I'm pretty sure I've read this and appreciated it immensely, but I get it confused with another book by an early 20th century Frenchman whose name I am mortified to admit I don't recall at the moment.

This a very perceptive historical account of Arianism, Albigensianism, Calvinism, and Islam. If you grew up in the US you probably never heard of the Battle of Lepanto, but it was among the most consequential conflicts in the history of the West (as opposed to the defeat of the Spanish Armada 17 years later). Belloc has an interesting side note that while the Black Death improved solidarity (the English upper classes stopped speaking French), it also bred despair leading to the Great Schism.

Written in 1938, this book is as pertinent today as it was when he wrote it. The book is an excellent starting point for anyone who wishes to gain a better understanding of what heresy is, and how it has manifested itself in the past.

Fascinating stuff (written in 1938 but he predicts the rise of Islam and its attacks on the West). But the style made it a challenging read for me. Think 1938 Historian/theologian-speak.

The chapters on Islam and Modernism are worth reading.

This is the only book I’ve read on the Heresies, so while I don’t have a strong base of additional study to speak from, here are my thoughts on Belloc’s work.

The Heresies are well defined from a philosophical and academic standpoint while remaining accessible to anyone who chooses to apply two brain cells in the process. If you’re an idiot; you can understand this if you try, and may learn something. If you are mired in one of these Heresies, Belloc will give you a glance at your current error in a way that an honest man can appreciate; if you are Catholic, you will grasp the truth of the threats to the faith. If you’re Catholic and don’t grasp this truth, go back to rule #1 and apply two brain cells. If that doesn’t help, bring it to our Lord and ask him to enlighten your understanding.

Enlightening of understanding will be absolutely key for comprehension of the final and most fearsome chapter; The Modern Phase. Belloc published this material in 1938, and his keen understanding of the already-dissolving culture and our connection with the long standing and life-supporting web of traditional wisdom allowed him to write this prophetic chapter.

It will absolutely turn your stomach and should bother you, as we watch the spiritual collapse - followed by the physical collapse - of the world around us.

“But there is (as the greatest of the ancient Greeks discovered) a certain indissoluble Trinity of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. You cannot deny or attack one of these three without at the same time denying or attacking both the others. Therefore with the advance of this new and terrible enemy against the Faith and all that civilization which the Faith produces, there is coming not only a contempt for beauty but a hatred of it; and immediately upon the heels of this there appears a contempt and hatred for virtue.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies

“The Modern Attack will not
tolerate us. It will attempt to
destroy us. Nor can we
tolerate it. We must attempt
to destroy it as being the
fully equipped and ardent
enemy of the Truth by which
men live. The duel is to the
death.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies

“Christian Europe should be
by nature one; but it has
forgotten its nature in
forgetting its religion.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies

“A man going uphill may be at the same level as another man going down hill; but they are facing different ways and have different destinies. Our world, passing out of the old Paganism of Greece and Rome towards the consummation of Christendom and a Catholic civilization from which we all derive, is the very negation of the same world leaving the light of its ancestral religion and sliding back into the dark.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies

Not a fan :(

Belloc has the wit of a Englishman, and the directness of a Frenchman. He breaks down the five great heresies that have challenged the Catholic Church. Coherent, insightful and simply cogent!

I really wanted to like this one, and I think that I would really like it if I gave it more of a chance, but I find Belloc's writing style so dry that I can barely keep focused on the page! I'm putting this one aside for a little while, and might try again later. (As in perhaps a year or so).

Belloc has his prejudices and they show, but if you know them and watch for them, you get a very good analysis of the various heresies throughout the ages. Akin to his "Survivals and New Arrivals."

Belloc became preoccupied with Calvinism, and the chapter called “What was the Reformation” in The Great Heresies is weirdly skewed by his determination to make John Calvin personally responsible for all the ills of the modern world. And yet, “The Arian Heresy” in the same book is a feat of succinct distillation: in this chapter, he takes the first five hundred years of Christian theological controversy and in thirty pages sketches out the salient points to present the topic so cogently that an ordinary reader can get a handle on it. If you’ve ever tried to approach this subject and given up in hopeless confusion, Belloc is your man.... Read the full review at https://catholicreads.com/2019/03/16/...