Historical anniversaries function as the Hallmark cards of collective memory, and 2009’s birthday boys—Darwin, Lincoln, Poe—have been subjected to the customary crush of commemoration reserved for the good and the great. But not all anniversaries are happy ones.
I learned of one such milestone last spring via a preview of an issue of Pays Cathare—Catharism being the only medieval heresy, incidentally, with its own glossy magazine. The entire publication, four-colour illustrations and all, would be given over to the Cathars’ dreadful summer of 1209. Emails from friends in Languedoc confirmed the news: their region of France would be partying to mark the eight hundredth anniversary of the Sack of Béziers. This gave me pause. Having ...
