Pegg, Mark Gregory 1963-

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Pegg, Mark Gregory 1963-

PERSONAL:

Born August 26, 1963, in Australia. Education: University of Sydney, B.A.; Princeton University, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Washington University, 1 Brookings Dr., St. Louis, MO 63130. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University College, University of London, London, England, research assistant, 1988-89; University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, tutor and lecturer in medieval history, 1990, visiting fellow, 1997-98; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, preceptor and lecturer, 1993, 1996, research assistant, 1996-97, chair and coordinator of Medieval Seminar, 1997; Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, visiting assistant professor, 1998, assistant professor, 1999-2004, associate professor of history, 2004—. Speaker at conferences and symposiums. Consultant for The Inquisition (docu-mentary), 1991-96.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including Australia-United States of America Fund Research Fellowship, 1997-98, German-American Frontiers of the Humanities grant, 2004, and Mellon New Directions Fellowship, 2005-2008.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2001.

A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor to books, including Dissent and Persecution: R.I. Moore and Heresy in the Middle Ages, edited by Michael Frassetto, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI); Encyclopedia of Religious Freedom, edited by Catherine Cookson, Routledge (London, England), 2003; and New Westminster Dictionary of Church History, edited by Christopher Ocker, John Knox Press. Contributor of articles and reviews to journals and periodicals, including Catholic Historical Review, Speculum, Sunday Times (London, England), and Journal of Religious History.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mark Gregory Pegg is a medieval scholar and a professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His areas of expertise include the Middle Ages, the Early Inquisition and the Great Inquisition of 1245-1246, the Albigensian Crusade, magic, and witchcraft. His first published book was The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246, published in 2001. In it, he discusses the idea of heresy, which in his book refers to religious beliefs contrary to the accepted truths as taught by the Roman Catholic Church. Because heresy depends on an orthodoxy to define it, it is a somewhat fluid concept, and studying it can be a difficult task. Yet, in The Corruption of Angels, Pegg "manages to hold to the conceptual problems of the question throughout," reported John H. Arnold in the H-France Review. "His response to thinking about heresy is insightful, intriguing, occasionally problematic, but well worth reading, whether or not one is particularly interested in the field of medieval religion."

Pegg's study focuses extensively on the Cathars, a group of people based in southern France who believed in not one, but two gods. Cathars believed that a good god had created the spirit world, while a bad god had created the physical world. The leaders of the Cathars were known variously, among their followers, as "perfects," "good men," or "Friends of God." They preached during the twelfth century, and demonstrated enough influence over the people to prompt the Catholic Pope, Innocent III, to call for a campaign against them during the thirteenth century. This opened the way for repression and persecution under the name of the Inquisition. In describing the Cathars, their beliefs, and their way of life, the author attempts "not to distill his subjects' beliefs so much as to unfold the fabric of life in which those beliefs were implicated," explained Richard Kieckhefer in an article in the Catholic Historical Review. "He does so superbly." Jay T. Lees, evaluating the book in History: Review of New Books, called it "a wonderful book deserving to be read from beginning to end. It is a ‘good read’ that will capture the imagination."

One of the author's objectives is to open the way for new thinking about Catharism. He points out that the group known as Catharists never called themselves that. Over time, they have been defined by the forces that were trying to drive them out of existence. Pegg feels they should not be thought of as "Catharist" at all. He also takes exception to the idea, expressed in a great deal of literature on medieval heresy, that certain groups of heretics, including the Cathars, embodied unchanged, dualistic ideas from ancient cultures. He also documents how good men and women could be transformed into outcasts, shunned by others who wanted to avoid the danger of associating with them. According to Arnold: "At the heart of his argument is a great, intelligent, and powerful idea: not to look at the heresy from the top down, with the bias of ideas, but to look at how the actual people involved talk about their faith. The sensitive training of an anthropologist comes to the fore here." The reviewer was enthusiastic about Pegg's writing style as well as his content, and called The Corruption of Angels a "highly entertaining, well-researched, original, thoughtful, and fun book. It is a wonderful and important addition to the field of medieval heresy studies, but also something that should be read by social historians of other periods, in its sensitive arguments about how we understand the relationship between ideas and lived experience." Thomas Renna, a writer for Church History, felt the author failed to draw conclusions from his material, but added that "what is included is no less than brilliant, for this study is an incisive analysis of a major record of inquisitorial proceedings."

Pegg's next book is titled A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom. The Albigensian Crusade is frequently confused with the campaign against the Cathars, but involved a different group of people. The Albigensians were people who followed their own folk religion, rather than the teachings of the Catholic Church. When a papal agent was murdered in 1208 in their region of southern France, a violent reaction came from Innocent III. Certain that the area around Montpelier and Bordeaux harbored nests of people who were not loyal to the Church or to him, Innocent urged all knights and barons to engage in a crusade to drive all heretics from the area. Pegg argues that this crusade was the first instance of genocide in the world, and set a precedent for Christians to persecute Jews and Muslims for years to come. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly found the book "compelling" both for its examination of religious violence and for its insight into how religions so easily become intolerant of other belief systems.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June 1, 2002, Bernard Hamilton, review of The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246, p. 925.

Catholic Historical Review, January 1, 2008, Richard Kieckhefer, review of The Corruption of Angels, p. 142.

Church History, June 1, 2006, Thomas Renna, review of The Corruption of Angels, p. 418.

History: Review of New Books, June 22, 2001, Jay T. Lees, review of The Corruption of Angels, p. 166; June 22, 2001, review of The Corruption of Angels, p. 166.

Library Journal, February 15, 2008, James A. Overbeck, review of A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom, p. 110.

Publishers Weekly, December 24, 2007, review of A Most Holy War, p. 47.

Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, October 1, 2003, Peter Biller, review of The Corruption of Angels, p. 1366.

Times Literary Supplement, June 15, 2001, review of The Corruption of Angels, p. 37.