Simon Schama, the author of The Embarrassment of Riches and Citizens , sets out to tell the history of two certainties, of two deaths. In discussing the speculations surrounding them, he finds himself involved in a history he cannot classify - the unpredictable history of stories.

Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This analysis of beliefs held on different levels of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700.

In the 13th century, a group of heretics in southwest France, the Cathars, became a serious threat to the Catholic church. In several waves of repression, thousands of Cathars were killed. Yet so ardent was their faith that, early in the next century, the Cathars rose one last time. This title tells the story of this historical episode.

This history of the great heretical movements of the middle ages provides an account of the dissent and protests made against the Medieval churches of Rome and Byzantium. It examines the origins and nature of these heresies, and how medieval churchmen grappled with deviation.

The Cathars, a group of heretical Christians from all walks of society, high and low, flourished in what is now the Languedoc in Southern France. Their subversive beliefs brought down on them the wrath of Popes and monarchs and provoked a brutal 'Crusade' against them.