Prefatory Note on Words

Summary

For the most part I have translated words in other languages, but there are some instances in which I do not translate Latin terminology. I have used the Latin perfecti for Cathar initiates (literally ‘the perfect’, the singular for men being perfectus, the feminine forms being perfecta and perfectae, singular and plural respectively), and credentes for their followers (literally ‘the believers’, singular: credens). Their use is in part a historiographical convention, as I discuss in Chapter 1. As such, there seems little point in using another such convention, more arbitrary, which is to translate the word into English ‘the perfect’. Translating haereticus (plural haeretici; feminine singular and plural: haeretica and heareticae) always and only as ‘heretic’ is problematic too, and this will also be discussed in Chapter 1. Some words, such as castrum (Latin), cannot be translated in a single word anyway, but are explained when referred to initially.

In terms of personal names, I use the modern French where we have it. Some Anglophone scholars make the leap from Latin, in which the vast majority of names were recorded, into modern English, for example from ‘Raimundus’ to ‘Raymond’. I prefer to use the French, hence ‘Raimond’. This approach has the effect of linking us to both the French scholarship and also to the region, as does using modern French adjectives such as ‘Cahorsin’ (of Cahors) and ‘Quercinois’ (of Quercy), and French ways of referring to regions such as the ‘Cahorsain’.