. 61; Matthew of Westminster, Flores historiarum, ed. H.R. Luard, 3 vols., RS, 95 (1890), 2, p. 94. See also note below. 15. Chronica majora, 3, pp. 361 and 520.

16. Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS, 49 (1867), 1, pp. 198-220; Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols., RS, 51 (1868-71), 2, pp. 105-17 and 150-66. See D. Corner, The Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi and Chronica of Roger, Parson of Howden, BIHR, 56 (1983), pp. 126-44. 17. Partner, Serious Entertainments, pp. 83-84.

18. It is edited in A. Hoste, Bibliotheca Aelrediana, Instrumenta Patristica, 2 (Steenbrugge, 1962), pp. 149-70; there is comment in p. 176 note 1 on the catalogues defects as a guide to books present in Ailreds day.

4 wolves denote heretics, and the vulnerable Church and laity are represented by the Lords vine and sheep (Judges 15.4-5, Song of Songs 2.15, and Matthew 7.15). There was also a model of heretics operations. They creep into houses and lead captive mulierculae, a pejorative word which is to be translated as silly or little women (II Timothy 3.6). Rievaulx contained copies of St Augustines De haeresibus, Isidore of Sevilles Etymologiae, and, Gratians Decretum. In these there appeared lists of early Church heresies, whose schematic description of any particular heresy could also be models. In each case what is given is the name of the auctor, the derivation of the heretics name name from this originator, and the particuar doctrines of the sect. 19 Thus an auctor was Valentinian, the heretics were therefore called Valentinians, and Valentian heresies were such and such. Rievaulx had a copy of Bedes Ecclesiastical History, and this supplied a nugget of national history of heresy in Bedes description of the spread of Pelagiuss heresy in Britain and its extinction by St Germanus. Rievaulx also had no less than three copies of St Bernard of Clairvauxs Sermones super Cantica Canticorum [hereafter Sermons on the Song of Songs], whose modern editors suggest that one recension of very high quality, possibly due to St Bernard himself, circulated in a distinct English family of manuscripts.20 Writing this long cycle (1139-53), St Bernard devoted several sermons (part of sermon 64 and all of sermons 65-6) to the passage on heretics, the little foxes who demolish the vine of the Lord. Two of these sermons came after he had been informed about Cathars tried in the Rhineland in 1143.21 St Bernards text emphasises hereticscontempt for the sacraments, their secrecy, their rustic lack of culture, and their refusal to answer when questioned about the faith. Finally, there were the canons of the Councils of Tours (1163) and the Third Lateran (1179), each of which contained one canon containing important material about the Cathars, their danger and their repression. The canons of the Council of Tours were being transcribed at least in part at Fountains (117981), while the so-called Bridlington collection, which also included the Tours canons, were being transcribed in a northern scriptorium, possibly Bridlington itself (Augustinian, like Newburgh) around 1182. The canons of the Lateran Council of 1179 were at some stage copied into Rievaulxs cartulary.22 Both sets of conciliar canons William copied into his History.

19. On such lists of heresies, see M. A. E. Nickson, The Pseudo-Reinerius treatise, the final stage of a thirteenth century work from the diocese of Passau, Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du moyen ge, (1967), 255-314 (pp. 284-5), and A. Patschovsky, Der Passauer Anonymus. Ein Sammelwerk der Ketzer, Juden, Antichrist aus der Mitte des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Schriften der MGH, 22 (Stuttgart, 1968), pp. 98-100. 20. St Bernard, Opera omnia, ed. J. Leclercq, C.H. Talbot and H.M. Rochais, 8 vols. (Rome, 1957-77), I, pp. x-xi, xxxiii, xxxv, xxxvi. 21. Opera omnia, 2, pp. 172-88. See on these B.M. Kienzle, Tending the Lords Vineyard: Cistercians, Rhetoric and Heresy, 1143-1229. Part 1: Bernard of Clairvaux the 1143 Sermons and the 1145 Preaching Mission, Heresis, 25 (1995), pp. 29-61 (pp. 39-44). 22. C. Duggan, Twelfth-Century Decretal Collections and Their Importance in English History (London, 1963), pp. 80-81 and 80 note 1, 85, 90, 91 and 91 note 2, 93. On the Tours canons see also R. Somerville, Pope Alexander III and the Council of Tours (1163) (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1977), pp. 39-40, 44 and 50 (on the canon on heresy entering the Compilatio Prima); Councils & Synods, pp. 845-47 and 847 note 6. On the Lateran canons see Councils & Synods, pp. 1011-14.

5 Who would have contributed orally to a pool of ideas and information in the northern province? There are, first, the clergy of the north-east, York and Durham. Both the Archbishop of York, Roger of Pont lvque, and Hugh du Puiset, bishop of Durham, were present at the Council of Tours in 1163, and Hugh du Puiset also participated in the Third Lateran Council of 1179.23 Both prelates and their households were possible and plausible channels for the transmission of canons back to the north-east of England, as well as memory of any related discussions. Another plausible network links William, via Rievaulx, with knowledge about the German Cathar mission to England. Two letters of Gilbert Foliot show him discussing with Roger, bishop of Worcester, what should be done about the captured Cathars.24 Ailred of Rievaulx corresponded with many English bishops, and therefore possibly some of the (unnamed) ones who gathered at Oxford early in 1166. But it was also known that he was a particularly good friend of Gilbert Foliot, to whom he dedicated his sermons on Isaiah some time after April 1163, when Foliot became bishop of London. Into the dialogue between Ailred and John which is contained in his last work, the De anima, Ailred inserted an exchange about the captured Cathars. Ailred says that impious heresy had formerly been condemned and buried by the early fathers of the Church, but that now weavers (of both sexes) are attempting to rescuscitate it, and with mental obstinacy and an irrational contempt for death they are trying to subvert the Churchs sacraments. John replies with what I have heard. Many of them are being held in chains. A council has been called by the king (Henry II), so that there could be deliberation with learned men about what to do with them. The heretics reject marriage, the Eucharist, bodily resurrection and baptism.25 So, before the Oxford synods final deliberations in early 1166, Rievaulx had contained up-to-the minute information about the capture and beliefs of the Cathars and debate about what to do with them, knowledge which could have been acquired in part through Ailreds friendship with one of the involved parties, Gilbert Foliot. We can only speculate about the extent of knowledge remaining in Rievaulx after Ailreds death in 1167, and available later to William as his source for the English episode. There may have been several information networks behind Williams narration; this one is distinguished in the first instance only by the unique survival of a few of its jigsaw pieces. Finally, throughout this period the most powerful network was probably that which connected Yorkshire Cistercian monasteries with Clairvaux and Cteaux and, through them, Cistercian actions against Cathars in mainland Europe. From the time of St Bernard in the early 1140s to the pontificate of Innocent III, Cistercians, especially those of Clairvaux, had spearheaded the Churchs struggle against Cathars.26 At the earliest stage concern had been with northern Cathars - St Bernard was appealed to for help in the struggle against Rhineland Cathars - but 23. Somerville, Council of Tours, pp. 14, 23; Councils & Synods, p. 1012.

24. A. Morey and C.N.L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 241-3; Letters 157-58, in The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, ed. A. Morey and C.N.L. Brooke (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 208-10. 25. Ailred of Rievaulx, De anima, i, 59-60, Opera omnia, 1, Opera ascetica, ed. A. Hoste and C.H. Talbot, CChr.CM, 1 (1971), pp. 703-04. 26. Beverly Kienzle is preparing a book on Cistercian preaching against heresy. In addition to the article cited in note 21 above, see her Henry of Clairvaux and the 1178 and 1181 Mission, Heresis, 28 (1997), pp. 1-24, and Hlinand de Froidmont et la prdication cistercienne dans le Midi (1145-1225), Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 32 (1997), pp. 37-67.

6 later the field of action was Languedoc. St Bernard himself preached against heresy in Languedoc in 1145. A later Abbot of Clairvaux, Henry of Marsiac, was a leader of the part ecclesiastical part military legation which tried to deal with Catharism in Toulouse and its environs in 1178, while Innocent III relied heavily on Cistercians, sending two of them in 1198 and another two in 1203, adding to the latter as a third legate Arnold Aimeri, abbot of Cteaux, and instructing the order to supply further monks to supplement the legates preaching. From around 1140 Clairvaux had become a repository of texts and knowledge about Cathars, and the chapter at Cteaux a centre for discussion of action against them. A later example of the effect of this can be found in the Dialogue of Miracles written by the Cistercian Caesar of Heisterbach in the early thirteenth-century. Caesars anecdotes about heresy and actions taken against it take in Cologne, Trier, Cambrai, Besanon, Strasbourg, Metz, Montpellier, Beziers, the Albigeois in general, Spain and Verona.27 Looking out from his Rhineland monastery, Caesar has a local view. But there is a wider panorama of heresyaffected areas of Latin Christendom, and this is supplied at least in part by the international Cistercian information-network. Yorkshire monks at Clairvaux had headed the party which came out to found Rievaulx. The requirements of visits between mother and daughter-houses and of abbots annual attendance at the general chapter of the Order at Cteaux must have meant a lot of travelling between the Yorkshire Cistercian houses and Cteaux and Clairvaux, even if the visits were not always made; thus Clairvaux was the place where the second Richard to be abbot of Fountains died, on his way to or from a general chapter at Cteaux. So, the Yorkshire Cistercian abbots who journeyed to the annual general chapter and stopped-over at Clairvaux were going to one of Latin Christendoms main talking-shops and to one of its most powerful abbeys and centres of thought and information about Catharism. Let us now turn back to Williams account. It comes immediately after a chapter which concludes with a death (1161) and accession (3 June 1162) to the see of Canterbury, and it immediately precedes a chapter which describes Pope Alexander III entering France (1162) and the Council of Tours (19 May 1163). It begins In these same days. Writing his History in the late 1190s and dealing with an episode which took place three decades before, William is being vague about its precise starting-point and its duration. His narration indicates several stages, (i) Cathars entering England to propagate their faith, (ii) staying and converting, (iii) being discovered, seized and held prisoner, (iv) Henry II ordering a synod of bishops to be held in Oxford, (v) their being charged by the synod, their leader discussing their faith, and their interrogation, (vi) the bishops handing them over to the king for punishment, (vii) their branding and flogging, (viii) their expulsion from Oxford and dying in the winter cold. From another source, extant letters sent by Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, in response to the question about what should be done with these heretics which had been put to him by Roger, bishop of Worcester, we glimpse debate and uncertainty about handling them. Dealt with in part by letter, this discussion suggests some passing of time in what followed stage (iii), their imprisonment, seizure and capture. Williams account of the earlier stage (ii) may lack detail, but it is explicit and direct on duration. After their entry into England the Cathars are described as living in England for some time or for some considerable time, the emphasis

27. Dialogus miraculorum, iii, 16-17, v, 18-25, vii, 23, ed. J. Strange, 2 vols. (Cologne, Bonn, Brussels, 1851), 1, pp. 132-4, 296-309; 2, pp. 31-2.

7 depending on ones preference when translating aliquandiu (aliquandiu in Anglia commorantes). Fluent and apparently simple, Williams chapter does not flaunt its structure. The scaffolding is elegantly draped. But scaffolding it has, almost like a letter written according to the rules of the ars dictaminis, and here I will number its parts. [1] First, there is the statement of the theme which is simultaneously the beginning of the narration, In these same days there came into England.... But the narration is immediately interrupted by a set-piece general account of Cathars [2], their origin, geographical spread, their reaction to leniency by lay rulers, and their success in converting certain sorts of people. To this is appended another set-piece [3], a longer historical account of Britain and heresy, which points to its freedom from heresy between the extermination of the followers of Pelagius and the reign of Henry II. There is then [4] the resumption of the narration, which henceforth flows without any interruption up to its natural conclusion with the death of the heretics. There is a final sentence, [5], in which William harks back the theme of [3], Englands long freedom from heresy. Pointing to the way in which the pious rigour of this severity purged England of this pest and prevented28 its re-entry, he is clearly also drawing a moral, contrasting this success-story with one theme in [2], the success enjoyed by heretics when authorities are too lenient towards them. The editor of the Monumenta edition of William omitted section [2], quite rightly from a positivist point of view, for it conveys no facts. For the same reason it is the section which is most illuminating about William himself. Williams first point is about about the name of the Cathars: whom they commonly call Publicani (quos vulgo Publicanos vocant).29 The Lateran canon, only two chapters away in Williams History, can supply the name: the heretics whom some call Cathars, others Publicani, others Paterines (quos alii Catharos, alii Publicanos, alii Paterinos ... nominant). Someone adapting the Laterans alii...alii...alii nominant, reducing three groups of subjects to one, might easily go too far and remove them altogether. This could explain the oddity in Williams sentence, where the people who call the Cathars are not spelled out: vocant has no subject, even though the adverb vulgo clearly indicates that the subject is people in general. Williams next point is about the Cathars origin, doubtless [or surely] ... from an unknown founder in Gascony (nimirum ... ex Gasconia incerto auctore). Both Tours and Lateran decrees mention and emphasise Gascony as a region of Cathar sspread: but not of origin. Under the influence of the view found in early lists, that heresies have must have auctores, and copying out sources which indicated Cathar strength in Gascony, William conjured out of the air an auctor in Gascony, happily qualifying the conjecture with surely but leaving the auctor as unknown. Williams next points are about the many provinces into which the Cathars had spread, which he names, and their multiplication. So many are said to be infected with this pestilence in the widest provinces of Gaul, Spain, Italy and Germany, that they seem, in the words of the prophet, multiplied above number (Psalms 39.6). The rhetorical core - they expanded so much, that - is the same in the Lateran decree: Because in Gascony, the Albigeois and the 28. See the later discussion in this paper about the word which prevented translates (precavit) and whether William really intended a success story. 29. On the name Publicani, see Borst, Katharer, p. 247 and 247 note 1, and Heresies of the High Middle Ages, ed. Wakefield and Evans, p. 723 note 3. On the Paulicians, see now Christian Dualist Heresies in the Byzantine World c. 650-c. 1450, ed. J. Hamilton and B. Hamilton (Manchester, 1998), pp. 5-25.

8 Toulousain and other places ... this damnable perversity grew so strong, that now they carry out their wickedness not in secret... (Quia in Wasconia, Albegesio, et partibus Tolosanis, et aliis locis ... invaluit damnanda perversitas, ut jam non in occulto ... nequitiam suam exerceant...). However, the trope is too common for the similarity to prove anything. The conciliar decrees encouraged William to think of the Cathars infecting very many (in the Tours decree, quamplurimi), and in many provinces, but in Williams precise list of countries we stumble against a much broader picture than is provided in the Tours or Lateran decrees. Part of Williams northern map is self-evident, Germany, the immediate source of the specific Cathars about whom he is writing, and the other part, the northern France which Gaul includes was a commonplace for late twelfth centry writers in England, as we have seen. Where Gaul presumably also included Languedoc there is no surprise, but Italy and Spain are difficult to find among the twelfth century writers. A variant reading in the modern edition of Rievaulxs chartulary copy of the Lateran decree, which has Cathars in the region of Toledo (for Toulouse),30 suggests how an error could arise, but Williams own History has the correct form, Toulouse. Since Italy and Spain constitute good information on the reality of Cathar diffusion, I am driven to suspect its supply by the Cistercian information-network. Williams next point is about princes and prelates dealing with the heretics too leniently. While seducing the simple, the more freely [they act] the more grievously they destroy the vine of the Lord God of Hosts (seducendo simplices, vineam Domini Sabaoth, tanto gravius quam liberius, demoliuntur). While the Tours decree is pushing a different point from Williams - how dangerous heretics are when they are secret rather than when they are free the near identity of its rhetorical construction makes it clear that it was the model for Williams passage. The more secretly it [the heresy] creeps around, the more grievously it destroys the Lords vine among the simple (quanto serpit occultius, tanto gravius Dominicam vineam in simplicibus demolitur). In interpretation of one passage in the Song of Songs, little foxes that destroy the vines, it was a commonplace that the foxes were heretics and the vine the Church, and in particular those whom the foxes devoured. While there was no need for William to derive this from any source other than his own general theological culture and his own preoccupation with the Song of Songs, it would be unwise to ignore the work which was famous for its application of this verse to contemporary Cathars, in particular those of the Rhineland, that is to say, St Bernards Sermons on the Song of Songs. Some of the parallels between Williams chapter on the Cathars and St Benards work, such as the Cathar rejection of sacraments, their secrecy, and heresy coming through diabolic fraud or sorcery have no necessary significance, for they can so easily be found elsewhere. Parallels in their depiction of the low estate and culture of the Cathars are more significant. Certainly this is a common class of people, wrote St Bernard (vile nempe hoc genus), while William wrote that they were clearly rough men (homines plane impoliti) and utterly contemptible (prorsus contemptibiles). Although such disdain can be found elsewhere, its degree is unusual. Turning to the Cathars culture St Bernard invokes a commonplace about heretics as unlettered rustics. Usually rusticus is the principal word and the formulation is rustici sine litteris, or rustici illiterati, sometimes with idiotae, sometimes without. St Bernard, however, chooses to use the much rarer word rusticanus: vile nempe hoc genus et rusticanum, ac sine litteris,31 Certainly this is a common class of people, and rustical, and unlettered. On the same theme Williams words 30. Chartulary of Rievaulx, ed. J.C. Atkinson, Surtees Society, 83 (1889), p. 374: in ... partibus Toletanis (instead of Tolosanis). Christopher Brooke has pointed out to me the possibility of mistranscription by the modern editor rather than the medieval scribe.

9 were these: Rusticani homines sunt et idiotae, et prorsus contemptibiles, they are rustical men and idiots, and utterly contemptible. Williams selection of rusticanus makes his use of St Bernard very plausible.32 St Bernard had written partly in response to information about Cathars discovered in the Rhineland in 1143. Knowledge of that fact would have added to the attraction of his text for William, who was also trying to characterise Cathars who came from Germany. Worth noting here is that the dedicatee of Williams commentary on the Song of Songs, the abbot of Byland, had been a friend of St Bernard.33 Williams treatment of heretical rusticity in general, which concludes part [2] of his account, leads naturally into his particular account of the rusticity of the 1160s mission, which comes near the beginning of part [4]. The two points are held apart by the historical digression about England and heresy, where William derives his point about Pelagianism in Britain from Bedes Ecclesiastical History, I.17. When William resumes, St Bernards cultural emphasis on heretics unlettered rusticity hangs over like a heavy cloud. The Cathars are unlettered rustics, and while it is granted that the leader Gerard is litteratus, this concession is grudging: he is the only one, solus, and he is only somewhat: aliquantulum litteratus. This is the first of Williams two references to the culture of the leader of the German mission. The second occurs when William turns to the examination of the Cathars, where his description of the Cathars begins with the point that the leader Gerard played the role of taking up the cause of all of them, speaking for all of them (suscipiente causam omnium, et loquente pro omnibus). William continues to use the third person plural in describing the examination, They replied ... They were questioned (responderunt ... interrogati), presumably in order to underline followers agreement and therefore share of guilt, but, since he is so emphatic on the leader being the person who spoke for everyone, these have to be turned into the third-person singular: Gerard replied ... Gerard was questioned. It is worth recapitulating and reflecting on what follows. At a time when the English episcopate included some notable scholars34 there was a council of bishops, gathered in Oxford for solemn deliberation. This assembly examined a German Cathar, questioning him about the articles of faith and Gods substance; theological themes were taken up systematically, in turn (per ordinem). The German Cathar replied, making statements about the sacraments of baptism, the eucharist and marriage and about the unity of the Church. Scriptural texts were put to him, and ultimately the German Cathar stated that he did not, however, want to dispute his own faith (de fide sua disputare nolle); after disputing the Catholic faith with these formidable bishops Gerard refused to dispute his own, Cathar, faith. Now, in Williams second reference to Gerards culture he wrote that he seemed litteratus (literatus videbatur). Tied as this is to Gerards performance as a theologian at the Oxford council, it is hardly surprising that it contrasts with Williams earlier statement, and the translation which I would select from the varied meanings of litteratus, which ranged from someone literate in Latin to a man of high learning, is this: 31. Sermon lxv, 8, Opera omnia, 2, p. 177, lines 15-16.

32. Ralph of Coggeshall also applies rusticani to the Cathars, Chronicon Anglicanum, p. 124; as a Cistercian he will have been a reader of St Bernard. 33. Gorman, William of Newburghs Explanatio, p. 22.

34 . M.D. Knowles, The Episcopal Colleagues of Thomas Becket (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 22, 26-30, 39, and B. Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools. A Study of Intellectuals in Politics (Oxford, 1973), passim.

10 He seemed learned. William is not often a transparent and slavish copier, and betrays only by a nuance of rhetoric or an unusual choice of a word a dependence on sources the tracing of which, therefore, is not a demonstrative science. William was unusually well-placed to report on the 1160s mission in England, and probably exploited books, information and ideas available to him in neighbouring Cistercian monasteries, which indirectly networked him to Clairvaux and Cteaux. He placed his Englishmans historical erudition and respect and knowledge of Bede at the service of a view of England and heresy which he wanted to put across: Englands freedom from heresy, and pious severity as the cause of this. In the first instance this is Williams point of view rather than a historical given, and its needs to be set within the context of a broader picture of Catharism in northern Europe and England. While modern tourists know that Cathars lived in Languedoc, erudite historians know of their earlier northern-European existence. Like tenth-century English government, twelfth-century northern Cathars have left scanty traces in the evidence, and they similarly need a James Campbell to point out the lack of relation between the size of their past reality and the size of the evidence that has survived. There has been recent illumination of this shadowy period from Bernard Hamilton, who has demonstrated that the the first Latin church of the Latin Cathars was set up in Constantinople, in the wake of the first crusade. 35 In the following years, shortly after 1100, northern Frenchmen returning to northern France established the first western church (bishopric) of Cathars, with its bishop: the church and bishop of the Cathars of Francia. The earliest Cathars were north-western European, and the Cathars of Provincia (Provence, standing in more broadly for southern France) came from northern France. It seems probable that the strong German communities of the Rhineland resulted from northern French Cathars turning to the north and missionising in the early decades of the twelfth century. Northern Cathars spread quite widely, finding support high up among nobles and merchants. Quoting the newly-translated Aristotle in their theological arguments and using a quasi-Euclidean technique (stating a maxim and logically deriving a theological proposition from it), the Cathar litterati formed part of the higher theology of the northern schools, including Paris. The northern Cathars were eventually firmly repressed, being dealt hammerblows in the Rhineland in the 1140s and 1160s, in Flanders and northern France in the 1180s, in particular at the hands of Count Philip of Flanders and Archbishop William of Rheims, and again in northern France, especially in the diocese of Auxerre, in the 1230s. Although Catharism in southern Europe was at first only an implant from the north, the blazing success enjoyed by southern Cathars and the savagery with which northern Cathars were repressed meant that Languedoc and Italy quickly came to be identified as the Cathar areas: but not immediately. Let us now turn to cases in England, parading them in chronological order and beginning with the episode reported by William, which was one event within the wider reality of this northern Catharism: one of the north-European Cathar missionary efforts. The German Cathar communities we know most about were in Bonn and Cologne, and there were executions of 35. B. Hamilton, Wisdom from the East: the reception by the Cathars of Eastern dualist texts, in Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530, ed Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 38-60. This is the starting-point for another statement of the priority of northern Cathars, in my The Northern Cathars and higher learning, forthcoming in The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy and the Religious Life. Essays in Honour of Gordon Leff, ed P. Biller and R.B. Dobson.

11 Cathars of Cathars in Cologne in 1163. The missionaries to England spoke German, according to William. One of the most striking expressions of German trading activity in England in the twelfth century comes in the mention for the first time, in the reign of Henry II, of the Guildhall of the men of Cologne near Dowgate in London. The frequent journeys of merchants between Cologne and England suggest one possibility, an obvious disguise for a German Cathar mission coming from a Cologne.36 The date of the mission was probably not long after the experience of persecution in Cologne, given that the Cathars, as we have seen, lived in England for some time or some considerable time, before being detained and examined early in 1166., As befitted a movement in which litterati were prominent, the German mission was led by a litteratus. In the dialogue in his De anima Ailred wrote that many of them (plures ex eis) were held in chains. Does this mean that some had not been detained? Secondly, there is the concern expressed by Peter of Blois, a Frenchman most of whose career passed within the ambit of the English Church. A much-travelled man, Peter was in a good position to know about heresy, in particular through his long friendship with Reginald, bishop of Bath,37 noted earlier as one of the two leaders of those who examined Cathars in Toulouse in 1178. Both Peter and Reginald were present at the Lateran Council of 1179. Contemporary heresy crops up several times in Peters writings, in particular in a letter referring to the Publicani (the Cathars) and other heresies, which prefaces an unpublished treatise on the faith.38 He expressed his concern to gird the clergy to action against new and recent heretics, once in a sermon to priests in (an unspecified) synod,39 and again in a letter to Geoffrey Plantagenet, archbishop of York.40 This letter postdates Geoffreys accession in 1191, and probably Peters slow return from Acre during 1191 and his return to England, and it is given another terminus by its entry into Peters letter-collection around 1196. 41 After surveying Geoffreys turning from worldly things to Gods service, Peter begins with the width of the harvest entrusted to Geoffrey (the size of the northern province) and the need to guard against its degeneration, against the shoots of the Lords vine turning into wild vine. In Geoffreys time preachers of false dogmas have arisen, writes Peter, teachers of lies, enemies of the truth and subvertors of faith. These are the heretics, who come to you seeming like 36. Borst, Katharer, p. 94 n. 18; Russell, Dissent and Reform, p. 310 n. 81; C.N.L. Brooke, assisted by G. Keir, London 800-1216: The Shaping of a City (London, 1975), pp. 267-8. 37. J.A. Robinson, Somerset Historical Essays (London, 1921), p. 107.

38. Letter 77, The Later Letters of Peter of Blois, ed. E. Revell, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 13 (Oxford, 1993), p. 326. On the letters see also R.W. Southern, Peter of Blois: a Twelfth Century Humanist?, in his Medieval Humanism (Oxford, 1970), pp. 105-32; L. Wahlgren, The Letter Collections of Peter of Blois: Studies in the Manuscript Tradition (Gteberg, 1993), and R.W. Southerns review of this, Towards an Edition of Peter of Bloiss Letter Collection, EHR, 110 (1995), pp. 925-37. 39. 40. PL, 207, col. 740. Letter 113, PL, 207, cols. 340-41.

41. Southern, Peter of Blois, p. 132 (group III). In her Letter Collections of Peter of Blois, Wahlgren disputes Southerns dating, in particular his use of the latest-dated letters of a group to suggest the date of formation of the group in question.

12 sheep; these are the foxes who destroy the vines. Peter uses no name to denote the heretics, but he has made it clear that they are contemporary, and his scriptural texts are those conventionally used against heretics. The explicit point of Peters letter comes in its conclusion, which is an exhortation to Geoffrey. Geoffrey should summon the clergy and gather the people. After common deliberation, there should be the prumulgation of a terrifying constitution in the province, imposing such severe punishment on heretics that others will be discouraged. Though much of Peters text has characteristic epistolary rhetoric, his vocabulary here is precise: promulgare, constitutio, provincia. The great early historians of Cathars and Inquisition, Charles Schmidt and Henry Charles Lea, took Peters text quite straightfowardly as showing that heretics had been found in the province of York, but later historians have usually passed over his letter in prudent silence.42 Peter was not without experience of the province; in one letter to Fountains he refers to his travelling away from the province, and he also held a prebend in Ripon.43 He was a knowledgeable churchman and he wrote many letters - and none on this subject to any other prelate. Why did he write only to the archbishop of York? In any further speculation, it is worth noting the function of York as a port and its reception of men from Flanders and Germany, and the concentration of attention paid by Yorkshiremen to heresy. It is within a very short time from Peter of Blois letter (1192 x 1196) that William of Newburgh is urging a connection between Englands freedom from heresy and severity, and that Roger of Howden is including so much on heresy. Writing his Chronica (in 1192-3 or 1201-2), Roger noted under 1178 the burning of many Cathars throughout the kingdom of Francia, adding the the peculiar note that this (the burning) was something that the king in no way allowed in his land, despite its very many heretics (quod rex nullo modo fieri permisit in terra sua, licet ibi essent perplurimi).44 There is not much to be gained from the geography of this. Terra sua may denote any of Henry IIs lands, from the Tweed to the Pyrenees. While Gascony is the most likely area in mind, no area is specifically excluded. Even if it is impossible to tease out the precise implications of Rogers point about royal permissiveness of the Cathars, what is significant is that we have two Yorkshire writers in this decade who are making points about repression or lack of repression of heresy. Thirdly there is the period 1210-11. 1210: this year an Albigensian was burnt in London (Hic anno concrematus est quidam Ambigensis apud Londonias).45 By this stage Albigensis was being used so generally that its employment here does not mean the heretics origin in the Albigeois or more broadly Languedoc, only that the heretic in question was a Cathar. A male Cathar heretic was burnt in London. Many of the chronicle entries on executions of Cathars in cities in northern France and the Low countries are nearly as laconic as this. We need to keep in mind the probable preceding events, going backwards in time from the only thing known to us, execution: verdict, trial, imprisonment, capture, discovery, and alarm because a semi42. C. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares ou Albigeois, 2 vols. (Paris, Geneva, 1848-49), 1, pp. 98-99; H.C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3 vols., revised edition (London, New York, 1906), 1, p. 114. Among recent historians the passage has been taken seriously by Duvernoy, Histoire des Cathares, p. 150. 43. 44. Robinson, Somerset Historical Essays, pp. 130-31. Chronica, 2, p. 273.

45. Cronica maiorum et vicecomitum Londoniarum, ed. T. Stapleton, Camden Society, 34 (1846), p. 3. See Borst, Katharer, p. 103 and n. 20.

13 clandestine Cathar mission in England had had sufficient impact, possibly success, to attract notice. Slightly richer is a report which is entered in 1211, and may be a differing version of 1210 or a second episode. It appears in one version of Ralph of Coggeshalls chronicle which is provided in the Monumenta but not the Rolls edition and is, perhaps as a consequence, usually ignored. Albigensian heretics come into England, and some are intercepted [and] burnt (Albigenses heretici in Angliam veniunt, et quidam intercepti comburiuntur).46 There is no specification of area. I read the report as indicating first that the mission is of several Cathars, and secondly either that all were intercepted (and some of these burnt) or that only some of the several who entered England were intercepted (and these some were burnt). Finally, there is the decade of the 1230s. In 1233 and then again 1235, after a short suspension, there was inquisition of heretics, principally Cathars, in various cities and towns of France, Flanders, Champagne, Burgundy, and the other provinces,47 and terrifying executions in Cambrai, Douai, Lille and elsewhere. As we have seen, Matthew Paris noted some of this, but there were also more direct heresy scares inside England. One piece of evidence comes in the Close Rolls from 1236, long ago pointed out by H.G. Richardson.48 The prior of Dominicans in York had arrested someone for heresy, and there was an order to the Sheriff of York for action since there are many faithless people in those parts, who could be convicted of heretical wickedness, so the king has heard (cum plures sint in opartibus illis infideles, et super haeretica pravitate, sicut rex audivit, possit convinci). Notable also is one of the statutes for the diocese of Salisbury enacted by Bishop Robert Bingham, possibly at Easter 1239 (and certainly between 1238 and 1244). This enjoined any priest not to delay in informing the bishop if he finds a heretic, for certain heresies are said to be spreading anew in these parts (quoniam quedam hereses in partibus istis de novo dicuntur pullulare).49 There is a possibility, as in the 1160s, that the heretics in England were refugees, this time from over the channel. Both in the 1190s and 1236 there was concern, then, in the province or city of York, and two Yorkshire writers of the 1190s are preoccupied in different ways with repression. William of Newburgh concluded his account of 1166 very forcefully, saying that the pious rigor of this severity not only purged the kingdom of England of this pest which had lately crept into it, but also prevented (or guarded against) it breaking in again in the future, through the terror stricken into the heretics (huius severitatis pius rigor non solum a peste illa que iam irrepserat Anglie regnum purgavit, verum etiam ne ulterius irreperet, incusso hereticis terrore precavit). This looks straightforward enough, but it is only a prior interpretation which favours prevented over guarded against as a translation for precavit: one implies success, the 46. 20. MGH Scriptores, 27 (1885), p. 357; this was noticed by Borst, Katharer, p. 103 note

47. C.H. Haskins, Robert le Bougre and the beginnings of the Inquisition in Northern France, in his Studies in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), pp. 193-224 (at p. 219). 48. Heresy and the Lay Power under Richard II, EHR, 51 (1936), pp. 1-28, at p. 2; Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, III, A.D. 1233-1237 (London, 1908), p. 358. 49. Councils & Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church, II, A.D. 1205-1313, ed. F.M. Powicke and C.R. Cheney, 2 parts (Oxford, 1964), Part 1, p. 371; see p. 364 for the suggestion of Easter 1239 as the date.

14 other only that precautions were taken, with no comment on their continuing efficacy. Nothing inside Williams text positively indicates that his description of the success of past severity was intended to be read as a praise of past time, designed as a warning against the danger of heresy and lack of pious severity of the time when he was writing, in the 1190s. However, what we have seen outside Williams text - slightly more evidence of heresy or concern about than is usually suspected - makes this reading of William possible. If these are no more than wisps of evidence and conjecture, anyone who cares to make much of them can speculate further, by thinking about plausible lines of communication between north-eastern ports, including York, and those areas of Flanders and northern Germany in which the early Cathars flourished. In his account of the 1160s episode William describes a muliercula, a little woman, whom the Cathar missionaries had gathered to their company by lying whispers and tricks. I suggested above that Ailreds comment that many of the Cathars were detained implies that some were not. Unless these were successful fugitives, these some were adherents who had been easily converted back to catholic faith. Was William bringing an original some down to one: a plausible simplification and reduction after the lapse of thirty years? Ascribing a heresiarchs success in conversion to lies, trickery and diabolic aid was standard obloquy among writers on heresy, and it was also commonplace to select one word, mulierculae, little women, from St Paul and impose it on women, mulieres. Through Williams hostile lies and tricks and his scriptural-pejorative muliercula, then, we glimpse an English woman, mulier, and the barest bones of her story. This English woman encountered the German Cathars, led by the litteratus Gerard but including both men and women in their numbers, thirty according to William. In the massively documented Catharism of Languedoc we see women commonly talking about faith to women and men to men, but this gendered pattern of conversion is far from universal. In this Englishwomans case this detail is unknown. Breaking somehow through a barrier of language, for the missionary Cathars were German by language, she was persuaded. How far? We need here to recall some essential features of Catharism, as they are known in detail in other parts of Europe. In deciding to share Cathar faith someone became what both Cathars and Catholic writers described as a believer, a credens. Now, there was some rough equivalence between the activities of a credens in the Cathar Church and a lay parishioner in the Catholic Church: both believed, for example, and both provided material support for the clergy of their Church. But Cathar theology excluded believers, credentes, from their Church, ecclesia, for until they received the Cathar sacrament, the consolamentum, and became perfects they were not part of the Cathar ecclesial body. Once a credens received the consolamentum, however, she or he did belong to this body, and entered upon the life of a perfect. This was the life of a religious, consisting in ascetic denial and prayer; it could be itinerant (roughly like the life of a Catholic mendicant friar) or it could be sedentary, passed in a settled community resembling a small monastery or nunnery. What, then, of the Englishwoman? Since she later confessed error, she was clearly persuaded of the truth of the Cathar faith, and at the very least became a credens. But Williams narrative says more. He uses a word, ctus, which in this context seems to mean ecclesial company or assembly: the German Cathars gathered her into their company (suo ctui aggregarunt). Brief as they are, these words mean that the Englishwoman went further, becoming a Cathar perfect. The rest of her story apears plainly in Williams words, perhaps with a pejorative touch in his description of her fear: leaving them through fear of punishment, she confessed her error and deserved reconciliation [to the Church] (metu supplicii, discedens ab eis, errorem confessa reconciliationem meruit).

15 Claire Cross was one of the pioneers of the study of Englishwomen in one medieval heresy, Lollardy. To a colleague and friend of many years I dedicate a study which concludes with a Yorkshire chronicler drawing attention to the first known heretical woman in England.