Although often overshadowed by his more famous son, Simon V of Montfort (d. 1218) was an ambitious, cunning, and practical ruler who showed great flexibility in navigating the currents of power in England and France, but was ultimately undone by his attempts to effect ecclesiastical reform through crusade in Toulouse. In this thorough and readable account of Simon's career, G.E.M. Lippiatt admirably mines a variety of sources to reconstruct Simon's approach to governance, nobility, and religion. He not only shows why Simon is a worthy subject for in-depth study, but also demonstrates why we should have a greater focus on the role of barons in discussions of governance and public order.
The book is laid out into six chapters, with the first three thematically examining Simon's approach to his lord/vassal relationships, his interaction with crusading, and his embrace of ecclesiastical reform ideology. The second three chapters trace Simon's career from his lordship of Montfort, through his holding of Carcassonne, and culminating in his rise to the duchy of Narbonne. This is a reasonable structure, though it does lead to some repetition as Lippiatt seeks to demonstrate Simon's use of specific elements from the first three chapters in his treatment of his lordships.
Lippiatt sets out in the introduction both to lay out the structure of the monograph, and to contextualize previous studies of Simon V. He wants to reconstruct and analyze the "practical aspects" of Simon V's authority during this time of growing royal and ecclesiastical pressures to centralize power and governmental authority, while at the same time avoiding the "moral posturing" that so often infects treatments of Simon (4). He gives a good overview of how contemporaries fit Simon into their understandings of the world; almost all were value-laden judgments, and Lippiatt wisely points out that this moralizing (both among contemporaries and modern historians) hampers our understanding of how Simon understood his pursuit of his objectives. He also stresses that Simon's autonomy must be studied in the context of his role as a subject (since he was never officially sovereign) as well as a lord.
Chapter 1 focuses on Simon's role as a subject and vassal. The chapter begins with a valuable account of the decline of the Montfort fortunes in the later twelfth century, tracking them as they became an exclusively "French" baronial family, rather than Norman-French counts. The rest of the chapter is largely taken up with useful discussions of Simon's relationship with his four "lords"--King John of England (with whom he was usually at odds), King Peter of Aragon (whom he largely had the upper hand over in their relationship), King Philip of France, and Pope Innocent III. In his discussion of Simon's relationship with Innocent, Lippiatt provides a good analysis of their relationship, including Simon's submissiveness towards the Pope, but he could have brought out more of why Simon cultivated this relationship; there are allusions to how it solidified Simon's temporal power, but there are avenues left unexplored.
Chapter 2 examines Simon's relationship with crusading, and the Albigensian crusade in particular. Lippiatt looks beyond the flowery rhetoric of crusade apologists and prescriptive papal evidence to instead illuminate Simon's decision to embrace the crusade based on his family relationships and the attitudes of the lay aristocracy. Simon's decision is especially interesting in that his family did not have a long history or tradition of crusading, though his actions served to provide that for his immediate descendants. In discussing Simon's motivations for taking the cross, and the decision of men to follow him, Lippiatt argues against the older theory that the Albigensian crusade attracted the younger sons of northern lords seeking lands in the south, pointing instead to the relationships between noble houses and ecclesiastical foundations, and ultimately to the intense personal loyalty that men apparently felt towards Simon. Lippiatt argues that, while Simon's reputation for unimpeachable loyalty (which served to inspire his followers) was largely a construct of friendly chroniclers, there was enough truth to it to explain how he assembled his retinue.
Chapter 3 finishes the thematic treatments of Simon's career with an examination of his relationship with religious ideology and reform. This is an understandable interest, given Simon's important relationships with ecclesiastical establishments and the crusade(s), though the chapter is itself rather speculative. This is due to the lack of clear evidence on how Simon interacted with ecclesiastical reform rhetoric, and thus it becomes very difficult to determine definitively his relationship with reformers. Lippiatt addresses this evidentiary lacuna by focusing on Simon's actions vis-à-vis ecclesiastical institutions, and assessing whether these actions would be in accord with the general goals of reformers. This approach makes sense and allows Lippiatt to argue that Simon had embraced reform ideology, but that he was also practicable and adaptable in its implementation. Ultimately, Simon was driven more by a desire to crush heresy than by the need to implement doctrinaire ecclesiastical reform.
The second half of the book contains three chapters that assess Simon's lordships, beginning with his lordship of Montfort and the earldom of Leicester. Lippiatt nicely shows how Simon styled and presented himself as lord of Montfort, and he documents Simon's attempts to inflate the prestige of his holding, thereby identifying a permeable rhetorical barrier between counts and lesser barons- if a baron could get away with presenting himself as having greater prestige, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As viscount of Béziers, Simon tried balancing military conquest, ecclesiastical reform, and anti-heresy activities, and largely succeeded, though he ended up focusing more on the military aspects of governance than he likely intended, a pattern that continued in chapter six in his years as duke of Narbonne (leading to his death at Toulouse in 1218). These chapters also give a good overview of Simon's continuation of his family's patterns of almsgiving as a mechanism of lordship and a nice survey of Simon's financial resources, approach to governance, and the challenges in each that he faced.
In the end, this is a strong book, and it broadens our understanding of how the upper-nobility in France interacted with major currents of political and intellectual life in the late twelfth-and early-thirteenth centuries. However, there are areas that could have been improved, particularly relating to the book's conversion from a doctoral thesis to a monograph. In several places, notably in the introduction, the hallmarks of a thesis remain, as well as in the introductions and conclusions of each chapter. While these do not detract too much from the value of the book, they do distract the reader from the overall thrust of the arguments (which are very good). Substantively, one area that could have been more fruitfully explored would have been Simon's interactions with the ideas and literature of chivalry. As a major French nobleman and crusader at the end of the twelfth century, contextualizing Simon within the growing awareness of the lay ideology of chivalric ideals would, perhaps, have helped flesh out our understanding of his actions and perceptions. However, these are relatively minor complaints, and overall the book is a very valuable addition to our understanding of lordship and nobility in high medieval France.