Gregory Lippiatt

Dissenter from the Fourth Crusade, disseised earl of Leicester, leader of the Albigensian Crusade, prince of southern France: Simon of Montfort led a remarkable career of ascent from mid-level French baron to semi-independent count before his violent death before the walls of Toulouse in 1218.  Through the vehicle of the crusade, Simon cultivated autonomous power in the liminal space between competing royal lordships in southern France in order to build his own principality.  This first English biographical study of his life examines the ways in which Simon succeeded and failed in developing this independence in France, England, the Midi, and on campaign to Jerusalem.  Simon’s familial, social, and intellectual connexions shaped his conceptions of political order, which he then implemented in his conquests.  By analysing contemporary narrative, scholastic, and documentary evidence—including a wealth of archival material—this book argues that Simon’s career demonstrates the vitality of baronial independence in the High Middle Ages, despite the emergence of centralised royal bureaucracies.  More importantly, Simon’s experience shows that barons themselves adopted methods of government that reflected a concern for accountability, public order, and contemporary reform ideals.  This study therefore marks an important entry in the debate about baronial responsibility in medieval political development, as well as providing the most complete modern account of the life of this important but oft-overlooked crusader.

La carrière de Simon de Montfort – seigneur français, earl anglais, croisé en Terre sainte et dans le Midi de la France – n’a pas cessé de marquer ses contemporains et sa postérité. Bien de ses compagnons d’armes ont vu en lui le plus pieux et le plus courageux des héros, le modèle du chevalier du Christ (miles Christi). Cette image prestigieuse a cours de son vivant et après son prétendu martyre au service du combat contre la dépravation hérétique. Cependant, dans les contrées occitanophones et dans la péninsule Ibérique, sa réputation devient aussi celle d’un brigand, d’un barbare, d’un intrus étranger, cupide et sans scrupules. Les actes du colloque tenu à Poitiers en 2018 reviennent sur sa vie et sur son lignage afin de comprendre l’homme dans toutes ses contradictions : le croisé incorruptible en Terre sainte, mutilant toute une garnison en Languedoc, le vainqueur du roi d’Aragon, soumettant toutes ses conquêtes au roi de France, le spoliateur des seigneurs légitimes du Midi, protégeant les veuves et le clergé local, le membre d’un puissant lignage franco-normand dont son héritage se perpétue dans toute l’Europe. Simon est à la fois le produit de son temps et l’agent de son devenir, un conquérant et un perdant. Caractère sombre et puissant, il semble être à l’image de son emblème héraldique: un lion à la queue fourchée.

La carrière de Simon de Montfort, chef de la croisade albigeoise de 1209 à 1218, offre un éclairage rare sur la réponse laïque aux ordonnances et aux critiques cléricales concernant la seigneurie temporelle. Grâce à l'étude de traités scolastiques, de sources narratives et de documents constitutionnels, cet article met en évidence les relations entre Simon et les intellectuels contemporains qui prônent une réforme chrétienne, et leur impact sur ses actions durant la quatrième croisade (1199-1203) et la croisade contre les albigeois. L'attachement de Simon, à travers les cisterciens, aux écoles parisiennes a une grande influence non seulement sur son voeu de croisade, mais aussi sur sa mise en oeuvre du pouvoir. Cependant, Simon ignore et contredit également l'enseignement des écoles sur des sujets aussi importants que les mercenaires et l'usure. Cet article démontre ainsi comment les seigneurs croisés peuvent adopter les préceptes de la théologie pratique tels qu'énoncés par les intellectuels de leur temps, tout en dessinant les limites que même les laïcs qui y sont favorables entendent appliquer à leurs politiques « réformées ».

The career of Simon of Montfort, leader of the Albigensian Crusade from 1209-1218, offers a rare insight into the lay response to clerical prescriptions and criticisms about temporal lordship. Through an examination of scholastic treatises, narrative sources, and constitutional documents, this paper traces Simon's connexions with contemporary intellectuals advocating Christian reform and their impact on his actions on the Fourth (1199-1203) and Albigensian Crusades. Simon's attachment, through the Cistercians, to the Parisian schools had a profound impact not only on his adoption of the crusade vow but also on his implementation of power. However, Simon also ignored and contradicted reform teaching on important subjects such as mercenaries and usury. This paper therefore demonstrates the ways in which crusading barons might engage with the practical theology of contemporary intellectuals, while hinting at the limits of what even sympathetic laymen found practical to implement in their " reformed " regimes.

The siege of Beaucaire in 1216 marked a turning point in the first, Montfortine stage of the Albigensian Crusade.  After the defeat at Beaucaire, Simon of Montfort's streak of apparent invincibility had been broken, and his personal fortunes and those of his family in the Midi would never recover.  This paper examines the reasons why Beaucaire served as such a powerful symbol before the siege and explores the ambiguities emerging from the Fourth Lateran Council that made it an ideal test case of the new crusader settlement.  Appended to the chapter is the first complete published edition of the charter recording Simon of Montfort's homage to Archbishop Michael of Arles.

Contemporary critics and modern historians have both faulted the Albigensian Crusade, directed against heretics in the south of France, for weakening attempts to recover Jerusalem for Christendom in the early thirteenth century. This essay explores the competition between the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades. Placing these crusades alongside each other, this essay will examine the conversation between them. It is often charged that the armed and eventually royal effort against the Albigensian heretics drained French crusaders and resources from Pope Innocent III’s second great push from 1213 to recapture Jerusalem that eventually led to a negotiated settlement under Emperor Frederick II in 1229—the year of the capitulation of Count Raymond VII of Toulouse in the Treaty of Paris. Certainly the Albigensian Crusade played its part among the European conflicts which distracted potential crusaders from setting out for the Holy Land, but this picture is incomplete. In fact, the correlation between crusade preachers and crusaders who participated in the Albigensian Crusade and the Fifth Crusade suggests that the former may have indirectly strengthened participation in the latter. By contextualising contemporary criticism of the Albigensian Crusades in favour of the drive to the East and examining the participants in and timing of expeditions to the French Midi, Egypt, and Syria, this essay argues that the Albigensian Crusade reinforced as much as distracted from the Fifth Crusade.