Helen Carr

From persecuted to persecutors: the story of early Christianity

There is no redemption in this account of the birth of Latin Christendom, with ‘heretics’ suffering cruelly for the beliefs, just as Christian martyrs had under the Romans

A 13th-century miniature of Minerve in the Languedoc, a ‘heretic’ town besieged by Simon de Montfort during the Albigensian Crusade. [Getty Images] 
issue 29 July 2023
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  • Beatrice’s Last Smile: A New History of the Middle Ages

    Mark Gregory Pegg

    OUP, pp. 512, £27

Dante travels through the circles of Hell, guided by Virgil. At the summit of the mountain of Purgatory, Virgil abandons him, leaving him with Beatrice, the woman Dante loved. With Beatrice’s smile, Dante is transported to Paradise, experiencing astral bliss as he soars through the cosmos. But Beatrice must leave him at the approach to the Eternal Fountain: for him to glimpse her smile further would be to incinerate him with its divinity.

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