The Albigensian Crusade of the early thirteenth century saw crusading used to combat heresy in southern France. Dr Gregory Lippiatt, in discussion with the CWD’s Dr Sophie Ambler, discusses how the crusade came about, its brutality and violence, and the role of Simon V of Montfort. Dr Lippiatt also discusses developments in governance introduced by the Statutes of Pamiers (1212), a crusader constitution for the Midi.

Dr Lippiatt is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Exeter and a historian of aristocratic government in the High Middle Ages and its intersection with Christian reform movements, particularly the crusades.

Dr Lippiatt's work considers the ways in which barons attempted to use their lordship to create an idealised Christian republic, at times through the imposition of military force. He is currently preparing a major monograph for Oxford University Press on the Statutes of Pamiers.

Dr Lippiatt’s publications include Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195-1218, (Oxford University Press, 2017), ‘Reform and Custom: the Statutes of Pamiers in Early Thirteenth-Century Christendom’, in M. Aurell , G. Lippiatt and L. Macé (eds.), Simon de Montfort (c. 1170-1218): Le croisé, son lignage et son temps, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), and ‘Worse than all the Infidels: the Albigensian Crusade and the Continuing Call of the East’, in G. Lippiatt and J. Bird (eds.), Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019).

Dr Lippiatt's blog for the Exeter Centre for Medieval Studies, is free to access: https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/medievalstudies/2020/04/a-new-charter-from-the-fourth-crusade/

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).