Factual record of a woman who remembers her life in the 13th century.

Factual record of a woman who remembers her life in the 13th century.

This book describes how a group of people, who had lived and suffered together in the 13th century, re-assembled in the 20th century in a limited area in the west of England. Independently of each other these people tuned in, with the piercing accuracy of searchlights, to the same tragic events in the Languedoc in the years 1242 to 1244. One of the most remarkable features of the book is the description of sketches made by a child of seven. It is clear that in these she too was remembering the same tragic years. Of this circle of people alive in the 20th century, the author has discovered the mediaeval names and roles of seven of the eight involved. Though born with a highly developed critical faculty the author regards the material revealed to him as unique. He has written this book to record faithfully an astounding experience and to fulfil the obligation laid on him to provide proof, not only of group reincarnation, but of the indestructibility of the human psyche.

A study of the history and beliefs of Catharism.

In 1300, the French region of Languedoc had been cowed under the authority of both Rome and France since Pope Innocent III 's Albigensian Crusade nearly a century earlier. That crusade almost wiped out the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians whose beliefs threatened the authority of the Catholic Church. But decades of harrowing repression-enforced by the ruthless Pope Boniface VIII , the Machiavellian French King Philip the Fair of France, and the pitiless grand inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui (the villain in The Name of the Rose)-had bred resentment. In the city of Carcassonne, anger at the abuses of the Inquisition reached a boiling point and a great orator and fearless rebel emerged to unite the resistance among Cathar and Catholic alike. The people rose up, led by the charismatic Franciscan friar Bernard Délicieux and for a time reclaimed control of their lives and communities. Having written the acclaimed chronicle of the Cathars The Perfect Heresy , Stephen O'Shea returns to the medieval world to chronicle a rare and remarkable story of personal courage and principle standing up to power, amidst the last vestiges of the endlessly fascinating Cathar world. Praise for The Perfect Heresy : "At once a cautionary tale about the corruption of temporal power...and an accounting of the power of faith ...It is also just a darn good read."-Baltimore Sun "An accessible, readable history with lessons ...that were not learned by broad humanity until it saw 20th-century tyrants applying the goals and methods of the Inquisition on a universal scale."-New York Times