Cathar sites

No trip to Bardies and the Ariege can be complete without acquiring some knowledge of the Cathars and the papal crusade and ensuing Inquisition that was determined to destroy them. Virtually annihilated from the history books for seven centuries, the story of the brave and devout Cathars has only re-emerged in the last forty years. Many cynics would say that much of their rehabilitation has been for the benefit of the tourist industry of the Languedoc, for almost every road that you travel on will have the ubiquitous ‘Route des Cathares’ logo.

In the 12th and 13th centuries a “new” and “different” form of Christianity, Catharism, began to spread throughout the Languedoc and “threaten” the power of the papacy and its clergy. To the all- embracing papacy, its toleration and tacit support by Raymond V11, Count of Toulouse, warranted extreme measures. The response of Pope Innocent 111 [1198 -1216], the French barons, his clergy and his successors was to excommunicate the whole county of Toulouse and wage a  “holy war” between 1209 and 1229 of ferocious atrocity, followed by the Inquisition.Furthermore, many of the Cathar sympathisers, ‘credentes’, were exceedingly wealthy noblemen and women whose assets the other French barons coveted. Money, land, houses and even chateaux were donated or bequeathed to the ‘bons hommes’. The politics of France and those of the Roman Catholic Church thus became inextricably and violently inter-twined. It is not for nothing that many of the legends of ‘The Holy Grail’ are centred upon this region, particularly around Rennes-le-Chateau [see ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln], where stories of the undiscovered hidden treasures and wealth of the Cathari abound.

Initially the Roman Catholic Church tried the persuasive techniques of a devout Spanish friar, St Dominic, who founded the order of Friars Preacher in Prouille, near Fanjeaux. The equally ascetic St Dominic engaged, unsuccessfully, in vigorous theological debate with the Cathari with limited success. When, in 1208, he said, “I have begged and I have wept but, as the saying goes in Spain, where a blessing has no effect, you need to wield the stick”, the papacy panicked. When, on 15th February 2008, Pierre de Castelnau, the papal legate and mediator, was murdered in Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, the stage was finally set.

By June 1209, an army of over 50,000 crusaders gathered in Lyon, among them the Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Nevers and Saint-Pol, the Seneschal of Anjou and Simon de Montfort. On 21st July 1209, the city of Beziers was attacked and the entire population of 20,000 people, heretics, Roman Catholics, priests, soldiers, burghers, women and children were massacred. One of the leaders of the brutality, Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux and a papal legate, is alleged to have rallied his troops with the chilling words, “Kill them all! God will recognise His own!”

The massacre had the desired effect, for the whole of the Languedoc quaked in fear of the crusaders. Narbonne surrendered and the crusaders moved east to siege successfully the medieval fortress of Carcassonne. Its lord, the twenty-four year old chivalrous Raymond–Roger Trencavel, was left to die in prison, probably poisoned, and the victorious Simon de Montfort was installed as sovereign of Carcassonne, Albi, Beziers and Razes. The Pope solemnly confirmed Simon de Montfort in all his possessions, and bestowed on him as a gift all goods and lands that he might gain by victory over the heretics.

His cruelty was deliberate, necessary and calculated. In 1210, he seized the town of Bram and, as an example to other towns that might harbour intentions of resistance, he had the eyes gouged out, and the noses and upper lips cut off the hundred or so men garrisoned there. He left one man with a single eye with which to lead his mutilated comrades to the chateau of Cadarcet. It had the requisite effect on the resistance of the Languedoc. A couple of months later, at Minerve, “a great fire having been got ready, more than one hundred and forty of these heretical ‘perfecti’ were flung thereon at the one time.”

Waves of new crusaders came and went as they pleased and de Montfort was continually forced to adapt his campaigns to suit the whims of these forty-day ‘indulgence hunters’. To compensate for this, terror continually proved to be his greatest weapon. At Lavaur, “Never in the history of Christendom was so noble a baron hanged [Aimery de Montreal], and so many other knights beside him [80].” Four hundred ‘perfecti’, men and women, were burnt at the stake and the chatelaine of Lavaur, the lady Guirade, was brutally raped before being thrown down a well and stoned until she was buried.

Throughout Simon de Montfort’s reign of terror, the Cathars maintained their moral authority. Vehemently opposed to all violence, they did not retaliate by joining rebellions against the crusaders. Instead, they remained a silent and spiritual army, protected by devoted local sympathisers and supporters. Their self-control inspired the whole of the Languedoc in what was perceived as a war of oppression.

After Simon de Montfort was killed by a cannonball during the siege of Toulouse in 1217, the crusade faltered. His son, Amaury, was unable to follow in his father’s footsteps and after defeats at the hands of the newly inspired uprising, eventually returned to France in 1224. Fifteen years of brutal warfare had done little to alter hearts and minds.

The response was a new royal crusade that swept through the Languedoc. On 30th June 1226, Louis V111 joined its ranks. The king of France had come to take possession of “his lands” in person. The entire region was in a state of collapse and for two years the whole region was racked by more sieges, battles and massacres, finally culminating in the politically disastrous Treaty of Meaux in April 1229. Raymond V11, Count of Toulouse and stalwart opponent of the crusade undertook to submit totally to king and Church in conditions that were staggeringly detrimental to his undefeated position.

By his own hand and against the wishes of all who had fought so bravely to maintain the independence and free thought of the Languedoc, the death knell of Occitanian independence was rung. The Council of Toulouse, strongly supported by St Dominic’s zealous friars, set up the Inquisition in November 1229. In April 1233, Gregory 1X gave the Order of St Dominic a mission with limitless powers through the courts of the Holy Office.

Cathars were systematically and brutally arrested, tortured, tried and burnt at the stake. Many took refuge in the castles of Peyrepertuse, Cordes, Puilaurens, Montsegur and Queribus.The most famous of them all, Montsegur Castle, finally fell in March 1244 after a siege of a year when 200 martyrs suffered death “in a cage of palings and stakes” in one gigantic holocaust.

When Queribus fell in 1255, the war had lasted for 45 years and cost a million lives.

The remaining Cathars fled into the Pyrenees, where the geography and climate discouraged their tormentors. The last act of the story took place in the little village of Montaillou, near Font-Romeu, close to the frontier between France and Spain. The Inquisition Register of Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers between 1318 and 1325, who was later to become Pope at Avignon under the name Benedict X11, meticulously records the depositions of the villagers of Montaillou.

It was the last village that actively supported Catharism. Its amazing story is told by the eminent French historian, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, in his 1978 book ‘Montaillou: village Occitan de 1294 – 1324’, published in English by Penguin in 1980. The ruins of the old village and of

Beatrice de Planissol’s chateau remain as a testament to their everyday lives. The effort to get there is well rewarded by the views along the way alone, and the location is perfect for a quiet picnic.

I recommend that you read Ladurie’s book, as well as Zoe Oldenbourg’s ‘Massacre at Montsegur’, first published in Britain by George Weidenfield and Nicolson in 1961. There are many other good books, impossible to detail here, including Jonathan Sumption’s scholarly book, ‘The Albigensian Crusade’.

Visits that are a must are Montsegur, Foix and Carcassonne, both easily reached from Bardies in a day. The Chateau de Roquefixade, whilst not pivotal in the crusade, nevertheless became a retreat for the Cathars after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1229. Perched high up on a limestone crag with panoramic views as far as the Pyrenees, Montsegur, Les Corbieres and Le Lauragais, it is in our view the best picnic spot in the region.