This is a history of the medieval heretical movements - the lives of the men and women whose ideas and actions had, by the end of the Middle Ages, tranformed utterly the religious and political map of Europe.
Michael Frassetto's account of five centuries of social and spiritual turmoil is a vivid and telling mix of events, personality and ideas. His cast of characters includes Bogomil, an obscure priest of the Balkan countryside who introduced 'Manichaean' ideas to his parishioners; Henry the monk, the first true heresiarch, who eluded his captors and prepared Languedoc for the Cathars; Valdes the rich merchant who renounced worldly goods to found the movement that would evolve into the Waldensian Church; Pierre Autier, last of the Cathar 'perfects'; and John Wyclif the gentle Oxford scholar who with his disciple the Czech priest Jan Hus - the first disinterred from his grave in an English country churchyard, the other burnt as an urban spectacle - heralded the Reformation. This is history replete with passion, terror and hope, a key to the heart of medieval Europe.
