O'Shea, Stephen

PERSONAL:

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Providence, RI.

CAREER:

Writer, journalist, translator, and historian. Paris correspondent for periodicals, including Variety, Elle, and Interview.

WRITINGS:

Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1996, Walker and Co. (New York, NY), 1997.

The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars, Walker and Co. (New York, NY), 2000.

Sea of Faith: The Shared Story of Christianity and Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean World, Walker and Co. (New York, NY), 2006, published as Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stephen O'Shea's Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I was inspired by his 1985 winter hike across one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War I, a conflict that lasted four years and left ten million dead. "This is not military history," noted Susan Adams in Forbes. "Rather, it is the past as seen through the eyes of a curious traveler, refreshingly aware of his failings and the irony of his surroundings…. This is a great read."

Paris-based journalist O'Shea found the earth of World War I's Western Front still marked by a continuing line of trenches and was amazed to find rusting bullets, unexploded shells, and disintegrating gas masks littering the landscape. Beginning the next summer, he walked the length of the front, 450 miles from Belgium's North Sea coast to the border of France and Switzerland. He visited the Langemarck cemetery near Ypres, Belgium, where 44,000 Germans are buried, many of them not-yet-fully trained student volunteers who were mowed down by British machine guns. O'Shea observed the museums, monuments, burial grounds, and vaults that contained the bones of the dead as he walked from village to village. Over the next ten years, O'Shea also read all the literature that pertained to the war and considered the role of his own family members in the conflict. His Irish grandfathers fought for the British, and he lost two great-uncles.

Library Journal contributor Mark E. Ellis commented that "what does emerge from his narrative is a shocking description of what happened on the battlefields." O'Shea writes that generals who lost up to 100,000 men in one month began new offensives the next month, using the same tactics. He also writes of the individual battles, notably in Verdun, Somme, and Argonne. "What is most compelling about his re-creations of the great battles is the way he interweaves them with the landscape of today," noted John Bemrose in Maclean's. "Everywhere he looks, O'Shea discovers absurdity, as though the assembly-line slaughter had undermined the meaningfulness of human life right down to the present." Booklist critic Gilbert Taylor wrote: "With this ambulant meditation and protest against militarism, O'Shea has created a high-stature addition to the classic works about the Great War." A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that O'Shea "displays a poet's gift of description and a sorrowful, contemplative pacifism in expressing the horror and futility of the Great War."

In writing The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars, O'Shea spent two years in the south of France researching the rise and fall of the heretical group founded in the twelfth century and whose members were slaughtered by the Church. He begins in Albi, at the imposing cathedral built of red stone by Bishop Bernard de Castanet, one of the officials of the Catholic Church who had seen their power threatened by Catharism, a medieval variation of Gnostic Christianity. Loren Rosson III wrote in the Library Journal that "at times, the book reads like a historical novel." History contributor John E. Weakland considered why this book, "not designed to replace scholarly works," was necessary. He concluded that "the answer lies in the brilliant narrative of O'Shea, whose gripping tale is filled with a cast of truly memorable heroes and villains who are introduced to the reader in a series of biographical sketches at the beginning of the book."

"Who were these Cathars who inspired such fanatical cruelty?" wondered Joshua Levin in Forbes. "Not much of a menace to anyone, really. The Cathar faith stemmed from the same paradox that fuels every dualistic gnostic heresy, to wit: If God is so good, how come the world is so crummy? The Cathars' theological solution made the body and all the material world the Devil's dominion, while leaving the human spirit and Heaven in God's hands."

The geographical base of the French Cathars was what is now Languedoc, but the Cathars could also be found in Germany and Italy. They practiced vegetarianism and believed in tolerance, pacifism, and gender equality. Their spiritual leaders, called the Perfect, drew followers from the Catholic Church, which the Cathars said represented a false religion. Because of their beliefs, they shunned material goods. They also rejected the sacraments, the concept of hell, and the account of Christ's crucifixion. During this period, the aristocracy of Northern Europe lived luxuriously. Popes begged the noblemen of the region to remove the heretics, to no avail, and St. Dominic was sent on a preaching tour. The turning point came when papal legate Peter of Castelnau was killed by a henchman of the Count of Toulouse. The abbott Arnauld Amaury led an army of some 40,000 knights and soldiers down the Rhône Valley in 1209, to stop first at Béziers, where the entire town of 20,000 people was slaughtered, including faithful Catholics and a newborn baby. Amaury is credited with having said: "Kill them all. God will recognize his own." Thus began the Albigensian crusade, during which the heretics were murdered, often by being burned alive.

This continued for half a century, during which time the Inquisition was established by Pope Innocent III to find and kill any remaining Cathars who might have been missed. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that O'Shea suggests that this "enabled the expansion of the French monarchy into the formerly independent region of Languedoc and created the first modern police state." Spectator writer Susan Lowry stated that "this was a Christian jihad waged against Christians, a horrific spin-off from the better-known but even more gruesome Crusades to "liberate" the Holy Land, still celebrated as glorious exploits in children's picture books."

Wendy Orent reviewed The Perfect Heresy in the Guardian, noting that "in the nineteenth century, the subject drew writers—many of them cranks—attracted to the story of the faith's demise." Among these was Napoleon Peyrat, anticlerical liberal and talented fabulist, whose 1870s account, although largely fabricated, still is accepted as truth in some circles. "His Cathars were heroic, the forefathers of progress in the darkness of Catholic totalitarianism," wrote Orent. "His heretics hoarded an immense treasure—spiritual and material—at Montsegur, and managed, before their incineration, to hide it in the foothills of the Pyrenees. And Esclarmonde of Foix, a high-born Cathar Perfect who may have debated with St. Dominic, was transformed, in Peyrat's narrative, into an Occitan Joan of Arc, a virginal high priestess."

Peyrat's interpretations were incorporated into French fable, literature, fantasy, and occult belief. Following World War I, the myths of the Cathars spread beyond France, and Languedoc became the subject of the writings of many, including Simone Weil, who wrote as Emile Novis and considered the site to be a moral utopia, and Maurice Magre, who in the 1920s and 1930s wrote two Cathar novels in which he rewrote Peyrat's version of history, portraying the Perfect as Buddhists.

In 1930, Magre met German student Otto Rahn in Paris and then introduced him to his associates in the Pyrenees. Rahn wrote Crusade against the Grail in 1933, in which he portrayed the Cathars as pagans and the guardian of the Grail as the feminine Esclarmonde of Foix. Rahn returned to Germany, joined the SS, and published The Court of Lucifer. Following World War II, the Nazis and Cathars were linked by former Vichy collaborators who said that Hitler was part of the Cathar secret society. The story was adapted as the plots of the "Indiana Jones" films, beginning with Raiders of the Lost Ark.

During the 1960s, the Pyrenees became home to a variety of groups, including Dutch Rosicrucians, Belgian neo-gnostics, and French hippies. The area was visited by archeologists, neo-pagans, and the curious, and became the subject of books, both fiction and nonfiction, including The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. "The trio made Catharism a mass phenomenon and turned the international Glastonbury Arthurian followers on to a new medieval romance," noted Orent. "The writers took the legacy of Magre, Roche, and others and wrote a thoroughly entertaining occult detective story, marketed, however, as nonfiction." This fictional account tells that a priest found the treasure, sold some of it, and blackmailed the Vatican. The plot also puts forth the idea that Jesus was a king who married Mary Magdalene.

Orent noted that the commercialization of the Cathars has extended to businesses in the region, including real estate, restaurants, and wineries, and that there are more than 5,000 Web sites that benefit from the Cathar name. Orent wrote that "the medieval heresy, which the Catholic Church thought it had so successfully quelled, has, thanks to fabulists, cranks, wishful thinkers, and romantics, proved remarkably enduring."

J.L. Nelson wrote in the London Review of Books that "O'Shea devastatingly exposes the political interests of the Crusaders, the recurrent manifestations of their hypocrisy, the acts of horrific violence perpetrated on fellow Christians as well as on heretics." Booklist reviewer Margaret Flanagan called The Perfect Heresy "a riveting chronicle of a shameful episode in medieval church history."

Lowry stated that O'Shea "writes with the enthusiasm and immediacy of a contemporary chronicler, with the occasional, rather startling use of modern slang: at one point Innocent III makes ‘an historic flip-flop’; Mary Magdalene ‘was never associated with Lady Luck.’ O'Shea even contrives to have some fun…. By contrast, his accounts of battles, massacres, and burnings are starkly moving. The book is unputdownable." Lowry continued: "The Crusade is placed squarely in its wider historical context: the author believes that, far from being an aberration or footnote to the general awfulness of the Middle Ages, it marked an important turning point, a crossroads." In a Washington Post Book World review, Rene Weis called O'Shea "a graceful and passionate writer."

In Sea of Faith: The Shared Story of Christianity and Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean World, O'Shea carefully explores the tumultuous history of Christian and Muslim coexistence in the Mediterranean. In a narrative that covers more than a thousand years, O'Shea looks at how the two religious groups have fought fiercely between themselves, but also lived in peace for long periods of time. The author considers seven major battles between Muslims and Christians, discusses the significance and repercussions of each, and reflects on how each battle helped shape the spiritual and religious fiber of the post-Crusades world. In addition to his coverage of warfare and conflict, he also describes several periods of convivencia, described by a Kirkus Reviews contributor as "the practice of Muslims and Christians living together in harmony," during which commerce and culture thrived. O'Shea adds a modern element to his story via firsthand descriptions of the current state of ancient battlegrounds, as well as buildings, towns, and other structures.

"O'Shea's marvelous accomplishment offers an unparalleled glimpse of the struggles of each religion to establish dominance in the medieval world," as well as the means of cooperation they established while coexisting within the same territory, noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Mick Herron, writing in Geographical, named Sea of Faith an "important, intelligent, absorbingly well-written account" of the history of Islamic and Christian life in the ancient Mediterranean region. The book is a "gripping account of Christianity and Islam's last tortured millennium of combat and coexistence," noted the Kirkus Reviews contributor. Anthony Elia, writing in the Library Journal, called O'Shea's book "well written" and "a rich chronicle of historical detail, military confrontation, and political machinations."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 1997, Gilbert Taylor, review of Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I, p. 1560; August, 2000, Margaret Flanagan, review of The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars, p. 2082.

California Bookwatch, February, 2007, review of Sea of Faith: The Shared Story of Christianity and Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean World.

Forbes, October 20, 1997, Susan Adams, review of Back to the Front, p. 324; June 12, 2000, Joshua Levine, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 442.

Geographical, September, 2006, Mick Herron, "Sibling Rivalry Writ Large on the Shores of the Medieval Mediterranean," review of Sea of Faith, p. 91.

Guardian (London, England), October 7, 2000, Wendy Orent, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 1.

History, fall, 2000, John E. Weakland, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 35.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006, review of Sea of Faith, p. 396.

Library Journal, May 15, 1997, Mark E. Ellis, review of Back to the Front, p. 86; August, 2000, Loren Rosson III, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 112; June 1, 2006, Anthony Elia, review of Sea of Faith, p. 126.

London Review of Books, June 7, 2001, J.L. Nelson, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 28.

Maclean's, February 10, 1997, John Bemrose, review of Back to the Front, p. 59.

New Yorker, August 6, 2001, Joan Acocella, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 82.

New York Times, October 23, 2000, Richard Bernstein, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. B7.

Publishers Weekly, May 12, 1997, review of Back to the Front, p. 70; July 31, 2000, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 85; January 23, 2006, review of Sea of Faith, p. 119; April 10, 2006, review of Sea of Faith, p. 67.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2006, review of Sea of Faith.

Spectator, December 16, 2000, Suzanne Lowry, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 79.

Times Literary Supplement, February 9, 2001, R.I. Moore, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. 10.

Washington Post Book World, August 26, 2001, Rene Weis, review of The Perfect Heresy, p. T08.