BY HOFFMAN NICKERSON With a Preface by HILAIRE BELLOC JOHN BALE, SONS & DANIELSSON, LTD. 83-91, GREAT TITCHFIELD STREET LONDON, W. 1. 1923 MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN....

To R. C. N. My dear — This book is rightfully yours for your unfailing help and encouragement. In dedicating it I do but make a payment on account. It was begun during a term in the New York State Legislature, when I endured Prohibition lobbyists, and cast about for something which might serve as a historical precedent in the way of religio-political oppression on so vast a scale. I was not long before discovering that traditional Christianity had more to say for the Inquisitors than for the Pro

Nearly all the historical work worth doing at the present moment in the English language is the work of shovelling off heaps of rubbish inherited from the immediate past. The history of Europe and of the world suffered, so far as English letters were concerned, from two vital defects rising at the end of the eighteenth century and lasting to the end of the nineteenth: when the wholesome reaction began. In the first place it was not thorough. In the second place it blindly followed the continenta

The Albigensian Crusade lasted for twenty years, from the original mobilization and march of the crusading army to the treaty which finally ended hostilities. Naturally, for the greater part of this long period there was no heavy fighting, the resources of the opponents could not have supported any such continuous performance; indeed throughout considerable intervals there seems to have been no actual fighting at all. Nevertheless, for twenty years there were hostile forces in being and a state

We have seen that everyone, except perhaps de Montfort himself, expected to see the Crusade annihilated. The event proved them wrong. It is fair, therefore, to speak of the rest of the war and the final surrender of the house of Toulouse as the sequel to the amazing action of Muret. For although that final surrender was postponed sixteen years, without Muret there would have been no surrender at all. Besides its immense result, the campaign of 1213 culminating in the battle of Muret, is interest

The subject of the Inquisition has been worked over so often that it is doubtful whether renewed searching of the original authorities would yield great profit. The law of diminishing returns comes in. The sources quoted in this bibliography are unequal in value. As interpreter of the Mediæval spirit Henry Adams comes first and after him Taylor. For Albigensianism and St. Dominic, Guiraud is best; and Vacandard for the mechanism and spirit of the thirteenth century Inquisition. On mediæval warfa