Bogomil to Cathar

The Lord's Vineyard in the Twelfth Century

2010-07-28T21:35:00.000+08:00

By Beverly Mayne Kienzle

The clerical hierarchy's suspicion of apostolic movements like the Waldensians and its concern for controlling the authorization to preach were sharpened by the growth of Catharism and its ecclesiastical structure: a real counter-church that shared certain basic elements of belief, organization, and ritual with the Bogomils who emerged in Bulgaria in the early tenth century. References in the West to groups with Cathar-like beliefs appear sporadically in the eleventh century and increase from the 1140s onward, from England to Germany, northern Italy and Occitania. Those reports are discussed in later chapters of this book. Occitanian Catharism surfaces clearly in the 1140s, and by 1167 an international Bogomil-Cathar council was taking place in the Lauragais to confirm the boundaries of four Cathar bishoprics. Catharism remained strong in Occitania until the crusade and tenacious even afterwards.

The Cathars called themselves simply `good Christians'. Their church consisted of believers, clergy and bishops. They advocated an austere manner of life and engaged their believers in some form of work such as weaving or cobbling. Differences from Rome centred primarily on the nature of Christ, the structure and role of the church hierarchy, the number and function of the sacraments, the source of evil in the world, and the possibility of salvation for all believers. For the Cathars, Jesus was not truly human; they objected that a good God would not send his son to earth for crucifixion. Moreover, the only sacrament necessary for salvation was the consolamentum, a laying-on-of-hands modelled on the imposition of hands described in the New Testament. It served as baptism, confirmation, ordination, forgiveness of sins, and extreme unction. Neither marriage nor the Eucharist was considered a sacrament, but the Cathars shared a symbolic breaking of bread. Cathars and Bogomils held the belief that matter was created by the rebellious angel Lucifer and that the last fallen soul would be saved at the end of this world. Their myths, recounted in the Interrogatio Iohannis, describe Satan's creation of the visible world and humankind. Furthermore, both groups rejected icons and practised a simple repetitive liturgy emphasizing the Lord's Prayer, an Adoremus formula, and multiple genu¯ections. The relationship between the Bogomils and the Cathars and the history of Catharism itself have been reevaluated extensively in recent years.

Why did these dualist beliefs implant themselves so successfully in Occitania? In contrast to Italy, where Catharism assumed a strongly urban base, Occitanian villages provided the principal stronghold for Cathar believers. Certainly Toulouse, which Cistercian preachers decry as the caput erroris, represented a centre for heresy and resistance to the Roman Church. The invaluable research of J. H. Mundy has illuminated the socio-historical background of Catharism in that comital city and helped to establish that Cathar believers belonged to all social classes. Mundy has also brought to light the attacks on heretics and usurers waged by the White Confraternity under Bishop Fulk of Toulouse in the early thirteenth century. Although earlier research sought explanations for the success of Catharism in Occitania among these and other economic factors, they do not appear to provide a solid explanation.

The castrum, the fortified village or town organized around a castle, and not the city, offered Catharism its most frequent foyer and the path for its dissemination from household to household. The Occitanian system of partible inheritance probably accounts for the representation of all social classes among the Cathars. Southern nobles, many of whom were impoverished as individual land holdings diminished because of repeated subdivisions, often lived among their subjects in the castra. Some famous castra were hill or mountain-top villages, although those developed later than the villages built near rivers or at lower elevations. Ruins of various villages are now being excavated, notably the castrum at Montségur. Three important centres of Catharism - Verfeil, Lombers and Fanjeaux - were inhabited by numerous nobles. Catharism was perhaps introduced by the upper class and then filtered down to other classes, but it also spread horizontally, from one family to the next. Villages allowed extraordinary freedom for Cathars to teach, worship and live together in community, and some families passed between city and country in search of refuge. Cathar houses played a religious and socio-economic role, as we have seen; people were welcomed there for instruction in trades and religion.

Recent research has explored the evidence for literacy among the Cathars. Although the language of Catharism was predominantly the vernacular, its scholarly leaders composed treatises and other documents in Latin. Peter Biller, surveying the use of written materials among the Cathars, underscores the evidence for formal correspondence among Cathar leaders. Letters conveyed between Occitania and Lombardy must have been written in Latin. Liturgical texts in Occitan contain headings and some prayers in Latin; extant theological works were written in Latin, and references are made to others composed in Latin or in a mixture of Latin and vernacular. Furthermore, there are numerous references to Cathars reading and commenting on books, and also to learned Cathar perfecti.

The fact that Catharism flourished in Occitania at the same time as troubadour poetry has provoked much speculation on possible causal relationships. The notion that troubadour songs, particularly the hermetic genre of trobar clus, constituted encoded statements of Cathar beliefs and thereby a type of mysticism has been refuted resoundingly by historians of Catharism and romance philologists. The connections that historians of Catharism have established between Cathar followers and poets of courtly love are primarily political. It was logical for the poets to favour the cause of Catharism, a product of their native soil, while the crusaders were considered foreigners whose invasion devastated Occitan society.

What intrigues us is the possibility that medieval clerics perceived a link between courtly love and heresy which parallels the opinion now refuted by historians. René Nelli asserted that the friars disapproved of the courtly love poetry of the Midi because of its exaltation of adulterous relationships and considered it responsible for the lax morality that fostered heresy. Romance philologists have shared this view to explain the eventual shift in troubadour lyrics from praise of the lady to that of the Virgin. To what extent the friars' unedited writings such as sermons reflect such notions and whether Cistercians shared the same suspicions constitute interesting questions for further research.

Certainly Cathar beliefs and the courtly love of the troubadours were tolerated in the same milieu, even though they did not proceed from the same principles. Some Occitanian nobles protected both Cathars and troubadours. Moreover, the Cathar perfects probably tolerated the sensual love praised by the troubadours at least as much as the institution of marriage, although they opposed both in theory. Such attitudes certainly would have provoked the anger of the orthodox clergy, who routinely denounced the Cathars for their opposition to marriage and for feigning chastity. If the Cistercians connected Cathar practices to troubadour poetry, Bishop Fulk would have had strong reason to be embarrassed by his youthful poetry.

imitatio Christi

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Whereas Cistercians were committed to a cloistered lifestyle, two additional orders, known as mendicants, stressed an itinerant way of life of preaching for their male branches. These are the Franciscan order, founded by St Francis of Assisi (c.1181–1226); and the Dominican order, founded by St Dominic de Guzman (d. 1221). Dominican and Cistercian female houses were initiated without prominent founding mothers such as St Scholastica. Although generally less well-endowed than male houses, the female or second orders could nonetheless vastly outnumber male houses in certain regions.

The biographies and teachings of St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Francis of Assisi illustrate the range of monastic innovation. Both St Bernard and St Francis came from respected, but not very prominent, families. Both made efforts to extend the reach of Christendom, St Francis and his followers through intensive missionary activities in Muslim countries, St Bernard through preaching the Crusades and in recruiting militias across Western Europe. As the founder of an order dedicated to charity and compassion for the poor, St Francis modeled an uncompromising return to apostolic simplicity and devotion. The Franciscan ideal has been to follow Christ perfectly, given symbolic expression in the stigmata that St Francis received in 1224 during a prolonged ecstatic experience on the La Verna Mountain. Although St Francis personally composed only a comparatively small number of spiritual works, his charisma and radical life inspired a prodigious body of spiritual literature intended to lead others to the same mystical heights as achieved by St Francis. The Franciscan order also furthered devotion to the Virgin Mary, who was worshiped as the order’s protector. St Francis composed a prayer addressed to the Virgin, in which she is identified with the church, and “in whom there was and is / all the fullness of grace and every good” (1982: 149).

In a collaboration similar to that between St Scholastica and St Benedict, St Francis worked with a close female companion, St Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), who founded and guided the female branch of the order. From their inception, however, and against their will, the Poor Clares had to accept more restrictions than the male order, which were rationalized by women’s greater vulnerability in a world of sexual violence.

Other contemporary spiritual movements, such as the Waldensians and the Cathars, were equally dedicated to the imitatio Christi and believed themselves to be as authentically Christian as, for example, the Franciscans. The church, however, decided otherwise, in the final analysis, because St Francis, and most Franciscans after him, professed loyalty and complete submission to Rome, whereas groups labeled “heretical” maintained a critical distance from the church hierarchy and developed alternative, independent leadership structures.

Cabaret (Lastours)

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The four fortifications of Lastours - Cabaret (1), Tour Regine (2), Surdespine (3) and Quertinheux (4) -dominate the skyline overlooking the River Orbieu. They are shown here as they would have appeared towards the end of the 13th century following their occupation and reconstruction by northern French forces. Of the four, three predated the Albigensian Crusade, whilst Tour Regine was constructed around 1260.

Archaeological work in recent years has shown that the medieval castrum of Cabaret was located to the left of the main image, situated on a series of terraces leading down to the river and dominated by a primitive stone keep. The inset image recreates what some of this medieval habitat may have looked like.

History

The castrum of Cabaret gave its name to the area of the Montagne Noire known as the Cabardes. The area is first mentioned in documents around 1063 and the site was held under the authority of the viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne.

At the time of the crusade Peter-Roger was lord of Cabaret and he served his lord, Raymond-Roger Trencavel, at the siege of Carcassonne. Following the fall of the city, Peter-Roger escaped back to Cabaret and it formed a centre for resistance to Montfort's rule in the area. The chronicler Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay refers to it as 'outstanding in its opposition to Christianity and the Count, a veritable fountain of heresy'. Montfort attempted to besiege the site at the beginning of the campaigning season of 1209, but failed in his endeavour - despatching the mutilated defenders of Bram to the site in 1210 as a grisly warning of his intent. In the end Cabaret fell to the crusaders through negotiation in 1211 following the fall of Lavaur. Peter-Roger made his peace with Montfort and withdrew; the castle was then occupied by one of Montfort's lieutenants, Bouchard de Marly, who had actually been imprisoned in the castle for the previous 16 months.

Following the death of Montfort outside the walls of Toulouse in 1218 Cabaret once more became a haven for Cathars until it finally passed into royal hands following the Treaty of Paris in 1229.

The fortifications

Although four separate fortifications now stand on the site, only three of them were present during the period of the crusade - Cabaret, Surdespine and Quertinheux. The fourth, Tour Regine, was built following the royal occupation of the site, probably around 1260.

The medieval castrum of Cabaret was located beneath these four fortifications, lower down the slope by the banks of the River Gresillou. This medieval site was constructed sometime in the late 11th and early 12th centuries and consisted of a basic fortification, around 500m2, located on a ridge with a simple keep and a rectangular building attached to it. On either side of this fortification the streets of the medieval castrum led down to the rivers Gresillou and Orbiel.

The four fortifications higher up the slopes of the hill were all heavily reconstructed following the royal occupation and share similar characteristics. The fortress of Cabaret consists of three principal elements: a five-sided keep with slits for archers and a large window looking west: a rectangular stone building used for living quarters and a stout curtain wall protecting them both. The curtain wall had a walkway along it and a tower at the northern end. A barbican protected the gate.

The next castle in line, Tour Regine, was originally called Tour Neuve, reflecting its later development. It consists of a tall tower surrounded by a wall. The tower itself has certain similarities with the towers constructed in the walls of Carcassonne during the same period. It is accessed by means of an external ladder going up to the first floor and has mounts for the attaching of wooden hoards around the upper levels.

Surdespine consists of a rectangular tower and a lower stone building, between which is located a water cistern. The whole complex is surrounded by a stone wall, within which there were originally other buildings, but no trace remains of these.

The final fortification, Quertinheux, consists of a tower constructed at the same time and to the same design as that of Tour Regine, surrounded by a complex curtain wall that divides the interior into a number of different courts. These contain two water cisterns; the entrance was protected by a projecting wall, which created a kind of chicane.

Cathars

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Monument memorial in Field of the Burned in Montsegur, Cathar country, France.

In 1208, Pope Innocent III (c. 1161–1216) declared the Cathars, a sect of Christianity (also known as the Albigenses), to be heretical and condemned the citizens of Beziers, Perpignan, Narbonne, Toulouse, and Carcassone to death as “enemies of the Church.” Simon de Montfort (c. 1165–1218), an accomplished military leader, was appointed to conduct a crusade against fellow Christians, cultured men and women of what is today southern France, who the pope had deemed a greater threat to Christianity than the Islamic warriors who had pummeled the Crusaders. Although it took him nearly 20 years of warfare against the beleaguered Albigenses, de Montfort managed to exterminate 100,000 men, women, and children, before he himself was killed during the siege of Toulouse in June 1218.

According to many contemporary scholars, the Cathars’ or Albigenses’ real offense, their “heresy,” was their opposition to the sacramental materialism of the medieval church. The group had no fixed, religious doctrine, and was known by various names. They called themselves the True Church of God, and most of the few manuscripts that survived the flames of siege were all written in Provencal, the old language of southern France, with even fewer written in Latin. Albi was the town in the province of Languedoc in which an ecclesiastical church council condemned them as heretics, hence the Albigenses designation. The cultural life of the Albigenses far out-shone that of any other locality in the Europe of their day. In manners, morals, and learning, objective historians state the Albigenses deserved respect to a greater extent than the orthodox bishops and clergy. It is now generally conceded among researchers that the court of Toulouse before the ravages of Simon de Montfort’s siege was the center of a higher type of civilization than existed anywhere else in Europe at that time.

Most experts on this historical period agree that the nearly 40 years of warfare against the Cathars ruined the most civilized nation in thirteenth-century Europe. The pitiless cruelty and brutal licentiousness, which was habitual among the Crusaders, achieved new depths of inhumanity against the Albigenses. No man was spared in their wrath. No woman was spared their violence. It has been observed that no Roman, Hunnish, Muslim, or Mongol conqueror ever annihilated a Christian community with greater savagery.

Since most of the Albigensian communities were first sacked, then burned, their records and their libraries were destroyed. Because the testimony of exactly what the Cathars really believed was wrung out under extreme pain from those who survived the massacres and endless sieges long enough to be tortured and burned at the stake, it has been difficult to gain access to their true belief structure until recent times. Research now indicates that far from the devil-worshipping heretics that Pope Innocent III decreed warranted extermination, the Albigenses were devout, chaste, tolerant Christian humanists, who loathed the material excesses of the medieval church. They were metaphysicians, spiritual alchemists, herbalists, healers, and social activists with a pragmatic turn of mind. Similiar expressions of their belief concepts may be found in the Gnostic Gospels, in the Essenic teachings discovered at Qumran, and in the Egyptian mystery schools.

It would appear that the greatest heresy to the Christian Church lay in the Cathars’ denial that Christ ever lived as a man, but was a being of spirit, much like an angel. They also believed that it was Satan who created the material world after his expulsion from heaven when God the Father, taking pity on his once bright star Lucifer, allowed him seven days to see what he might create. The bodies of Adam and Eve were animated by fallen angels and directed by Satan to beget children who would follow the ways of the serpent. To counter the lust of the flesh inspired by the devil, the Cathars preached abstinence before marriage, chastity, vegetarianism, and nonviolence. They believed in a progressive doctrine of reincarnation with the spirits of animals evolving into humans. In their view, it was a dualistic universe, with good and evil having equal strength, and they considered their time in the world as a struggle to resist Satan’s power.

In 1244 Montsegur, the last center of Albigensian resistance, fell, and hundreds of Cathars were burned at the stake. The headquarters of the Inquisition was now established in the once highly cultured Albigensian city of Toulouse, and the few Cathars who had managed to escape death during the bloody decades of the crusade that had been launched against them were now at the mercy of the relentless witch and heretic hunters.

More Reading Baigent, Michael, Leigh, Richard, and Lincoln, Henry. Holy Blood, Holy Grail. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1983. Clifton, Charles S. Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992. Delaforge, Gaetan. The Templar Tradition. Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, 1987. Lea, Henry Charles. The Inquisition of the Middle Ages. New York: Citadel Press, 1963. Trevor-Roper, H. R. The European Witch-Craze. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

Sorcery, Alchemy and Witchcraft

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Although Christianity affirms the existence of a transcendent reality, it has always distinguished between religio (reverence for God) and superstitio, which in Latin means “unreasonable religious belief.” Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in 395 C.E., and in 525 the Council of Oxia prohibited Christians from consulting sorcerers, diviners, or any kind of seer. A canon passed by the Council of Constantinople in 625 prescribed excommunication for a period of six years for anyone found practicing divination or who consulted with a diviner.

Although the Church had issued many canons warning against the practice of witchcraft or magic, little action was taken against those learned men who experimented with alchemy or those common folk who practiced the old ways of witchcraft. In 906 C.E., Abbot Regino of Prum recognized that earlier canon laws had done little to eradicate the practices of magic and witchcraft, so he issued his De ecclesiaticis disciplinis to condemn as heretical any belief in witchcraft or the power of sorcerers. In 1,000 C.E., Deacon Burchard, who would later become archbishop of Worms, published Corrrector which updated Regino’s work and stressed that only God had the power to transform matter. Alchemists could not change base metals into gold, and witches could not shapeshift into animals.

In spite of such decrees, a lively belief in a world of witches and ghosts persisted throughout the Middle Ages and co-existed in the minds of many of the faithful with the miracle stories of the saints. To the native beliefs were added those of non-Christian peoples who either lived in Europe or whom Europeans met when they journeyed far from home, as when they went on the Crusades. By the twelfth century, magical practices based upon the arcane systems of the Spanish Moors and Jewish Kabbalah were established in Europe. The Church created the Inquisition in the High Middle Ages in response to unorthodox religious beliefs that it called heresies. Since some of these involved magical practices and witchcraft, the occult also became an object of persecution. The harsh treatment of the Manichaean Cathars in southern France is an example of society’s reaction to those who mixed arcane practice with heterodox theology.

By the twelfth century, the Cathar sect had become so popular among the people that Pope Innocent III (1160 or 1161–1216) considered it a greater menace to Christianity than the Islamic warriors who pummeled the crusaders and who threatened all of Europe. To satisfy his outrage, he ordered the only Crusade ever launched by Christians against fellow Christians, declaring as heretics the Albigensians, as the Cathars of southern France were known.

In spite of persecution, the concept of witchcraft persisted and even flourished in early modern times. At least the fear of it did, as the Salem witch trials richly illustrate. In the early decades of the twentieth century, schools of pagan and magical teachings were reborn as Wicca. Wiccans, calling themselves “practitioners of the craft of the wise,” would resurrect many of the old ways and infuse them with modern thoughts and practices. Whatever its origin, the occult seems to be an object of permanent fascination to the human race.

Inquisition Deux

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The Inquisition came into existence in 1231 with the Excommunicamus of Pope Gregory IX (c. 1170–1241), who at first urged local bishops to become more vigorous in ridding Europe of heretics, then lessened their responsibility for determining orthodoxy by establishing inquisitors under the special jurisdiction of the papacy. The office of inquisitor was entrusted primarily to the Franciscans and the Dominicans, because of their reputation for superior knowledge of theology and their declared freedom from worldly ambition. Each tribunal was ordered to include two inquisitors of equal authority, who would be assisted by notaries, police, and counselors. Because they had the power to excommunicate even members of royal houses, the inquisitors were formidable figures with whom to reckon.

In 1246 Montsegur, the center of Albigensian resistance, fell, and hundreds of Cathars were burned at the stake. The headquarters of the Inquisition was established in Toulouse, and in 1252, Pope Innocent IV (d. 1254) issued a papal bull that placed inquisitors above the law. Another decree within the bull demanded that all civil rulers and all commoners must assist the work of the Inquisition or face excommunication. In 1257, the church officially sanctioned torture as a means of forcing witches, sorcerers, shapeshifters, and other heretics to confess their alliance with Satan.

The inquisitors would stay in a particular location for weeks or months, from which they would bring suit against any person suspected of heresy. Lesser penalties were levied against those who came forward of their own volition and confessed their heresy than against those who ignored the summons and had to be placed on trial. The tribunal allowed a grace period of about a month for the accused to come to them and confess before the heretic would be arrested and brought to trial. The penances and sentences for those who confessed or were found guilty during the trial were pronounced by the inquisitors at a public ceremony known as the sermo generalis or auto-da-fe and might consist of a public whipping, a pilgrimage to a holy shrine, a monetary fine, or the wearing of a cross. The most severe penalty that the inquisitors could pronounce was life imprisonment; therefore, when they turned over a confessed heretic to the civil authorities, it was quite likely that person would be put to death at the stake.

Catholic, Critique, Heresy, and Response

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Pelagius

The history of medieval Catholicism was one of consistently struggling to get a uniformity of belief in the face of constant questioning. Once Christianity became linked with the Roman power structure, differences of opinion about religious matters became “heresies,” equivalent to treason. In the early centuries, differences were resolved in church councils that established correct belief, and later in the West, popes in consultation with bishops determined what was orthodox and what was heretical. Nevertheless, throughout this age of faith church leaders had to wrestle with confronting and suppressing heresies.

Before the twelfth century, heresies grew from a variety of opinions—many left over from earlier deep discussions about the nature of Christ, humanity, and the clergy. The Eastern Church had always had a tradition of actively discussing theological issues, and three important heresies arose there in the early Middle Ages. In the fifth century, discussions about the nature of Christ led to two different opinions: The Nestorians emphasized the split between Jesus’s humanity and divinity, claiming that Mary was the bearer of the human person, but not of God. In response, others emphasized Jesus’s divinity, claiming that the divine portion of God obliterated the human at the Incarnation much like the sea would overwhelm a drop of honey. These were called “Monophysites” (“one nature”). The Council of Chalcedon in 451 condemned both positions arguing that Christ was fully human and fully divine. However, Nestorians and Monophysites continued to flourish in Egypt, Armenia, and even as far away as China.

In the eighth century another serious conflict arose in the Eastern Church that further emphasized the differences between East and West. The Byzantine emperor Leo III (r. 717–741) ordered all icons destroyed to avoid idolatry, and in an autocratic style, he intended for this decree to apply to all Christendom, East and West. This introduced iconoclasm, which raged in the East for a century, during which many mosaics in Constantinople and Asia Minor were destroyed. Ultimately, the iconoclasts were discredited, and icons remained a part of Christian worship.

In the West, the church father, Augustine, spent much of his career battling three heresies. The Manichaeans believed that a good God could not have created evil, so they posited the existence of two gods, one good and one evil engaged in a timeless battle for the soul of humanity. This dualist belief reappeared in the Albigensian heresy that flourished in southern France in the twelfth century.

Augustine also battled against Donatism, which split the North African church for centuries. The Donatists argued that priests who had turned over sacred books during the Roman persecutions should lose their offices. Augustine and the orthodox position was that sins of a priest did not affect the efficacy of the sacraments they perform. The violent proponents of both these positions did not end until North Africa was conquered first by the Vandals then the Muslims.

Augustine’s last struggle against heresy took a more intellectual turn when he penned his arguments against the Pelagians. Pelagius was a British monk who argued that free will was possible, that people could choose not to sin. Augustine, drawing from his own struggles against lust and sin, denied this possibility and claimed that people were burdened by original sin. Augustine’s position became the orthodox one, and Pelagianism was condemned.

By the twelfth century in the West the greatest critique of the church came from those who believed that the church had become corrupted by wealth. There were many groups who advocated following what they called the “apostolic life,” a simple existence embracing poverty, reading the Bible, and preaching God’s word. The most famous of these groups was the Waldensians, who were centered in southern France. Their leader, Valdes of Lyons (also known as Peter Waldo) was condemned as a heretic in 1181, but the movement continued in spite of repression. There are even some Waldensian churches today.

Late in the Middle Ages, other critics challenged the hierarchy in ways that foreshadowed the sixteenth-century Reformation. John Wycliffe in England and John Hus, in what is now the Czech Republic, were influential at universities and questioned papal supremacy and other church doctrines.

In the thirteenth century, the established church felt sufficiently threatened by these various heresies to establish a new court to discover and root out heretical ideas. This court was the Inquisition, and it was different from the many criminal courts in the lands because it was concerned with ideas instead of actions. Consequently, it had to resort to torture to find out what the accused was thinking, instead of other evidence to determine what he or she had done. The progress of the Inquisition contributed to the breakdown of the medieval religious structure.

Queribus Castle - The last bastion

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The castle at Queribus was extensively rebuilt after it fell into royal hands after 1255; this reconstruction shows it in the late 13th century once the work had been carried out. The defences were based on three separate levels, with a polygonal keep dominating the top level of fortifications. The pathway up to this central fortification is protected by two lower stages, each of which covers the progress towards the centre of the castle. The upper right inset shows the entrance to the highest level of Queribus.

The Château de Quéribus stands on the ridge above the vine-ringed village of Cucugnan which marked the French-Spanish border until the seventeenth century. It is spectacularly situated, balanced on a pillar of rock above a sheer cliff, whose crevices nourish a variety of beautiful wild flowers, and lies just a few kilometres north of the main Quillan–Perpignan road.

Because of the extreme, cramped topography of the rock, the space within the walls is stepped in terraces, dominated by the polygonal keep and accessible by a single stairway. Inside, at the heart of the keep, is the remarkable chapel of St-Louis-de-Quéribus, surprisingly high and wide when you consider the keep's tortured position, and supported by a single pillar. The stairs to the roof are broken, but from the window halfway up there are fantastic views to Canigou and Perpignan, with other castles and watchtowers of the Spanish Marches dotting the peaks and ridges. To the northwest you're within easy eyeshot of Peyrepertuse.

The history of Quéribus is similar to that of Puilaurens, though the fortifications visible today are thirteenth century. It was the last stronghold of Cathar resistance, holding out until 1255, eleven years after the fall of Montségur. The successful siege and surrender of the castle in 1255 concluded the military phase of the Albigensian Crusade. Never reduced by siege, its role as a sanctuary for the Cathars ended with the capture of the luckless Chabert. Chabert de Barbera, the region's de facto ruler, was captured and forced to hand over his strongholds here and at Puilaurens to secure his release.

FOLQUET DE MARSELHA (fl. ca. 1178–95).

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Son of a rich Genoese merchant, the troubadour Folquet de Marselha was himself a wealthy merchant in Marseille by ca. 1178. Around 1200, he, his wife, and two sons entered the Cistercian abbey of Le Thoronet, of which he became abbot. As bishop of Toulouse from 1205 until his death in 1231, he helped found the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and organize the Albigensian Crusade. According to the Chanson de la croisade contre les Albigeois, Folquet was responsible for the deaths at the stake of 10,000 Albigensians.

Of Folquet’s nineteen certain songs, fourteen are love songs (thirteen have music preserved); the others are two crusade songs, two debate poems, and one planh. In song as in deed, he praised courtly love before rejecting it, in a learned and literary style that builds on his assimilation of Latin and Occitan sententiae. Yet his carefully refined and subtle artistry remains original and abstract, preoccupied with aesthetic and moral issues. His poetry and music were admired and imitated.

FOIX

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The last of the great fiefs of the Midi to be restored to the crown, the county of Foix was also one of the last to be created during the Middle Ages. The town and castle of Foix, noted as early as the 7th century, formed part of the large county of Comminges- Couserans. A partition of the inheritance of Count Roger le Vieux in 1002 left the territory of Foix to a cadet, Bernard-Roger, whose sons Roger I (d. 1064) and Pierre- Bernard (r. 1064–70) ultimately assumed the title count of Foix. The domains of the counts included the cities of Foix and Pamiers, the towns of Lézat, Saverdun, and Mazères to the north and Tarascon, Lordat, and Aix-les-Termes to the south. During the Albigensian Crusade, Count Raymond-Roger, whose sister Esclarmonde sheltered and assisted heretics at Pamiers, was a determined enemy of Simon de Montfort. With the elimination of the viscounts Trencavel and the extinction of the house of Toulouse, Foix emerged in the mid-13th century as the most important independent fief in lower Languedoc. In 1290, its territory increased with the marriage of Count Roger-Bernard III to Marguerite, heiress of the viscounty of Béarn.

The apogee of the counts’ power came in the 14th century, when they profited from the weakness of royal authority during the Hundred Years’ War and the strategic position of their own domains to play a critical role in the politics of the kingdom. Against the determinedly pro-French position of his rivals the counts of Armagnac, the brilliant and lettered Gaston III Phoebus (r. 1343–91) pursued a policy of official neutrality in favor of the English and engaged in frequent hostilities with both the house of Armagnac and the duke of Berry, royal lieutenant of Languedoc. His successor Jean I (r. 1412–36) continued the pro-English alliance until the accession of Charles VII, from whom he accepted the lieutenancy of Languedoc. At the death of François Phoebus (1483), the county of Foix passed to the house of d’Albret and was united to the monarchy with the accession of Henry IV.

CHANSON DE LA CROISADE CONTRE LES ALBIGEOIS

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A historical epic retelling the events of the Albigensian Crusade, the Chanson is an invaluable historical and literary resource. The author of the first 131 laisses (2,772 lines), Guilhem de Tudela (fl. first quarter of the 13th c.), began writing in 1210 and ceased in spring 1213; he is a relatively impartial though dry reporter of events. Approving of the crusade, condemning the heretics, he defends, however, southerners whose orthodoxy was unquestionable. In 1228, an anonymous author continued Guilhem’s story. Sympathetic to the southern cause, he recounts in detail those events to which he was an eyewitness; the style is more animated and much more dialogue is reported. His story stops in the midst of a description of the 1218 siege of Toulouse. Using as model the Chanson d’Antioche, the work is composed of 9,582 Alexandrine lines, divided into 214 assonanced laisses; the last line of each laisse (of only six syllables) links to the next, capcaudada in Guilhem de Tudela’s portion, capfinida in the second part of the work. Only one manuscript is extant (B.N. fr. 25425), with pen-andink illustrations, dated ca. 1275. Two prose chroniclers of the Albigensian Crusade appear to have had access to this text for their redactions.

Guilhem de Tudela and Anonymous. La chanson de la croisade albigeoise, ed. Eugène Martin-Chabot. 3 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1957–1961.

——. La chanson de la croisade albigeoise, trans. Henri Gougaud. Paris: Berg, 1984.

D’Heur, Jean-Marie. “Sur la date, la composition et la destination de la Chanson de la croisade albigeoise de Guillaume de Tudèle.” In Mélanges d’histoire littéraire, de linguistique et de philologie romanes offerts à Charles Rostaing, ed. Jacques De Caluwé et al. Liège: Association des Romanistes de l’Université de Liège, 1974, pp. 231–66.

Ghil, Eliza Miruna. L’âge de parage: essai sur la poétique en Occitanie au XIIIe siècle. New York: Lang, 1989.

AGENAIS

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Centered on the city of Agen in southwestern France, the seat of the bishopric and county, the Agenais comprised an irregular territory lying between the rivers Garonne and Dordogne. On the west, it included the town of Marmande; on the east, the towns of Tournon and Puymirol; and on the south, Moissac and Auvillars.

From the 9th through the 12th century, the Agenais fell under the authority of the dukes of Gascony and Aquitaine. In 1196, to secure peace on his southern borders, Richard the Lionhearted granted the Agenais in fief to Count Raymond VI of Toulouse. This transfer brought the Agenais into the center of the turbulent events that commenced with the Albigensian Crusade in 1209 and concluded with the victory of France in the Hundred Years’ War. Simon de Montfort attacked the region in 1212, capturing the fortress of Penne d’Agenais, where Cathar heretics were found and burned. In 1219, the crusading army of the future Louis VIII of France assaulted Marmande, which suffered pillage and massacre. By the Treaty of Meaux in 1229, Raymond VII of Toulouse retained the Agenais. On his death in 1249, it was occupied by his son-in-law Alphonse of Poitiers, brother of Louis IX.

The Agenais remained thereafter an object of contention between France and England, where Henry III asserted his claims as duke of Aquitaine. In 1259, the Treaty of Paris conceded the Agenais to England should Alphonse of Poitiers die without heirs. This eventuality came to pass in 1271, but the county was not restored to Edward I of England until 1279. Quarrels between Edward and Philip the Fair rekindled hostilities in the Agenais; from 1293, French seneschals and English administered portions of the disputed territory. The Agenais suffered heavily during the Hundred Years’ War. Restored to England briefly by the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, it returned definitively to France in 1370. At the close of the Middle Ages, the Agenais, like the Quercy, recovered slowly from rural depopulation and economic depression.

CARCASSONNE

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Situated in a strategic position on the Aude River between the Toulousain and the Mediterranean port of Narbonne, the city of Carcassonne (Aude) served throughout the Middle Ages primarily as a military stronghold and center of administration. Occupied at least since the 1st century A.D. by the Romans, Carcassonne was a major Visigothic stronghold after the 5th century, before becoming one of the largest walled cities in western Europe during the later Middle Ages. In the Carolingian period, the fortress of Carcassonne became the seat of a county; a comital dynasty appeared in the early 9th century. During the 11th and 12th centuries, Carcassonne was at the center of the vast domains controlled by the family of Trencavel. The city, twice lost and regained by the viscounts, played a pivotal role in the struggles between the counts of Toulouse and Barcelona.

The Albigensian Crusade of 1209 ended the dynasty of the Trencavels. Under Simon de Montfort and, after 1226, the king of France, Carcassonne became the seat of a sénéchaussée. In 1240, the final attempt of the young Raymond Trencavel to recover his domains failed in the desperate siege of Carcassonne. Trencavel’s retreat left the bourg, which had joined his rebellion, abandoned and destroyed. It remained depopulated until 1248, when Louis IX had it reconstructed on the left bank of the Aude. At the end of the 13th century, the bourg was again the center of agitation, led by Bernard Délicieux against the Inquisition in the Midi. In 1305, fifteen burghers, including the consuls, were hanged for attempted insurrection and treason against the king of France.

Although Carcassonne never achieved the importance of Béziers, Narbonne, or Nîmes, its economic prosperity, particularly as a center of textile manufacture, reached its height in the first half of the 14th century. After 1350, the city declined rapidly both in commercial and military importance. The raid of Edward, the Black Prince, in 1355 again left the bourg destroyed; in 1384, complicity in the revolt of the Tuchins subjected the burghers once more to crippling penalties.

The city consists of a rectangular castle, 247 feet by 148 feet, and double curtain walls separated by grassy lists; the outer ramparts (about 5,000 feet long) have some twenty reinforcing towers or strongholds, and the inner ramparts (about 3,600 feet), twenty-five. The so-called Palace of the Viscounts was actually built, according to Héliot, in the 13th century by Simon de Montfort and especially Louis IX. Constructed of rough-worked sandstone, it is surrounded on three sides by a deep moat and protected by nine towers. Its main entry, between two half-round towers, is defended by a bridge and a semicircular barbican. Within, in lieu of a central keep, is an open courtyard flanked by a high watchtower. Construction on the walls was continued under Louis’s son Philip III, who was responsible for several of the more remarkable towers, notably the Tour du Trésaur and Tour de l’Inquisition. A number of the towers have their own well and could be independently defended in the event other sections fell. The principal entry to the town, the Porte de l’Aude, was defended by a series of barbicans and outer works; those entering were required to approach first parallel to the line of defense, then perpendicular to it, thus exposing themselves to fire from every angle.

In its present state, and in spite of major restorations by Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, Carcassonne is one of the finest examples of a medieval walled city. Its ramparts and towers, with their crenellations, arrow loops, embrasures, potlug holes, hoarding, walks, and battlements, provide an outstanding example of medieval military architecture.

INQUISITION IN FRANCE

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In Medieval Latin, the term inquisitio generally conveyed the sense of investigation or inquest. Charlemagne’s agents, the missi dominici, conducted inquests; William the Conqueror’s survey that produced Domesday Book was an inquisitio. Emperor Henry IV encountered opposition from the Saxons when he attempted to conduct an inquisitio concerning lost royal rights in Saxony. Thus, the investigation of religious dissent, the practice with which the word “inquisition” has been most closely identified, was in a major sense merely another form of investigation by an authority competent to inaugurate an inquest and carry it out.

Other forms of inquisitio included the obligation of bishops to make visitations to the religious institutions of their dioceses and to correct wrongs found during such visitations. Various forms of inquisitio were used in the church, usually against erring or criminous clergy, more frequently after 1200. These instances of the term probably echoed older Roman criminal legal procedure, which from the 1st century tended to supplant an older private accusatorial criminal procedure with one in which the magistrate or judge assumed the responsibility for assembling evidence and carrying out a criminal trial. This process was technically known as cognitio extraordinaria. In another instance, inquisition might be made into the writings of a scholar accused of error.

With the emergence of formalized and institutionalized papal authority in the 11th century and classical canon law in the mid-12th, other dimensions were added to inquisitio. Papally delegated investigators and judges were instituted and in some instances could subdelegate all or part of their judicial authority to others. With the growth of widespread forms of religious dissent, popes urged bishops to investigate heresy in their own dioceses and appointed monastic figures to preach against it. This combination of delegation and appointment was not restricted to matters of dissent, however; popes also appointed preachers of the Crusades and later constituted the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and delegated judicial authority for other matters as well.

Earlier episcopal attempts to discover heresy were hampered by the survival in many regions of the accusatorial procedure—that is, someone had to accuse publicly those he suspected of heresy. In 1162, however, Pope Alexander III wrote to Henry, archbishop of Reims, ordering an archiepiscopal inquest into reported heresy in Flanders. The next year, at the Council of Tours, Alexander included a canon indicating that heretics were to be sought out by local ecclesiastical authorities. Another canon, c. 10 of Tours, stated that “it is expedient to discover new remedies for new maladies,” and some of Alexander III’s other correspondence indicates a concern for the secrecy of heretics and could be considered a rationale for requiring the inquisitio procedure in this instance.

As for the laity, Alexander also allowed the procedure of denunciation—that is, accusation without the responsibilities normally incumbent on the accuser. This was a form of the denunciatio evangelica that with accusation and inquisition came to be regarded as the three standard means of making a crime known to authorities. Denunciations were to be made by suitable people, synodal witnesses—testes synodales, a principle laid out in the well-known decretal of Alexander III, Ad abolendam of 1184, which also insisted that the ordinaries (bishops) of dioceses conduct hearings of these special witnesses for the purpose of discovering heresy.

As the perception of the extent and danger of heresy increased, more and more severe penalties were imposed by both ecclesiastical and temporal powers for those convicted. Crusades against heretics were launched, and the use of the inquest increased during the pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216). In 1199, Innocent III appointed the abbots of Cîteaux and other Cistercian monasteries to hold inquests in Metz in matters of dissent, and in the process of rationalizing the prosecution of criminous clerics, Innocent commanded that they be proceeded against by the inquisitio method rather than by accusation. Recent scholarship has indicated how important the changing criminal law of clergy now seems to have been for developments in criminal procedure generally.

In the wake of the Albigensian Crusade, the pope and the king of France collaborated upon the general constitution of inquisitorial tribunals throughout the kingdom, established in the ordonnance Cupientes of 1229. Cupientes established, as Maisonneuve stated, “the inquisitorial procedure, by virtue of which all vassals and officers of the king were obliged specifically to seek out heretics and accomplices to heresy.” In the same year, the Council of Toulouse formalized the episcopal inquisition. With the increasing importance of the mendicant orders, particularly the Dominicans, in the early 13th century, mendicant inquisitors joined mendicant confessors and preachers. After the disastrous inquisitorial experiments of Robert le Bougre in 1233–35, Dominicans began to be used regularly as inquisitors, even in episcopal inquisitions.

Inquisitorial tribunals flourished most effectively in the south of France, but in 1310 Marguerite Porete became the first capital victim of the inquisitors at Paris, followed by the destruction of the Templars in 1316. The case of Jeanne d’Arc in 1431 reflects the increasingly prominent role in the inquisitional tribunals not only of the Dominicans but of the faculty of theology at the University of Paris and continued the close collaboration among episcopal, mendicant, and political authorities.

From the 14th century through the 16th, the faculty of theology of Paris provided most of the inquisitorial activity in France.

The Medieval Inquisition

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Pedro Berruguete. Saint Dominic Presiding over an Auto-da-fé (around 1495).

Inquisitions were instituted by the popes. Pope Gregory IX (1227–41) established the Medieval Inquisition in 1229 to try to destroy those people they believed to be heretics. One such group, the Albigensians, admitted two principles as the source of the universe: a good principle that created spiritual reality and a bad principle that created material things. Their way of life and dress was simple, and they attacked the worldliness of the clergy. They also rejected the Old Testament and opposed infant baptism, since it lacked a personal commitment to Christ. Condemned at the Council of Albi in 1176, they continued to survive. Pope Gregory created a powerful body that had almost unlimited powers to persecute those it considered to be heretics. The brutal use of the Inquisition, combined with a war against the Albigensians, led to the mass murder of thousands in the south of France. The Inquisition was also used in the early 14th century to destroy the Knights Templar, who were accused of heresy, and was used against the Waldensians—an early Protestant group who rejected the power of the clergy and who created new communities in the mountains of northern Italy from the 13th century onward.

“On Toleration”

Toleration of religious differences was appealed to by the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) in his essay “On Toleration,” written during his exile from England in the 1680s. The basic assumptions of Locke’s work are that the teachings of any church are opinions that people hold, and every reasonable opinion should be respected. He argued that people simply choose to join a religion the way they choose to belong to any organization. Religious gatherings and celebrations are permitted on the same terms as a dinner meeting of an extended family or a club. In short, religious rituals are treated in the same way as a secular event: A Eucharistic liturgy in Locke’s view is simply an act of eating bread and wine. Catholics claim that during the Mass the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ (a process called transfiguration). Locke would later claim that Catholics have a right to believe such a thing as long as it does not harm anyone.

King Peter (Pedro) II Crusader and Defender of the Catholic Faith!

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In 1212 Peter he helped Alfonso VIII of Castile to defeat the Moors at Las Navas de Tolosa. This battle was the turning point in the history of Medieval Iberia. The forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile were joined by the armies of his rivals, Peter II of Aragon and Alfonso II of Portugal to fight the Muslim Almohad rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. Caliph al-Nasir led the Almohad army. The defeat of the Almohads signaled the beginning of a long decline in the power of the Moors in the Peninsula.

Following his performance against the Moors, Peter II was the most famous and respected crusader of the period. He had driven the Moslems from much of Spain, and won plaudits from the Papacy for his leadership. But Peter's problems had already started when the crusaders purported to replace Raymond-Roger Tranceval as Viscount of Carcassonne and Beziers in 1209. How could they do this? Feudal law was absolutely clear that it was for Peter as suzerain, to appoint, confirm and dispossess his own vassals - but now Innocent had a legal claim to be Peter's suzerain. Even the Northern Lords were uneasy about this precedent. As they clearly saw, if Innocent III got away with this then neither they nor any sovereign in Christendom would be safe.

Peter returned from Las Navas in the autumn of 1212 to find that in the course of the Cathar Crusade. Simon de Montfort had conquered Toulouse, exiling Raymond VI Count of Toulouse, Peter's vassal and brother-in-law. Peter crossed the Pyrenees and arrived at Muret in September 1213 to confront de Montfort's army. He was accompanied by Raymond of Toulouse, who gave Peter excellent counsel, to avoid battle and instead to starve out Montfort's forces. This suggestion was rejected as unknightly. Peter fought at the subsequent battle of Muret in 1213, but was killed during a needless show of bravado. (He was fighting in disguise - a common ploy for kings at the time and not apparently regarded as unknightly. A lowly vassal armed as the King of Aragon attracted the scorn of the Crusaders and Peter, unable to contain himself, shouted out something to effect of "here I am, come and get me".) He died, as brave as he was foolish at the hands of two French Crusader knights.

The death of the most famous Crusader in Europe, a King, surnamed the "Catholic", fighting against brother crusaders, shook both armies and indeed left the whole of Christendom horrified and bewildered.

Persecution of the Waldensians

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The Waldensians, for that is how they came to be known whether they liked it or not, and that is the name that lasted, gradually became marginalised before being openly condemned. The main obstacle, as might be expected, was not so much their poverty but their preaching. The stakes were high, as time would show. To be more precise, as I mentioned above, and as was borne out by the work of André Vauchez devoted to medieval sainthood, the Roman hierarchy had yet to settle the question of lay preaching: could laymen preach, or were clerics alone entitled to assume this public function? When Jean de Belles Mains succeeded Guichard at the episcopal see, the situation changed course. The new bishop was partial to the chapter to whom he owed his election. Less partial to clerical reform, he wished to bring the Waldensians back into line. Henceforth no one could preach in a diocese except on the authority of the bishop. A double refusal led directly to a crisis-point: the bishop refused to let the Waldensians continue preaching, while they refused to listen, choosing to pursue their mission, thereby showing that they considered their vocation more important than the duty to obey. In 1184, the pope Lucius III declared them “schismatic” for having usurped the ministry of preaching without a mission, which the emperor Frederick Barberossa confirmed. The Waldensians were henceforth officially excommunicated, rejected by the Christian community. We should note, however, that at this point they were being condemned for disobedience towards the ecclesiastical authorities, not for deviation from doctrine.

This situation went on for the next thirty years or so, both stable and ambiguous. The preachers were marginalised, having been condemned, which paradoxically encouraged them to expand outside the diocese of Lyons, yet at the same time they were popular, for the simple lives they led were in keeping with their word, which won them the approval of their followers. While there are no documents shedding light on what really took place, beyond the fact that they gradually spread towards Lorraine, Alsace, Italy and the south-west of France, relations between the Waldensians and the ecclesiastical authorities would seem to have gone on in the same way, never improving, never deteriorating. As for the internal evolution of the Waldensian community, their expansion could not fail, sooner or later, to create problems, and this indeed seems to be the case from 1200, although we have no need to elaborate on this here. Suffice it to say that the situation was curious, to say the least, for we find excommunicated preachers who are neither falling back in line, nor are they being checked and certainly not wiped out. Things became stranger still after the condemnation which occurred some fifteen years later.

It was during the fourth Lateran council in Rome in 1215 that all those found preaching without express authorisation of the apostolic see or the bishop were condemned; there is no doubting that the Poor of Lyons were included in the mass of those who, while “forbidden or not sent out to do so”, had been claiming the right to preach. Furthermore, although the Waldensians are not mentioned by name, just as no others are, canon 3, entitled De haereticis [Of Heretics] does condemn all those who had already been found guilty in the rescript of 1184, whose general structure and terms it takes up. This meant the Waldensians were now condemned not just as schismatics but as heretics, in other words deviating from the faith.

Divergences appeared and spread within the Waldensian community, although there is little detail to go by. Certain groups, the “Poor Catholics”, returned to the embrace of Rome, while others opted for increasingly radical positions on the question of the baptism of children, the Eucharist and purgatory. Thus, little by little, the course of those referred to by their adversaries under the umbrellaterm “Waldensians” irrespective of the various divergences in their opinions, led them away from the path of Rome. The Waldensians thus became heretics, answerable to the Inquisition, an exceptional jurisdiction newly created to stamp out heresies. Although the Waldensians had long been tolerated, for they had proved particularly efficient in the fight against the Cathars in the south-west of France, the first judicial procedures against them, of which we have trace, began in about 1230, once the Cathar issue had been settled by the treaty of Meaux-Paris in 1229.

The condemnation issued by Rome, and more importantly no doubt, the first legal pursuits against the Waldensians, led to major and lasting changes in the community of the Poor of Lyons. Indeed, hounded by lay and religious authorities alike, although not consistently nor with the same conviction in different places, they had to adapt to this situation having chosen not to return to Rome, but also not to finish as martyrs but rather to ensure the survival of their dissent which they deemed the pure word of the Gospel countering the deviations taken by Rome. No document has survived which expresses this double position which they may well have adopted solemnly, as a community; we can only surmise that this was the case, judging by practices and attitudes the Waldensians came to favour. Adapting to survive meant first and foremost dispersing, as members scattered. Quite rapidly, in fact, the first groups of preachers set out from Lyons into the surrounding area and then towards the south-west, but not as a result of constraint. In this region, they had acquired a reputation as efficient preachers against the Cathars alongside the Roman authorities. From the early thirteenth century, Waldensians had settled in the Quercy and Albigeois regions. In Montauban, for example, of the 200 heretics cited in 1241, 80 of them, or 40%, were Waldensians. In the same era, the Waldensians had spread to reach northern Italy, Burgundy, and Lotharingia, on the fringes of Germanic Europe. Once the Cathar question had been settled, and the Waldensian “witch-hunt” had begun, it was towards the east that the Waldensians began setting out.

‘Divine Victory’ Battle of Muret

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The battle took place on 12th September. Simon realized that his army dared not run the risk of being encircled ; shut up as he was in the fortress of Muret, his strategy must be to launch a lightning attack in the hope of breaking through the enemy lines. At his council-of-war he declared: 'If we cannot drive them back from their tents, we have no recourse but to retreat instantly.'

The allied armies had established their camp in a strong position on the heights overlooking the plain, a couple of miles from the chateau, which stood beside the Garonne. Count Raymond, who knew his enemy, proposed that they should sit tight and await the attack, which should be repulsed by concentrated crossbow-fire. Then they should counter-attack, and blockade Simon inside the chateau; this would force his speedy capitulation. It was sound advice, but it was not followed. The Count of Toulouse was out of luck. This war concerned him, personally, more than anyone else: he was its principal victim. For once he had the chance of retrieving his position; yet he could not obtain a fair hearing for the ideas he proposed. The King's close friends, especially Miguel de Luezia, ridiculed such a plan, and accused him of cowardice. Bitterly hurt, Raymond retired to his tent.

By abandoning his fortified camp Peter lost the initiative, and played right into Simon de Montfort's hands. The warrior-King wanted a fine battle in which his army could test its valour against the invincible French knights, who, he believed, had not hitherto encountered any opponents of their own quality. He wanted to smash them in the field.

When Simon attacked, he was met first of all by the Count of Foix's troops, who very quickly had to retreat before a furious French onslaught. At this point King Peter threw his Aragonese into the battle. Simon, who had only nine hundred knights as against his opponent's two thousand, manoeuvred with great speed so as to prevent the enemy forces from having time to redeploy their positions. By so doing he hoped to preserve a numerical advantage wherever he attacked. He concentrated all his efforts against the Aragonese, and the two lines engaged with a terrible crash: as the young Raymond VII afterwards recorded, 'it sounded like a whole forest going down under the axe'. It was a hopelessly tangled melee. Spears and shields flew asunder, horses were cut down, trampling their riders; everywhere swords rose and fell, while steel helms rang under a rain of blows, skulls were cracked by maces, and the shrieks of the wounded were drowned in the thunderous clamour of arms. Yet this was no full-scale battle, so much as a very brisk engagement between two comparatively small advance guards. The unfortunate thing was that one side should have been led by the King in person.

Simon's aim was to bring down the King at all costs. Two of his knights, Alain de Roucy and Florent de Ville, had taken a solemn oath to kill the King or die in the attempt. Peter of Aragon flung himself headlong into the heart of the battle, which testifies rather more to his courage than his common sense. He had even changed armour with one of his knights before the battle: it was as an ordinary knight, relying on nothing but his strong right arm, that Peter wanted to face Simon de Montfort.

He was thirty-nine years old at the time: a big-built man of herculean strength, and reputedly the finest warrior in his native Aragon. Alain de Roucy hacked his way through to the knight who bore the royal arms, and felled him at a single blow. This isn't the King!' he shouted. The King is a better fighter.' Observing the incident, Peter called out: 'Here is the King!' and charged to his comrade's rescue.29 Alain de Roucy and Florent de Ville and their men now hemmed him in on all sides, never giving him an instant's respite. Very soon so desperate a struggle was raging about the King that Peter himself was killed, and all his maynade (that is, the knights of the royal House of Aragon) died where they stood rather than retreat and abandon the body of their King.

The news of the King's death spread panic through the rest of the army. The Catalan knights, taken unexpectedly in the flank by De Montfort, broke and fled. The Count of Toulouse's troops had not so far had a chance to intervene; and now, finding themselves swamped by a confused mob of retreating Catalans and Aragonese, they saw that attack was out of the question, and fled themselves.

While the cavalry was being routed in this fashion, the Toulousain train-bands, on foot, were attempting to assault the fortress of Muret. Simultaneously a section of the French cavalry, having abandoned the pursuit of their defeated enemy, returned to the chateau, fell bodily on this infantry force (which numbered about forty thousand men), cut them to ribbons, and drove the survivors back towards the Garonne. Since the water at this point was deep, and the current rapid, a large proportion of the fugitives died by drowning. Battlefield and river between them accounted for between fifteen and twenty thousand men, or half the entire Toulousain infantry.

De Montfort had won a complete and crushing victory. It was, indeed, something more than a victory: it meant, for the time being at least, the elimination of Aragon as a political power. Peter II's death left the throne occupied by a mere child, whom the conqueror kept as a hostage.

When the battle was over, Simon sent out to find the King's body. Since his troops had already stripped the corpses of all their possessions, this proved no easy task. Having identified his adversary, Simon paid him a final tribute. Then he took off his shoes, bestowed his horse and armour upon the poor, and went to church to give thanks to God. In a few hours' fierce fighting, which his army had survived comparatively unscathed, he had contrived to rid himself of his most powerful opponent; and what was more, he had struck down one of the mightiest monarchs in Christendom without anyone being able to describe his action as a crime. The Battle of Muret had an air of Divine Judgment about it.

The bishops and the clergy, St Dominic among them, had gathered in Muret's church while the battle was raging, and prayed fervently for victory. Now their prayers had been answered in the most striking fashion, and they hastened to spread the good news through the length and breadth of Christendom. The heretics' army had been swept away 'as the wind sweeps dust along the ground' [William de Puylaurens]; a Catholic monarch who had dared to fight for enemies of the Faith had been killed, together with all his knights, and an immense host wiped out in a few hours by a handful of Crusaders whose own losses were, miraculously, restricted to a few sergeants and one single knight. (This is an obvious exaggeration. According to all the evidence the battle was very fiercely contested, and Peter and his maynade most certainly did not let themselves be slaughtered like sheep. On the other hand, since only the Count of Foix's troops and the Aragonese were actually engaged, the conflict, numerically speaking, was more or less an even match. Simon's flair for strategy, and above all his courageous if cruel decision to insist on the King's death, had stopped the rest of the army from intervening in time. The two reserve lines of allied troops had quit the battlefield without striking a blow.)

Beyond a doubt the King of Aragon's death came as a depressing shock to the country as a whole. Only yesterday this monarch had ridden through Languedoc at the head of his proud chivalry, arms and armour sparkling, a legend of prowess, acclaimed by all and ready for the fray. Yet now he had shown himself so fragile a reed that De Montfort's first onset destroyed him utterly.

In their consternation the allied princes accused each other freely of treason, and retired without making any effort to reassemble their forces and retrieve the day. The Spaniards went back across the Pyrenees; the Counts of Foix and Comminges returned to their own domains; while the Count of Toulouse and his son fled the country and took refuge in Provence. The victory of Muret had won, for De Montfort and the Church, a country not so much defeated as demoralized by the sudden and brutal shattering of its high hopes.

In the final count it is the city of Toulouse which paid by far the most dearly over this episode, in terms of human lives. The French cavalry's frenzied charge against the men-at-arms of Toulouse was a massacre rather than a battle. If the French had two of their own number to avenge (that is, Pierre de Sissey and Roger des Essarts, old comrades-in-arms of De Montfort's, who were captured at Toulouse and horribly tortured before execution) then Toulouse, 'where scarcely one house had not someone to mourn' would not forget the carnage and drownings of Muret.

The day after his victory Simon did not march on the capital. It would appear that this vast city, even when abandoned by its defenders, distressed and desolate, still was regarded by the conqueror, if not as an actual danger, at least as a potential source of trouble which he did not, as yet, feel strong enough to meet.

But the bishops entered Toulouse, with Foulques at their head, and attempted to negotiate for the city's surrender. The consuls dragged discussions out to an interminable length, argued over the number of hostages to be taken, and finally refused their submission. Meanwhile De Montfort had crossed the Rhone, and was methodically pursuing the conquest and subjugation of the Count's domains. If he waited till the other provinces were in his hands, he argued, then Toulouse would fall to him like a ripe apple.

Prelude to Muret

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Pope Innocent III

The bishops who accompanied De Montfort, alarmed by the size of the army preparing to march against them, now tried to negotiate. But the King refused to receive them, declaring that prelates escorted by an army stood in no need of safe-conducts. He could hardly have given them a clearer hint as to the contempt he felt for the way this war was being fought, the continual attempts to turn its equivocally 'sacred' status to profitable advantage. He had not pledged all his possessions and led the flower of his chivalry to the walls of Toulouse merely to be told that by attacking Simon de Montfort he was striking at Christ in person.

Yet this was exactly what his adversaries either believed or wished to believe. De Montfort himself was scared, since at the time this was September 1213 he had few troops over and above his Old Guard apart from some negligible reinforcements that the Bishops of Orleans and Auxerre had brought him; while Peter's total forces numbered over two thousand knights alone, not to mention about fifty thousand foot-soldiers, mainly recruited in Languedoc (in particular from the regions about Toulouse and Montalban) and consisting of both mercenaries and citizen train-bands.

Peter entered Toulouse in triumph, and was given a tumultuously enthusiastic reception. He now prepared to march against De Montfort, and planted his standard before the walls of Muret, 'a noble but ill-defended chateau which, for all its paltry fortifications, had a garrison of a mere thirty knights and some of De Montfort's men-at-arms' [Vaux de Cernay]. The siege began on 30th August; as soon as De Montfort heard the news he hurried to the rescue at the head of his troops. He stopped en route at the Cistercian Abbey of Bolbonne and, having due regard to the seriousness of his situation, consecrated his sword to God there: 'Lord God,' he prayed, 'Jesus most merciful, You have chosen me, though all unworthy, to fight Your holy war. Today I lay my arms upon Your Altar, that when I join battle on Your behalf I may reap justice in this sacred Cause.'

This was a most opportune demonstration of piety: since De Montfort's men could hardly have much confidence in their own numerical strength, they stood badly in need of the moral boost produced by an absolute certainty of fighting for God.

But as we have seen, the bishops (that is, those of Orleans and Auxerre, together with Foulques, the fugitive Bishop of Toulouse) were not at all optimistic about the possibility of a miracle. They sought rather to dissuade the King from his purpose having first solemnly re-excommunicated their adversaries, among whom the King himself was not listed by name. It was De Montfort who broke off negotiations, since he knew that they would come to nothing in the end.

The King of Aragon

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King Peter II the Catholic.

Having successfully drawn the King of Aragon into an enterprise which (to the great scandalization of public opinion) made that devout Catholic monarch a de facto protector of heretics, the Count of Toulouse had good grounds for hoping that the campaign being fought against him might now, at last, take on a somewhat different appearance. The so-called Holy War, directed against a heresy about which even the belligerents no longer appeared to care, would be revealed as a war of conquest pure and simple, fought on Christian soil, led by an unscrupulous adventurer, and backed by a handful of ambitious prelates.

The Pope may have hesitated momentarily ; but once enlightened by the Legates (who, obviously, did not hesitate to blacken the picture in order to justify their own conduct) he reversed his previous policy and lectured the proud King of Aragon as though the latter were a naughty child. His letter of 21st May, 1213, concluded : 'Such are the orders which your Serene Highness is invited to obey, in every last detail; failing which . . . We should be obliged to threaten you with Divine Wrath, and to take steps against you such as would result in your suffering grave and irreparable harm.'

Peter II, offended (and perhaps worse than offended) by such ingratitude on the part of the Pope, whom he had always served so faithfully, took no notice of this threat. (He was all the more annoyed with Innocent since the latter had refused to sanction the divorce proceedings he had brought against his wife, Marie de Montpellier.) He had already begun his preparations for war, being well aware that there was only one way to reduce De Montfort by force. He assembled his troops at Toulouse, and it was here that the Pope's letter reached him. He made a purely formal promise of obedience, but never thought for one moment of actually abandoning his allies.

The King of Aragon's forces, when combined with those of the Occitan barons, heavily outweighed De Montfort; as a wise and seasoned warrior Peter II must have reflected that, when all is said and done, right always lies with the victor. 'He summoned all the folk throughout his domains,' the Chanson tells us, 'so that there was gathered together a great and a noble host. To all he declared that he would go to Toulouse, to fight this Crusade which was laying waste and destroying the whole country. The Count of Toulouse begged a favour of him, that his lands should be neither burnt or ravaged, since he had done naught wrong, nor harmed anyone in the world.'

Peter II then returned to Barcelona, where he raised an army of a thousand knights; the finest warriors in Aragon and Catalonia were to fight in this campaign. There can be no doubt that the King, who was, in seventeenth century parlance, honour-proud, regarded this war as something more than an opportunity to get his hands on Languedoc. It was the honour of the Occitan nobility, so humiliated by these Northern Frenchmen, that the King and his knights were going to defend: the freedom of their brothers-in-arms, and the cause of la courtoisie or Parage, as it was known in the langue (Toe. The meaning of this word (like that of so many others) has over the centuries been weakened and narrowed down to a remarkable extent ; at this time it evoked the very highest moral values current in secular society. The greatest compliment that the most impassioned lover could pay his lady was to say that she was courtoise; and when, in the Chanson, William of Tudela's continuator puts speeches into his knights' mouths, they are constantly invoking Parage, as they would some divinity.

The songs of the troubadours bear witness to this attitude of mind. Whether he would or no, it was, indeed, for the very existence of a civilization and a national tradition that the King was fighting. 'Then ladies and lovers will recover the joy they have lost,' sang Raymond de Miraval, as he offered vows for Peter's victory. We wonder what these ladies and their lovers were doing in so bloody an adventure; it is clear that we are concerned here with something other than broken families and knights condemned to exile. It was a whole way of life that lay under threat of destruction; a way of life in which Vamour courtois, with its ostentation, its affected elegance, its daring mystique and heroic lack of moderation, served as a symbol for a society that avidly craved spiritual freedom.

According to William de Puylaurens, on the eve of the Battle of Muret, Simon de Montfort intercepted a letter from the King of Aragon to a noble lady of Toulouse: a letter in which the King declared that the only reason he had come to drive out the French was for love of her. Moline de Saint-Yon, in his Histoire des Comtes de Toulouse, believes that this letter was, in fact, written by Peter to one of his sisters (the King, as a good feudal monarch, would have the interests of his family very much at heart, and would make no mystery of the matter); whether it was or not, a detail of this sort would not on its own constitute a proof of the King of Aragon's frivolity. According to the tenets of the tradition courtoise, a knight regarded it as an honour to be able to offer the lady of his heart homage by accomplishing some notable deed in her name. And even if we allow that Peter's private intentions may not have been exclusively chivalrous, what interests us is the atmosphere in which the preparations for this campaign took place. There can be no doubt that the combatants, both in the allied camp and the King's immediate entourage, felt that they were fighting in a noble cause for Parage, for civilization (though the word itself is an anachronism here), against the Northern barbarians. It must be admitted that Simon de Montfort hardly gave his opponents a very flattering impression of the moral qualities possessed by his French nobility; the significant point is that the Catholic Church now found itself in this barbarian camp.

Lord of the South of France

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For Simon (as for the Legates) a new stage of affairs had now been reached. As in preceding years, the commander's military talent, combined with the periodical drafts of warrior-pilgrims which he received from the North, had contrived to triumph over local resistance movements. But this time the resultant gains were so substantial that Simon was able to regard himself as master of all Languedoc: he had swept the country clear of his enemies. The Counts of Foix and Toulouse had retired to the court of the King of Aragon, where they were now planning a retaliatory campaign. Burghers and seigneurs had renewed their oaths of allegiance to the conqueror except, that is, for the Jaid'its, whose property now came in very handy for rewarding the French knights for their devoted service. The local bishops were gradually replaced by faithful executors of Papal policy. Toulouse was not yet reduced, but Simon had high hopes of rectifying this situation the following spring. He was, indeed, already thinking how best to put his conquest on an organized basis.

The Statutes of Pamiers show us that De Montfort already regarded himself as the legitimate seigneur of Languedoc. He summoned an Assembly in Pamiers, a kind of States General that included Bishops, Nobles and Burghers. At least, it did so in theory; in fact the Bishops dominated the Assembly, and markedly so, while the Legates were conspicuous by their absence. This suggests that while De Montfort was trying to enlist the support of the Church in Languedoc, he was more concerned to free himself from the guidance of the Legates, who were rather too prone to remind him that the whole campaign had been undertaken at the Church's behest and for 'spiritual' ends. Simon had already half-quarrelled with the Abbot of Citeaux, who, having been elected Archbishop of Narbonne, had also granted himself the title of Duke, and received direct homage from Viscount Aimery.

In the Statutes that he drafted at Pamiers, Simon bestowed upon the Church considerable material advantages: protection of property and privileges, confirmation of tithes and other dues, exemption from certain taxes, such as tallage, and ecclesiastical justice for all the clergy. On the other hand and this is understandable when we see the annoyance the Abbot of Citeaux was to cause him Simon gave the prelates of the Church no part whatsoever in the government of the country. The real power was to be his alone, backed by his troop of French knights.

Simon de Montfort's companions, in fact, were to fill the gap left by the local seigneurs, whether the latter were heretics or merely dispossessed by the invader. They were to form a new aristocracy, a ruling class: important fiefs were distributed among them, and in return they agreed to serve the Count [i.e. De Montfort] in all his wars; not to cross the frontier without prior leave; not to prolong their absence beyond an agreed date; for a period of twenty years to enrol none but French knights in their service. Their widows, or other female heirs to their chateaux, were not, for a period of six years, to marry other than a Frenchman except with the Count's permission. Finally, all heirs were to inherit 'according to the customs and usage obtaining in Paris and that part of France surrounding'. What Simon had in mind, it appears, was a thoroughgoing colonization scheme for the conquered territory or at least, the gradual elimination of the local nobility, and its replacement by aristocratic blood imported from France. His hostility towards the Occitan aristocracy was persistent and, indeed, well justified. As a soldier his prime aim was, naturally, to eradicate the class which held military power in Languedoc.

He seems not to have been over-troubled about heretics; nor did he set up any special organization for the purpose of hunting them down. In his view this task was the Church's responsibility. Besides, Crusader though he was, De Montfort apparently regarded heresy as a mere excuse for despoiling such seigneurs as showed him hostility or whose property he coveted. Yet till the very end, doubtless in all good faith, he was to proclaim that his battles were fought in Christ's cause.

Finally, the Statutes of Pamiers envisaged a series of measures designed to improve the lot of the common people, and to protect them against the more arbitrary whims of their overlords. These provisions were generous enough, but smacked somewhat of demagoguy, since with the country in a state of war they would tend to become inapplicable. The promise of less crushing taxes and fairer treatment in the courts was small enough compensation for warlevies, increased tithes, and the damage incurred by property during each campaign. Be that as it may, Simon took his legislative functions with the utmost seriousness. Here in this hostile, half-subdued country, where he was hard put to it even to hold his own, he already seemed to be settling in for centuries ahead.

In fact the Count of Toulouse was still the legitimate seigneur; indeed, as early as September 1212 the Pope was already writing to his Legates, asking why the Count had not been allowed to lodge a plea in self-justification; whether his guilt had really been established; and if there were any legitimate grounds for deposing him in favour of someone else. This letter, it seems, is not so much a testimonial to Innocent Ill's taste for equity as the immediate result of some diplomatic work on the part of the Count himself, who had been doing his best, using the King of Aragon as his intermediary, to disparage the Crusade in the Pope's eyes.

Now, after three years' fighting, a certain number of military successes, and the apparent stamping out of all armed resistance in districts affected by heresy, the Pope suddenly seemed to lose interest in the whole affair, well though it had begun. He declared the Crusade over (at least for the time being), criticizing the Legates, and De Montfort in particular, for their excessive and unprofitable zeal. 'Certain foxes,' Innocent wrote, 'were destroying the Vine of Our Lord in this Province [i.e. Languedoc]. They have been caught. . . . Today we have to prepare ourselves against a more formidable danger. . . .'

In fact the Crusade's main enemy was no longer Raymond-Roger Trencavel, or even the Count of Toulouse, but Peter II of Aragon the leader of the Crusade against the Moors, whose victory over Las Navas de Tolosa (16th July, 1212) was still fresh, who stood as the champion of Christendom against Islam.

So in order to become unquestioned masters in Languedoc Montfort and the Legates still had one decisive obstacle to overcome. The very least we can say is that they were by no means sure of triumphing. If Simon were to be beaten by Peter II (who was a devout Catholic) he would from that moment be a mere adventurer and usurper; the Pope himself, for all his hatred of heresy, would doubtless be forced to bow to the fait accompli, leaving the King of Aragon with the task of persecuting heretics in the States that he had thus taken under his protection.

In any case, in January 1213 Peter II had not the slightest intention of taking military action: he assumed that he could impose his will on both De Montfort and the Pope simply by virtue of the high prestige he enjoyed. Still covered with the glory that had followed his brilliant victory over the Moors, this doughty warrior reckoned (not without cause) that the Pope owed him very special consideration; and when he intervened on behalf of his brother-in-law the Count of Toulouse, he doubtless did not expect to have Innocent writing to him, five months later: 'Would God that your wisdom and piety had grown in proportion [to your renown]! You have acted ill, both towards Us and yourself. . . .'

The King of Aragon, who held direct suzerainty over part of the lands belonging to the Viscounts of Trencavel and the Counts of Foix and Comminges, had long regarded this Crusade as an enterprise in direct conflict with his sovereign rights. During the previous century the Counts of Toulouse had, on numerous occasions, been forced to defend their independence against Aragonese claims. Even when the Crusade was at its height, certain of the Viscount of Bezier's vassals, who had sought aid from Peter II, preferred to submit to De Montfort rather than surrender those strongholds which the King of Aragon demanded of them. But the cruel deeds and tyrannical spirit that marked their new seigneur must very soon have alienated the sympathies of baron and burgher alike, and made them look towards their powerful neighbour beyond the Pyrenees.

Whatever his claims upon Languedoc, the King of Aragon could scarcely fail to be hailed as a saviour if he drove out the French. The people of Carcassonne, of Beziers, and of Toulouse,' as the future King James I was afterwards to write, 'came to my father [Peter II] and told him that if only he would conquer them, he could become Lord of the Realm. . . ,' 22 As early as 1211 the consuls of Toulouse had addressed a letter to the King, in which they appealed against the Crusaders' misdeeds, and begged his intervention in defence of a country so close to his own : 'When your neighbour's wall is on fire, your own property burns too. . . ,' 23 Peter II was a Catholic ; indeed, he had actually persecuted and burnt heretics in his own domains. Barons, consuls and burghers all claimed to be good Catholics, and swore that there were no more heretics left amongst them.

The Count of Toulouse, in agreement with his vassals the Counts of Foix and Comminges, had decided to play his last card. Alliance with the King might place them all in a position of direct dependence upon Aragon, but at least there was a chance of driving the foreign invader from their soil.

Meanwhile King Peter himself took up the cause of ravaged and downtrodden Languedoc. Even if his desire to help his brothers-in-law was not wholly disinterested, we should bear in mind that this feudal monarch felt touched in his honour by the humiliations which his vassals had undergone; and in any case ties of family and nationality might well drive him to defend his sisters' heritage, and uphold a country whose tongue he spoke and whose poets he admired.

His ambassadors, with the Bishop of Segovia at their head, had undertaken to demonstrate to the Pope that heresy as such was defeated, and that the Legates (in league with Simon de Montfort) were now attacking territories that had never been suspected of heresy, and were utilizing the Crusade for their personal advantage and the mere pursuit of new conquests. Furthermore, by attacking vassals of the King of Aragon, they were hindering the latter from prosecuting the Crusade which he had undertaken against the Moors, and which had already yielded such excellent results. Preoccupied as he was by his war against the infidel, the King hoped, by halting this anti-heretical Crusade, to divert into Spain the great hordes of Crusaders who annually filled the French Midi, and whose fighting qualities he had already had occasion to appreciate.

To begin with the Pope was influenced by these emissaries from the King of Aragon, and wrote a really severe letter to Simon de Montfort:

The illustrious King of Aragon has informed Us that . . . not content with taking up arms against the heretics, you also have fought, under the banner of the Crusade, against Catholic peoples; that you have spilt innocent blood, and have invaded, to their detriment, the domains of the Count of Foix and those of the Count of Comminges and of Gaston de Beam, his vassals, though the population of these said domains was in no way suspect of heresy. . . .

Being unwilling, therefore, to deny him [the King) his rights, or to divert him from his praiseworthy intentions, We order you to restore to him and his vassals all those seigneuries which you have appropriated by force; lest by retaining them unjustly you cause it to be said that you have laboured for your own advantage, and not for the sake of your faith. . . . The Indulgences granted to pilgrims who joined in the Crusade against the heretics were cancelled, and 'transferred to wars fought against the paynim, or for the succour of the Holy Land'.

While the Pope was writing his letters, the Legates held a Council at Lavaur. The King, having been invited to speak in defence of the Count of Toulouse, found himself personally threatened with excommunication by Arnald-Amalric. For the sake of the Church in Languedoc it was essential that the Count should be at all costs prevented from regaining his rights, whether in principle or fact: the Legates preferred to run the very serious risk of saddling themselves with a war against the King of Aragon.

To judge from their letters, the minutes of Council meetings, and the account given by Vaux de Cernay, it would look as though the very existence of the Church in the Midi depended on the elimination of the Count of Toulouse. Being better informed on the situation than the Pope or the King of Aragon, they knew that this apparently peaceable and conciliatory person, always so ready to submit, was indeed (so far as the Church was concerned) the 'roaring lion' they spoke of in their letters. Their relentlessness is only comprehensible in terms of the knowledge they had concerning the Count's character; and this they judged rather better than most historians managed to do in the centuries that followed. This 'protector of heretics' was firmly resolved to remain so to the end, come wind come weather ; whether his attitude was dictated by personal sympathies, or, as seems more likely, by a genuine sense of justice, Raymond VI represented, in the heretics' eyes, a guarantee of security, a sure prop and stay. From this position he never wavered. This so-called 'weakling' seems in fact to have been a pliable and realistically-minded diplomat, hard to intimidate, and doggedly tenacious of purpose. Raymond realized, perhaps better than anyone, that the Church was a practically invincible Power, against which one could only fight by means of as spectacular a submission as possible. He never abandoned this policy of submission till the day came when his Catholic subjects decided that his cause was also God's cause, the cause of justice and righteousness.

Catharist Credentes II

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Various sorts of charges were brought against the credentes, and repeated over and over again. Though Pierre des Vaux de Cernay may be a most partial witness, he cannot surely have been wholly mistaken when he claimed that these credentes were addicted to 'usury, rapine, murder, perjury, and every kind of perversion'. He is here referring, clearly, to the Cathar seigneurs and knights; and we should not forget that identical accusations were brought against the nobility of countries untouched by any taint of heresy. The perennial hostility between clergy and nobility would, indeed, give us a most sinister impression of the Catholic nobility if we had no evidence to go on save the writings of monks and churchmen: apart from a few 'soldiers of Christ', these knights are drawn as men given over to every base instinct, bursting with brutality, glutted with honours and luxuries, only happy when engaged in warfare or rapine. Secular literature, on the other hand, either ignores or despises the clergy ; here the bishops unless, like Turpin, they happen to be cracking Saracen skulls figure at best as mere decorative additions to the narrative. In the countries where Catholicism was most firmly established the nobility and the ecclesiastic hierarchy seemed to live in completely separate worlds, as rivals and indeed as enemies to one another. Now the aristocracy of the Midi, though not worse than its counterpart in any other country, numbered among its plentiful shortcomings that of holding the Catholic religion in open contempt: so why should we be surprised at its incurring clerical censure, seeing that the clergy habitually kept up a running fire of criticism against the Catholic nobility as a whole?

The great barons in the North by no means always honoured their oaths of allegiance: they seized the least excuse to rebel against overlords whom they had sworn on the Gospels to serve faithfully. Those of the Midi (those at least who also happened to profess the Cathar faith, which compelled them to treat any oath as illicit) must have regarded such oaths as they were obliged to take as merely simple formalities, void of any moral force; or at any rate, they were quite at liberty to do so when it suited their book. Possibly then this meant that they 'perjured' themselves more often than the men from the North? But, as against this, their religion also condemned any kind of lie which meant, by implication, that they had to preserve a certain scrupulousness in their conduct. The only people who were liable to be driven into perjury by reason of their religion were those who would have perjured themselves under any circumstances. Still, even the most honourable of them were often obliged to maintain some sort of relationship with the Catholic Church, since the latter controlled a large proportion of the country's official administration; and this necessarily encouraged hypocrisy. It is only fair to say that many of the smaller landed proprietors had made a clean and open break with the established Church. In Ariege, Carcasses, and the region round Toulouse whole villages indeed, sometimes whole districts had long since abandoned the practice of Catholicism. All the inhabitants received the consolamentum on their deathbeds; the perfecti conducted their rites in the deserted churches; and one extreme case is cited, that of the Chateau de Termes, where, until the arrival of the Crusaders, no religious service had been held for over a quarter of a century. The seigneurs described as faidits that is, whose who abandoned their lands when the Crusaders came were too intransigent in their faith even to feign submission to the Church; and there were a great many of them. It is reasonable to assume that men who were capable of sacrificing both property and security for the sake of their religious beliefs were not likely also to be addicted to usury, rapine, and debauchery.

The burghers of the towns in the Midi seem to have been pugnacious folk; the nobility, rich or poor, when they were not at Court or celebrating various feast days, had scarcely nine months in the year to get on with their own affairs. In order to keep their domains intact they had to conduct continual guerilla warfare against bandits, aggressive neighbours, and insubordinate vassals or bailiffs. The Cathar Church had not succeeded in transforming these wolves into lambs, any more than the Catholics had; but doubtless the Cathars were more vehement in their denunciation of murder. The Cathar believer could never feel that he was fighting for a sacred and righteous cause. This, at any rate, was how things stood during the first years of the Crusade.

The Cathars held most lofty notions concerning the value and dignity of life ; thus they would not admit that the God of the Old Testament could have been a righteous God, since He had drowned the entire pre-Deluge population of the world, annihilated Pharaoh and his army, destroyed the inhabitants of Sodom, and done much more of the same sort. In fact, they pointed out, He actually approved of murder: witness his orders to the Israelites, commanding them to massacre the peoples of Canaan. To Catholics the destruction of evil-doers seemed to present no particular problem; Cathar morality was both subtler and more demanding. Taking the Gospels as their authority, they utterly condemned the death penalty, and indeed punitive measures of any sort; they claimed that criminals should not be punished, but rather given treatment designed to make them better citizens. Doubtless it was easy enough for them to talk in this way, since their adversaries were responsible for the execution of justice; but it is, nevertheless, highly disturbing to find such humane doctrines being denounced by the Church as scandalous. Nor should we be surprised at notions of this sort appealing to a great many people: the times, we may conclude, were less brutal and primitive than superficial observers are wont to assume.

Those who listened to the preaching of the perfecti must have possessed an awareness of common humanity lacking in such crude noblemen as supposed they could win entry to Paradise by cleaving numbers of Saracens to the chine. The declaration that to kill a Saracen was just as great a crime as parricide or fratricide was certainly not immoral, though it may have been somewhat imprudent. As we shall see later, however, the war eventually compelled the perfecti to modify their uncompromising attitude and allow their followers into battle though perhaps not with much active degree of encouragement. Still, it remains possible that their pacifism contributed to the relative weakness of resistance in Languedoc at the outset of hostilities.

Catharist Credentes I

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We know really very little about the Catharist credentes, the body of the faithful; not even their approximate numbers. We do know that the population of certain boroughs and country estates was composed wholly of heretics; that in some districts such as the Ariege Valley they formed a comfortable majority ; and that they were more numerous in some guilds than others for instance, 'weaver' was a popular nickname for any heretic. But when we have assembled such facts as we possess, this mass of believers cannot but seem to us today both vaguer, more irresolute, and less organized than in fact it was. No official document contains so much as an outline of the way in which the Catharist Church was organized : as we shall see from subsequent events, these people had nothing to gain by getting themselves officially registered as heretics.

Nevertheless, this organization did in fact exist. To begin with, each province had its own bishop, together with two assistants, known respectively as the bishop's filius maior and filius minor, or elder and younger son. Before he died the bishop would ordain the filius maior as his successor; the filius minor in turn now became filius maior, and the regional congregation of perfecti elected a new filius minor. Each important locality had its deacon, assisted by a varying number of perfecti, both men and women. We know that there were never all that many of them. The whole financial and administrative side of the Church's organization was in the hands of ordinary credentes who had not renounced the world: they ranged from rich merchants, who were entrusted with the funds necessary to maintain various maisons communes, down to the common folk, both men and women, who acted as messengers, guides, or liaison agents. Wherever the bons hommes halted to preach, they would find asylum for the night with some faithful member of the Church, well known for his upright way of life or his religious zeal. When we read in the Inquisition's transcripts that such-and-such a man or woman had sheltered perfecti under their roof, we may suppose that the credentes judged worthy of this honour were not picked at random, and that already they formed something of an elite among the general body of the faithful.

In such communally maintained houses there were always to be found a number of persons whose desire it was to receive the Holy Spirit, and whose life was therefore devoted to prayer, and to study of the Church's teachings. They might be young people (often entrusted to the perfecti by their parents while still mere children) or converts of any age; and though they had not yet received the consolamentum, they were no longer classed with the rank and file of the credentes. There were also those believers who, while still living in the secular world, still observed a proportion of the restrictions imposed upon perfecti i.e. those concerned with fasting, chastity, and prayer. The greater majority, however, lived perfectly normal lives, and contented themselves with attending meetings and showing reverence to the bons hommes.

Theoretically, the ordinary Cathar had only one ritual obligation, and that was to perform his melioramentum or act of veneration before the bons hommes. This very simple ceremony consisted in his bowing three times to the perfectus and saying: Tray God to make a good Christian of me, and bring me to a good end.' The perfectus would then bless him, and say: 'May God make a good Christian of you, and bring you to a good end.' The believer had no other religious obligation apart from this, and could even continue, out of prudence, to attend Mass in Catholic churches. The credentes, in fact, were people who had either given up going to church, or only did so out of fear or habit; and as we have seen, there were very many parishes in which there was no need for them even to do this.

Those whose faith was strong and sincere, and who despite this were still debarred from the sacrament, would regularly (once a month on the average) make their aparelhamentum, or self-correction: this involved a public declaration of their sins, and a begging of God's forgiveness. It was not exactly a public confession in the full sense, but rather akin to an Act of Contrition, cast in sufficiently wide terms to include every sort of sin especially those of indolence or neglect in fulfilling God's wishes. The perfectus officiating at this ceremony then absolved the congregation, one by one, from their sins, and imposed penances upon them in the form of fasting and prayer. The Cathars prayed a great deal, but most of their devotion consisted in repeating the Our Father in the Occitan tongue (with the phrase 'suprasubstantial bread' substituted for 'daily bread' *) and meditation on the commentaries with which they glossed the Lord's Prayer. Specifically Catharist prayers do survive, but the creed's one great central prayer, its focal point of truth, the daily nourishment of perfectus and credens alike, remained the Our Father.

We see, then, that a Catharist credens, despite his non-participation in the sacraments, led a truly religious life ; and thanks to the simple fact that his Church was, if not actively persecuted, at any rate illegal and still a partially clandestine organization, his personal faith functioned at a deeper and more intense level than could that of the majority of Catholics. It is true that in many districts the Cathars no longer made any pretence of concealment; indeed, by the time of the Crusade a large number of people must already have gone over to Catharism for motives of self-interest, or simply to be in line with the rest of the community. But the new Church still retained, unchanged, its original characteristics, which were those of a persecuted creed. The man who turned heretic through conviction could always steel his faith with the memory of still-recent burnings.

* This Cathar variant on the normal version of the Lord's Prayer results from a different interpretation of the Greek word epiousios, which is almost impossible to render precisely, and contains a certain ambiguity of form. 'Suprasubstantial’ is a quite feasible rendering. Cf. Runciman, The Mediaeval Manichee (1947), p. 166, who explains it as a 'literal translation of the so-called Nikolski gospel, the Slavonic gospel of the Bosnian heretics' (Trs.).

Women and the Crusades

2009-09-23T11:34:00.001+08:00

An imaginative artist's impression of the death of Simon de Montfort IV at the Siege of Toulouse. Strong arms these southern French women have or perhaps the ‘rock’ was propelled by the supernatural from her hand.

Camp followers, combatants, vivandières, leaders, and tenders of home property during the Crusades. The crusades—medieval European attempts to conquer and control Jerusalem and its surrounding territory—were the largest and longest military endeavor of the Middle Ages. Between 1096 and 1400, well over a million European men, women, and children “took the cross,” vowing to reach Jerusalem or die in the attempt. Besides the Holy Land crusades, there were holy wars against Muslim rulers of Spain, non- Christian Slavs, heretics in southern France, and, increasingly, the enemies of the papacy. Although women only bore weapons in the direst emergencies, they still played interesting roles in these conflicts because of the nature of crusading itself.

In the Middle Ages, the only women who normally accompanied troops were camp followers, but a crusade was a holy war and the reward for participation was remission of all penalties for sin. At a more mundane level, a Holy Land crusade could last for years, a long time for families to be separated. Thus, when the First Crusade was preached in November 1095, wives, daughters, and even nuns joined the cause. Pope Urban II tried to dissuade women from going without the permission of their legal guardians but recognized their right to participate. Because the crusade was a holy endeavor, attempts were made, especially on the First Crusade (1096–1099), to drive the prostitutes from camp and even to prevent sexual encounters between married couples. Still, the women played a useful role dealing with supplies, nursing the sick and injured—and of course providing sex.

The largest role played by a crusading woman was that of Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of France and participant with her husband Louis VII in the Second Crusade (1147–1148). Eleanor went as spokesperson for the contingent of soldiers from her province of Aquitaine, who otherwise would not have been represented in military councils. Her command position was considered so outrageous that imaginative chroniclers later decided that she and her female attendants must have dressed up as Amazons and that Eleanor must have behaved scandalously with her uncle the prince of Antioch. The truth of the matter seems to be that Eleanor disagreed with Louis on the conduct of the war (which was a miserable failure), and he exerted his husbandly rights by placing her under restraint. Arabic reports of the Third Crusade (1189–1192) also tell of female Europeans taking part in battles. These tales should not be taken at face value; the Arabic authors were eager to show how barbarous the westerners were, and to Muslims as to medieval Europeans, warrior women were the height of barbarity. The only certain cases of women participating in crusading battles are when they were in besieged cities or castles; the Albigensian crusade commander Simon de Montfort was killed by a stone shot by a woman during a siege. As always in premodern war the women of the losing side could expect rape or worse; one crusade chronicler commends the good Christian soldiers for not raping Muslim women but only killing them.

Because of the length of an average crusade, the role of women left behind was particularly important. Women controlled estates in their husbands’ absence and acted diplomatically for their distant spouses. Queen Blanche of Castile even served as regent of France while her son Louis IX was off on the first of his two crusades and had to raise his ransom when he was captured.

References and Further Reading

Fulcher of Chartres. 1969. A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127. Translated by Frances Ryan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Nicholson, Helen. 1997. “Women on the Third Crusade.” Journal of Medieval History 23: 335–349.

Owen, D. D. R. 1993. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend. Oxford, England: Blackwell.

Book Review: The Last Witch of Langenburg.

2009-09-10T20:16:00.002+08:00

Thomas Willard Robisheaux. The Last Witch of Langenburg. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. 427 pp. $26.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-393-06551-0.

Reviewed by Marc R. Forster (Department of History, Connecticut College)
Published on H-German (September, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

The End of the Witchcraze

Thomas Robisheaux has written a study of a late-seventeenth-century witch trial that takes the reader deep into the world of the small German county of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Robisheaux does a masterful job of telling the story of the gruesome and sudden death of a young mother, Anna Fessler, and the subsequent trial, conviction, and execution of Anna Schmieg, the miller's wife, for poisoning and witchcraft. The investigation and trial of Schmieg opens a window on many aspects of seventeenth-century society. This is a legal history, as Robisheaux seeks to understand the logic that led Court Advisor Dr. Tobias Ulrich von Gülchen, the lordship's leading legal official, to seek a conviction for witchcraft. He follows the struggles of local medical experts to understand the evidence of the autopsy of Anna Fessler. He explains the religious concerns and fears of local Lutheran pastors and members of the local elite. Most of all, Robisheaux explores the world of the hamlet of Hürden where Fessler and Schmieg lived and the social and family interactions that led to accusations of witchcraft against Schmieg and several other women in the area. The conflicts and tensions of rural life meant that some women, especially women like Schmieg, who had a sharp tongue, a drinking problem, and many enemies, gained reputations as witches, which could lead to dangerous accusations in times of crisis or after an untimely death, whether of a person or of cattle.

The Last Witch of Langenburg also reminds historians of the contested nature of witch prosecutions. In order for the horrific crazes of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to gain momentum, a consensus had to prevail across society about the reality of the witches' sabbath, the validity of denunciations from common people, and the reliability of confessions procured through torture. In Germany in 1672, when Schmieg was arrested, this consensus was falling apart. Of course, some observers had always been skeptical or even openly critical of witch trials, most famously the Jesuit Friedrich von Spee and the Lutheran medical doctor Johan Weyer, but after 1650 this group was gaining ascendency. Particularly important among these skeptics were jurists who found it increasingly difficult to gather reliable evidence against witches.

Robisheaux follows the complex process used by Gülchen to gather evidence against Schmeig and several other women accused of witchcraft. His presentation of Gülchen is sympathetic in a way, as we see this pious, well-educated, cosmopolitan man struggling to build a case based on the evidence available. As demanded by the legal reforms of the post-Thirty Years' War period, Gülchen needed evidence of Schmieg's reputation as a witch and of "inimicitia odium, or vicious enmity toward others" (p. 231). Unwilling to resort to the "extraordinary procedure" that had been used in so many cases earlier in the century, Gülchen ultimately needed evidence of a crime, in this case poisoning, in order to torture the accused and gain a confession, which was necessary for a conviction. In order to fulfill each of these requirements, Gülchen consulted the medical and legal faculties at the University of Altdorf and the legal faculty in Strasbourg. It is an indication of the contested nature of witch trials that these consultations brought mixed results. The Altdorf professors ruled that there was insufficient evidence to justify torture, but the Strasbourg jurists, in a convoluted decision, allowed it, sealing Schmieg's fate.

But why was Gülchen so intent on convicting this accused witch, especially at a time when many neighboring states were no longer executing witches? Robisheaux demonstrates brilliantly the interplay of factors that led to the execution of Anna Schmieg. Despite the involvement of universities outside the county of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, this investigation and trial were results of the political, social, and religious dynamics of this small territory. Traumatized by the experience of the Thirty Years' War, Count Heinrich Friedrich feared disorder above all else. The 1630s and 40s had been terrible for Hohenlohe--its residents had witnessed marauding soldiers, plague, famine, and the total collapse of princely authority. The count and his officials worked hard in the following decades to restore order and authority, and a measure of prosperity, to the little principality. Central to this "search for stability" was the court system, which was efficient enough to earn the loyalty of the population.

The late-seventeenth-century Hohenlohe state developed in the context of close relations between the local population and government officials. Robisheaux shows how residents of Hürden and the other villages involved in the witchcraft case had personal relationships with government officials in Langenburg and even with the count himself. Anna Schmieg's husband Hans, for example, had a personal confrontation with the count, whom he met on a lonely road near his home. Other villagers worked as servants at the court or had family members who did so. They negotiated contracts in person with high officials, and they knew judges and tax collectors well.

The close interactions between the court at Langenburg and the peasants of the surrounding villages meant that Gülchen and the count himself knew all about Anna and Hans Schmieg. Anna's reputation for drinking and brawling in taverns and for cursing her neighbors and family members was well known among officials, as were her husband's shady business dealings as miller. Both Schmiegs engaged in long-running feuds with neighbors and had had regular run-ins with the law in the decades before the witchcraft accusation. Furthermore, everyone knew of the accidental deaths of two Schmieg children and about the conflicts within the family, particularly between Anna and her daughter, Eva, over issues of inheritance and Eva's unsuitable marriage. Eva's denunciation of her own mother as a witch was very important, if not decisive, in bringing about a conviction.

Accusations of witchcraft fed a variety of fears in this close-knit society. Peasants tended to see witchcraft behind any outbreak of cattle disease, for example, and this attitude could lead quickly to panic. People also sustained long memories of earlier trials, linking women together across decades as part of an (imaginary) conspiracy of witches. The count and his officials saw it as their duty to protect society from attacks by Satan and his minions, but at the same time, trials were dangerous. They tended to create panic, since each witch was assumed to work with others and forced by torture to identify conspirators. In 1672, Gülchen was sure that he had found "a whole nest of witches" (p. 175) and this discovery motivated him to push his investigation as far as possible.

Concern with Satanic conspiracies was reinforced by the prevailing religious culture of this Lutheran territory. The Lutheran pastors, led by court preacher Ludwig Casimir Dietzel, were strongly influenced by Strasbourg's reform movement, which grew out of the Thirty Years' War. This movement emphasized active pastoral work and a strong sense that the war had "revealed God's wrath and the urgent need for spiritual, religious, and moral renewal" (p. 181). Dietzel served as Schmieg's pastor when she was in prison and pressured her continuously to admit her guilt, confess her sins, and reconcile with God. Dietzel's focus on internal, personal guilt and repentance did not match up well with the common folk's more ritualized sense of confession and communal reconciliation, but his intense sense of threat from the forces of evil did much to heighten tensions around the case.

The interplay between the count's officials and the local population led to Anna Schmieg's execution. But, as Robisheaux makes clear, the outcome was not inevitable. Schmieg was a stubborn defendant, denied her guilt for a long time and, despite torture, delivered only a partially satisfactory confession. Had the jurists in Strasbourg ruled otherwise, she might have gotten off. Furthermore, she was the last witch executed in this part of Germany and it did not lead to a larger panic. This trial is thus situated at a turning point in the history of witch persecutions. Robisheaux uses this exceptionally well-documented case to illuminate how local accusations could lead to larger panics, as they had earlier in the century. He also shows how legal reforms and new, more secular, attitudes at universities and among government officials of the post-Thirty Years' War era increasingly called these trials into question. Everyone still believed in the reality of witchcraft, but new legal rules and the requirement that medical and forensic evidence be deployed in a poisoning case made it difficult to prove a crime like this. People in the villages still referred to certain people, usually older women like Anna Schmieg, as witches, and they told stories about the Schmieg case into the nineteenth century, but the trials ended.

This is a book with great scholarly depth, but The Last Witch of Langenburg is also a lively read and deserves a wide audience. Robisheaux tells his story very well, and it is a good story--a difficult and argumentative woman, an outsider who had to fight for everything she had in life, coming to grief on the accusations of her neighbors and her own daughter. Other compelling characters play their parts, as well--the jurist Gülchen, struggling to build a case; the court preacher looking to save souls; and the count living in fear that the political order he had worked so hard to create might be destroyed by a conspiracy of witches. In the end, of course, the story Robisheaux tells is a tragedy, as Anna Schmieg is executed. But it is also the end of an era--there would be no more executions of women for the imaginary crime of witchcraft.

King Richard II and the Lollard movement

2009-09-10T07:17:00.000+08:00

Richard's reign is also notable for the significant impact of John Wyclif and his Lollard followers, who formed the first recognised critics of the established church since the fifth century. Born in Yorkshire in the 1330s, Wyclif was a theologian at Balliol College, Oxford and a 'realist' who believed that one's knowledge derived from within rather than through the senses. He rejected the human church, preferring one which comprised the body of the elect with all authority derived from the scriptures. He denied transubstantiation and believed in the spiritual Eucharist rather than the physical one. Wyclif wanted the church reformed, with its landed wealth and tax exemptions removed.

The Lollards who followed Wyclif, often called "mumblers" (probably reflecting their scriptural based worship) represented a general, but very limited, minority theological reform movement. The most important Lollards were a group of knights who formed part of the king's court. These included Sir William Neville, Sir John Montague and Sir William Beachamp who enjoyed sympathetic support and active protection from the Black Prince and Gaunt, at least from 1371 to 1382.

Wyclif's aim was for a reformation of the church but his movement failed for various reasons, amongst which were limited literacy levels and the lack of the printing press as a tool of dissemination. Wyclif was an important figure but the extent of his influence was limited, and the crucial contextual requirements that allowed the Reformation to occur were completely non-existent during Richard's reign. Furthermore, if the Lollards had become a greater threat, they would have faced the full assault of the united crown, church and law. After the Peasants' Revolt, when the association with any kind of opposition brought condemnation, the influence of Lollardy waned. Years later, Henry IV attacked their heresy more vociferously and the Lollards fell into isolation after the failure of the Oldcastle revolt in 1414.

Richard personally possessed a strong faith. Yet he did little to stamp out the Lollards and tolerated key adherents to their beliefs in his own court. Again, Richard II is so self-absorbed that he fails to see that there are many currents and movements in society which exist outside his own world. But his personal piety makes any chance of further tolerance on his part highly unlikely. In fact, by the mid-1380s, Richard had started an active campaign against heresy in the kingdom, attacking heretical works, arresting Lollards and supporting the church authorities. However, no new statutes were passed. Richard's personal faith blossomed in the 1390s and a number of artefacts survive from this time, such as the Wilton Diptych, many gifts to the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor at Westminster, and his investment in Westminster Abbey and York Minster.

SIMON OF MONTFORT AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1210 PART II

2009-07-08T21:02:00.001+08:00

Examples of Trebuchets

THE SIEGE OF MINERVE , JUNE– JULY 1210

By late June things were moving in a positive direction for Simon of Montfort. Though his overlord, the King of Aragon, had not accepted his homage, he had not rejected it either, and the lords of the viscounty had likewise failed to work out a solution with King Pere at Montréal. By 24 June Montfort decided to secure his lordship more firmly by beginning major military operations for the year. His first target was the mountain fortress and Cathar refuge of Minerve. Neither the siege of Minerve nor that of Termes later was that important militarily, as both were small castra deep in the mountains. He chose Minerve because it consistently served as a refuge for Cathar perfects, so taking it became crucial in establishing both church and vicecomital authority in that part of his territory.

Bolstered by reinforcements from the north, including men from Anjou, Brittany, Champagne, Frisia, and Lotharingia and other groups of ‘‘Germans,’’ Montfort besieged Minerve for seven weeks, from the third week of June to the end of July 1210. He did so, according to Peter Vauxde- Cernay, because the citizens of Narbonne asked him to, even though he had his own reasons for doing so as mentioned above. Though the chronicler is vague about why the people of Minerve were a ‘‘constant source of trouble’’ to the Narbonnais, Montfort had the support of Viscount Aimery and the town militia for the entirety of the siege. Having Aimery’s help at Minerve was a pleasant change from the previous year when the militia of Narbonne refused to help Montfort punish Giraud of Pépieux before the walls of Puisserguier. Also present at Minerve was a unit of Gascons, perhaps recruited by the Archbishop of Auch.

The siege of Minerve revealed Simon of Montfort’s talent and tenacity. The chief crusader still did not control every major city in the viscounty, and his hold on the ones he possessed was really only as good as his reputation when it came to defend them from both internal and external enemies. He could not count on having a large army at all times, and isolated parties of reinforcements could be picked off before they ever reached him. The agricultural base around Minerve was not enough to support an army of any size, yet the geography dictated there must be sufficient manpower to blockade the site. Logistics played a key role in the siege. Supplies were secured, bought, escorted, and hauled up steep, narrow, and dangerous roads from Carcassonne and other places more than thirty-five kilometers away. In addition to being the first great siege of the Occitan War under Simon of Montfort’s leadership, Minerve became the first example of his skillful use of siege warfare to take castles in geographically hostile conditions. Unlike Béziers and Carcassonne, both medium-sized cities in relatively open areas, Minerve sat atop a steep, rocky, peninsula-shaped plateau protected by vertical cliff walls and flanked by two deep river gorges. Even in the summer, when much of the water dries up in the gorges, it would have been virtually impossible to get in the castrum by force except along the narrow isthmus at its north end, and that side was guarded by a citadel. Montfort set up his main camp on the east side of Minerve across one of the gorges while he sent the Gascons under the command of one of his lieutenants, Guy of Lucy, to the west side of Minerve. As co-commander of the siege Aimery, with the militia of Narbonne, cut off the isthmus on the north side, while other crusader groups surrounded the south.

While the gorges surrounding Minerve are incredibly steep they are not overly wide, placing the town in easy range of siege weapons stationed across the gorges. Additionally, the land surrounding the gorges is higher than the walls of the town, and that made Minerve particularly vulnerable to missile fire. Even today, standing across from either the east or south one can easily see into the town. Viewing Minerve’s formidable geography, the crusader leadership realized from the start that it could not be stormed successfully. Almost immediately, therefore, a mangonel manned by a Gascon crew was brought up and began battering the walls from the west. Two other machines to the north and south meanwhile bombarded their respective sections of the walls from across the gorge. On Montfort’s side the crusaders brought up a special rock thrower (petraria). This may have been the first use of a large counterweight, or at the very least a traction, trebuchet, in the crusade. This ‘‘lady and queen’’ among the siege engines was called mala vezina, or ‘‘Bad Neighbor,’’ and its crew was paid twenty-one livres a day. Judging from Peter Vaux-de-Cernay’s explicit use of the sum, this must have been a lot of money to pay a siege crew, but evidently their ability was highly regarded by the army. Under this crew’s skillful handling, Bad Neighbor’s missiles broke up the walls of Minerve and even partially destroyed the house of Guilhem of Minerve, the lord of the place.

The trebuchet’s contribution to the siege is indicated by the worry it caused the defenders. One Sunday night a unit of southerners sortied out of the safety of Minerve, crossed the gorge, climbed up, and attempted to burn Bad Neighbor. Its crew had left it unguarded, confident that no one would brave so many obstacles to get to it. The southerners heaped baskets of flax, dry wood, grass, and grease around the trebuchet and attempted to ignite it. By sheer chance, one of Bad Neighbor’s crew members was urinating next to it and raised the alarm before being impaled by a spear. Crusaders rushed from all parts of Montfort’s camp to save the beleaguered siege weapon, and returned it to action in ‘‘two strokes’’ (‘‘per duos ictus jacere non cessavit’’).

Eventually the constant bombardment destroyed a great deal of the small castrum’s buildings. Completely cut off, Minerve’s swollen population of townspeople and Cathars from as far away as the Béziers region soon grew short of supplies. Undoubtedly the defenders lacked water as well, since the crusaders could easily prevent attempts to get water from the near-dry rivers in the gorges by firing missile weapons or dropping stones down from the heights. Guilhem of Minerve finally decided to meet with the chief crusader and negotiate a settlement. During the negotiations two papal legates, Arnaud-Amaury and Master Theodisius, arrived to complicate matters. Though Simon of Montfort was undisputed military head of the crusade, evidently he was unsure of his power because he deferred final judgment over terms to the legates. Arnaud-Amaury proposed that the castrum surrender to Montfort; Guilhem of Minerve, the villagers untainted by heretical beliefs, and the credentes, the rank-and-file Cathars, were to be simply reconciled to the church. Even the perfects would be spared if they converted back to orthodoxy. One of Montfort’s lieutenants, Robert Mauvoisin, feared that too many would accept the proposal and get off scot-free. Representing the more zealous warriors among the crusaders, he told the legate to his face that the men of the army would never accept the proposal to let professed heretics go free. According to our chronicler, the legate told Robert Mauvoisin that he knew his enemies well and figured that few would take the deal. This proved to be the case, at least among the perfecti. The Abbot of Vaux-de- Cernay and Simon of Montfort himself personally tried to persuade the perfects to be reconciled. In the end Guilhem surrendered the town, but 140 perfecti refused to abjure their Cathar faith – part of the agreement Arnaud-Amaury imposed – and were burned alive on a pyre constructed outside the town. Some of the perfects actually rushed forward to hit the flames faster, indicating how futile it had been to try to convert them.

This is one more example of the mass atrocities committed by both sides during the war. None of the sources give an exact chronology from the castrum’s surrender to the burning of the perfecti, but it seems there was an interval of hours or days between them. In other words, the burnings did not happen immediately after the town’s capitulation, and the people affected had plenty of time to decide whether to convert or die. Depending on one’s perspective this time interval either ameliorates what happened or makes it worse. Certainly Montfort and his men gladly participated in this mass burning, but it was under terms imposed by the legates, not by him or a council of the army. While not excusing the behavior of the crusaders, after the frustrations of a seven-week siege these things should not be so surprising. The villagers of Minerve and Cathar refugees who wished it were reconciled to the church and appear to have suffered no other punishment, indicating that at least at this point in the war atrocities were not the reaction of first choice. Guilhem, lord of Minerve, suffered no penalties for his defiance and was granted comparable lands around Béziers. He, like Giraud of Pépieux and so many other southern lords, later betrayed Montfort’s clemency by fighting against the crusade at Beaucaire in 1216 and at Louis VIII’s siege of Toulouse in 1219.

The taking of Minerve was an important moral victory for the crusade and enhanced Montfort’s military reputation, but his command over his territories remained tenuous. In the short term Montfort’s victory at Minerve helped him in the diplomatic realm. Peire-Roger of Ventajou, a rebellious lord from the previous fall, pledged his allegiance to the crusade, and Montfort punished him no worse than by pulling down the keep or tower (turris) of his fortifications. More importantly, Aimeric, lord of Montréal, was reconciled to the crusade for a second time and offered his territory up in exchange for suitable (meaning less defendable) territory somewhere else. This was duly granted in spite of the fact that Aimeric had already violated his word when he took back Montréal from the crusade in 1209. The fact that Montfort gave these two men a second chance suggests that he attempted to be flexible and merciful to avoid a siege or protracted conflict. In 1211 Aimeric of Montréal broke his word yet again and finally paid the ultimate price for his disloyalty when Lavaur fell.

Buoyed by his success Montfort continued to take the offensive. Within the next couple of days a council of advisors, including Montfort’s wife Alice, met with Montfort at the town of Pennautier, about five kilometers northwest of Carcassonne. The council suggested that the chief crusader next besiege the castle of Termes, further south and even deeper into the mountains than Minerve. Besieging Termes was a greater gamble than besieging Minerve. Montfort still faced possible rebellion if he got bogged down in another protracted siege. He lacked manpower to replace the men who had participated in the siege of Minerve, won their indulgence and had now departed for the north, as well as the Narbonnais militia, who would not participate again. Finally, the rugged country in which Termes sat would place a greater logistical strain on the resources of the crusade than even Minerve. While the military leadership continued to meet at Pennautier, William of Cayeux arrived with a party of crusader-pilgrims from the north to reinforce the army and to bring word that a sizeable army of pilgrims from Brittany was marching south to join the crusade. Although Montfort’s army remained quite small even with the additions of William of Cayeux, these reinforcements offered the chief crusader sufficient incentive to march into the mountains southeast of Carcassonne to begin a siege of Termes.

Because Montfort marched to Termes with the bulk of his army it was clear he would be unable to respond quickly to any attacks or rebellions in crusader-held towns. Keeping Carcassonne safe was particularly important, since capable southerners extremely hostile to the crusade surrounded it. Peire-Roger of Cabaret commanded the mountain roads north of it while Raimon-Roger of Foix dominated the road and Aude River directly south of the city through his recapture of Preixan. Picking a governor of proven ability for Carcassonne was essential in order to prevent its loss and to keep a supply line open while the army besieged Termes. In succession Montfort asked two of his lieutenants, Lambert of Crécy and Rainier of Chauderon, to command the defenses of Carcassonne. Both refused because of the enormous responsibility of serving as governor over the most important conquered crusader city still in the middle of enemy territory. Several of Montfort’s lieutenants, and even Alice of Montfort, pushed forward William of Contres as garrison commander of Carcassonne. According to William of Tudela, at that time Montfort viewed William as one of his better field soldiers and wanted him to be at the siege of Termes, not governing Carcassonne. The consensus within the army supported his candidacy, so Montfort finally agreed, but further ordered Crespin of Rochefort, Simon the Saxon, and Simon the Saxon’s brother Guy to be William of Contres’s subordinates. The council now broke up, with the bulk of the army moving southeast thirty-three kilometers to Termes while William of Contres and his men rode a much shorter distance of about five kilometers southeast to Carcassonne, arriving there late in the evening of 29 July.

As it turned out, Lambert of Crécy and Rainier of Chauderon had made the right decision by refusing the command of Carcassonne. Besides protecting the town both internally and externally, Montfort had ordered William of Contres to send on a wagon train consisting of mangonels, other siege weapons, and their associated equipment currently at Carcassonne. Upon his arrival in Carcassonne William of Contres directed that the equipment and wagons be assembled for transport and placed outside the city on the road towards Termes alongside the Aude. With the wagons packed up and accompanied by a hundred-man escort, the train would get an early start the following morning. Though the train’s escort and drivers stayed with the wagons during the night, undoubtedly many slept at their posts while none was particularly vigilant, since they would not have been outside the walls in the first place had they expected trouble. A poorly guarded, unsuspecting prize of this magnitude was a perfect target for those willing to risk an attack in the shadow of the castrum’s defenses. A spy (espia), perhaps from within the garrison guarding Carcassonne itself, secretly left the city and rode the fourteen kilometers to Cabaret to inform Peire-Roger of the potential bounty and its weak guard.

Upon hearing the news, Peire-Roger led more than 300 men and two of his lieutenants, William Cat and Raimon Mir, on horseback from Cabaret in a moonlight raid on the siege train outside Carcassonne. A force this size riding hard to take advantage of the night would be fairly noisy, and evidently the guards of the train had some warning of their approach. The raiders struck part of the train strung out along the road, chopping up some of the weapons while they tried to light a fire to destroy the rest. Inside Carcassonne, William of Contres hastily mounted up about eighty sergeants, who joined him in a counter-charge against Peire-Roger’s raiders. The garrison’s quick response in turn surprised the raiders, and intense hand-to-hand combat broke out, spilling over the road and open ground leading down to the Aude. Men knocked from their horses in the fierce fighting drowned in the river, weighed down by their iron hauberks. Eventually the raiders appeared to have had enough, and retreated back towards Cabaret without accomplishing much. The need to strike a strategic blow to postpone the coming siege of Termes convinced the raiders to try their luck again that same night. Taking advantage of the fact that the defenders would not expect another raid, Peire-Roger’s men doubled back and attacked the train again near dawn. Once more the men fought at close quarters, but even the early morning light was insufficient to recognize friend from foe. In this second melee Peire-Roger was surrounded, but shouting the crusaders’ battle cry of ‘‘Montfort!’’ he rode off before anyone realized who he was. Once day broke the raiders fled for cover, and it took two days before Peire-Roger made it back to the safety of his mountain fortress. William of Tudela related how happy the crusaders were at driving off a superior force and preserving the siege train, but this joy must have contained a great deal of relieved embarrassment for William of Contres, who had opted for convenience over security.

The siege train departed soon after, probably on 31 July 1210, its escort greatly supplemented by the large party of Breton crusaders who had finally arrived in Occitania soon after the chief crusader had left for Termes. These crusaders arrived in Carcassonne by way of Castelnaudary, where they had been refused admittance to the castrum by the townspeople and spent the night in the fields and gardens around it. Montfort heard what happened at Carcassonne when the train arrived with its escort about three days later. He was still preparing the territory of Termes for the siege, and even though William of Tudela said the chief crusader was overjoyed at the successful check of Peire-Roger, his joy too must have been tinged with relief that disaster had been narrowly averted. Though no source says it, this raid may have further convinced him that the nuisance of Peire-Roger and Cabaret would have to be dealt with as soon as an opportune moment presented itself.

Featured Website: Albigensian Crusade

2009-06-24T23:13:00.003+08:00

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aimer le pays cathare: Jean-Luc Aubarbier. 1992. A 1994 edited version, in idiom from Périgord, is the French text and basis for the following listed work.

Wonderful Cathar Country: Jean-Luc Aubarbier, Michel Binet, Jean-Pierre Bouchard; English translation byAngela Moyron. Editions Ouest-France, Rennes, 1994. Profusely illustrated with color photographs and descriptions to guide visits to the various sites as they exist today.

Le Drame albigeois et le Destin français: Jacques Madule. Bernard Grasset, Paris, 1961. English translation by Barbara Wall,The Albigensian Crusade (Fordam U., NY, 1967). A fine concise account and analysis of the epic as it related to the development of France. However, it lacks supporting citations.

The Albigensian Crusade: Jonathan Sumption. Faber, London, 1978 and 2000. A scholarly, comprehensive, and very readable narrative account in English.

The Albigensian Crusades: Joseph R. Strayer. Dial, New York, 1971; re published with an added Epilogue by Carol Lansing that explores aspects of the Cathar 'heresy' (U. of Michigan, 1992).

Historia Albigensis: Pierre des Vaux-de-Cerny. Edited by P. Guébin and E. Lyon, 3 vols., 1926-39. A young monk who was eyewitness to much of the crusade until 1219. An English tranlstion, with notes, by W.A. and M.D. Sibly has recently been published: The History of the Albigensian Crusades (Boydell, Suffolk, 1999).

La Croisade contre les Albigeois 1209-1249: Pierre Belperron. Librairie Plon, Paris, 1942; and Librairie académique Perrin, 1967.

Les Cathares: Arno Borst. Payot, Paris, 1984.

Le Catharisme: La Historie des Cathares: Jean Duvernoy. Privat, Toulouse, 1979.

Les grandes heures cathares: Dominique Paladilhe. Librairie académique Perrin, 1969. An itinerary through the cathare country.

The Inquisition : A Political and Military Study of its Establishment: Hoffmann Nickerson. John Bale, London, 1923 and 1932.

"Kill Them All... God Will Recognize His Own": Douglas Hill. Military History Quarterly, Winter 1997 (9:2) pp.98-108.

The Yellow Cross, The Story of the Last Cathars 1290-1329: René Weis. Penguin, London, and Alfred A.Knopf, NY, 2000. A reconstruction and account of the late phase of the Cathar movement. Author employed latest geographical maps, Vatican documents, and a personal visit to the sites to provide a vivid description of what happened to individuals as the Inquisition moved in on a small, remote, community of Cathars that survived in the Pyrenees.

SIMON OF MONTFORT AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1210 PART I

2009-06-17T18:06:00.002+08:00

Montlaur, had rebelled against their Montfortian garrison and were besieging the men inside the keep. Only six kilometers from Capendu, in terms of actual distance Montlaur was much farther due to the winding roads leading up into the mountains. Leaving Alice in the castle at Capendu, Montfort took what troops she had brought and those he already had with him and rode quickly to Montlaur, surprising the besiegers and quickly ending the siege. Given the fact that Montfort was a man of his word, when others broke their promises to him he did not take it lightly. He showed his displeasure at what he rightly regarded as treachery on the part of the people of Montlaur by hanging the men he caught for their disloyalty. Some got away however.

The year 1210 began in uncertainty, but conditions for the crusade would rapidly improve when the weather warmed and reinforcements arrived. It was in this year that one of the most important and infamous aspects of the Albigensian Crusade became institutionalized by the papal legates: the forty-day service (quarantine) required to win the indulgence. Montfort’s ability to fight in geographically hostile country amidst his enemies was tested by this requirement. Besides undergoing repeated military and logistical tribulations, he had to worry about diplomatic efforts by the Count of Toulouse, the people of Toulouse, and the King of Aragon possibly undercutting his position.

Though Raimon VI had taken the cross and served with the crusade through the capitulation of Carcassonne, as mentioned previously he intended to seek out support and protection from the crusade by going directly to the sources of power, in this case his primary feudal overlord, Philip Augustus, and his spiritual overlord, Pope Innocent. When Montfort’s military fortunes began to sour during the autumn of 1209 the Count of Toulouse traveled north to visit the King of France. While Philip treated him graciously, he refused to assist him in his attempt to reinstate tolls he had previously imposed in his territories. Next the count traveled to Rome via parts of eastern France. On his journey to the pope Raimon VI visited two of the most prominent crusaders from the previous campaign season, Odo, Duke of Burgundy, and Hervé, Count of Nevers. Evidently the time Raimon had spent in the crusader army had predisposed at least some to like him, because both received the Count of Toulouse warmly and the duke gave him gifts.

Once Raimon VI arrived in Rome, our sources vary as to the pope’s response to his visit. Peter Vaux-de-Cernay says the pope chastised the count and made accusations against the depth of his faith and his support of Christianity. William of Tudela relates that the pope treated the Count of Toulouse warmly and kindly, giving him gifts and showing him relics in his personal possession. The tone of the pope’s reception was probably somewhere in between. Innocent III had a furious temper, but he was extremely accommodating to those who made personal visits to him and willingly gave people second and even third chances. He ordered Raimon VI to purge himself of the murder of Peter of Castelnau and also of any taint of heresy, orders he commended in writing to the Archbishops of Narbonne and Arles, the Bishop of Riez, Master Theodisius, Arnaud- Amaury, and Raimon of Toulouse himself in January 1210.

In exchange for this any sentence of excommunication would be lifted unless Raimon attempted to reinstate any tolls. As the Count of Toulouse attempted to win back the pope’s favor, so did the people of Toulouse. During the previous fall they told the leaders of the crusade that they would treat with the pope directly. By November 1209 a delegation of town consuls had traveled to the pope in hopes of freeing Toulouse from any possible visit from the crusade. In addition they sought a lifting of the sentence of excommunication against the consuls and the interdict laid on the city the previous September by Master Milo. They were quite successful; Innocent lifted the interdict and excommunication by a letter of January 1210. As Raimon of Toulouse made his way back from Rome early in 1210, he paid a visit to the Emperor Otto in northern Italy in hopes of securing support against Simon of Montfort, especially since the emperor was Raimon’s overlord for some of his more eastern territories along the Rhône valley. Nothing substantial appears to have come out of that meeting, but it did hurt the count’s relationship with King Philip when the count met the king for a second time on his way back south. The king was angry about Raimon’s visit to the emperor, as the two monarchs were bitter rivals, a rivalry that came to a head at Bouvines four years later. Once back in his own lands, Raimon even had a meeting with Montfort, and it appears that at least up to this point the two men had no reason to dislike each other. In fact they arranged a marriage alliance between Raimon VI’s son and one of Simon of Montfort’s daughters. As another guarantee of his good behavior the Count of Toulouse turned the Narbonnais Castle, the citadel of the city defenses of Toulouse and the count’s residence, over to Guy, Cistercian abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay, who had arrived in Occitania the previous autumn, and Folquet of Marseille, Bishop of Toulouse. These two men soon began a vigorous preaching campaign against heresy, money lending, and usury though the people of the south were not much interested in what they had to say. January and February 1210 was a quiescent time for the south, as the weather made campaigning nearly impossible and Montfort was so short of men he could do little anyway. In February 1210 Estève of Servian, lord of the small castrum of Servian twelve kilometers northeast of Béziers, which had been abandoned as the crusade army marched through the previous summer, formally abjured heresy and swore loyalty to the crusade. In early March Montfort gave Estève his lands back.

At the beginning of Lent that year, 10 March, Simon of Montfort received word that his wife Alice was on her way to Occitania with a large party of knights. Relieved and overjoyed, he met her at Pézenas, twenty-one kilometers northwest of Béziers, to escort her and these newly arrived troops along the main roads to Carcassonne. On their way to Carcassonne the campaign year began. Staying the night at a castrum called Capendu less than sixteen kilometers from Carcassonne, they received word that the citizens of another castrum in the Corbières mountains, Montlaur, had rebelled against their Montfortian garrison and were besieging the men inside the keep. Only six kilometers from Capendu, in terms of actual distance Montlaur was much farther due to the winding roads leading up into the mountains. Leaving Alice in the castle at Capendu, Montfort took what troops she had brought and those he already had with him and rode quickly to Montlaur, surprising the besiegers and quickly ending the siege. Given the fact that Montfort was a man of his word, when others broke their promises to him he did not take it lightly. He showed his displeasure at what he rightly regarded as treachery on the part of the people of Montlaur by hanging the men he caught for their disloyalty. Some got away however.

Montlaur was a small problem that required little effort to solve. Montfort now decided to go on the offensive by picking off other small targets which had either resisted him the previous year or had rebelled. In all these actions of 1210 Montfort used Carcassonne as a base of operations, intending to clear the territories around it first before he risked going farther afield. After a short stay in Carcassonne, the army moved west to Alzonne, which had been occupied by the crusade in August 1209 but was now deserted. From there the army continued west less than six kilometers to the small castrum of Bram, also located along the main roads west of Carcassonne. For some time Bram had functioned as a safe house for Cathar perfecti, but – more importantly for a man with a long memory for treachery like Simon of Montfort – it housed the unnamed French cleric who had given back Montréal to its rebellious lord Aimeric in November–December 1209. Bram had weak fortifications and unlike many other castra in the region was located in a flat area where geography could not assist its defense. Bram was so weak that Montfort only blockaded it for three days before having his army take the unusual step of direct assault against the town. Peter Vaux-de-Cernay explicitly mentions that the crusaders accomplished the blockade and assault of Bram without the support of any siege devices, a testament to the castrum’s vulnerability.

The aftermath of the siege of Bram greatly added to the infamy of the crusade. While one certainly cannot condone Montfort’s actions at Bram, placing why he did so in context makes his actions far more understandable. Besides the fact that he captured over one hundred prisoners who had refused to surrender, their lives possibly forfeit under contemporary customs of war, Montfort had two other scores to settle which made scapegoats of the men of Bram. The cleric caught in Bram, a man of the church supporting heretics and a Frenchman no less, represented the worst kind of treachery to Simon of Montfort. The Bishop of Carcassonne defrocked this renegade priest, and the man was tied to a horse’s tail and dragged through the streets of Carcassonne before being hanged. The other score Montfort believed he had to settle was in retaliation for the two knights blinded and mutilated by Giraud of Pépieux the previous autumn. More than willing to raise the ante, Monfort had all but one of the over one hundred prisoners blinded and their noses cut off. A single man of Bram was left with one eye in order to lead the rest to Cabaret, a clear message to those who would defy the crusade. This army of the disfigured and disabled would spread terror amongst his enemies as they worked their way west.

Though most modern authors do not condemn what Montfort did at Bram, it has become perhaps the second most infamous story next to the storming of Béziers. We should be cynical about Peter Vaux-de-Cernay’s claim that Montfort disliked doing things like this; for example, he willingly confirmed the death sentence on a repentant heretic at Castres in September 1209, justifying that if the man was sincere the fire would atone for his past misconduct, and if he had converted simply to avoid the flames the fire would be suitable punishment. A more flexible man might have used Bram as an opportunity to show his magnanimity or good faith, but Montfort was not such a man. He lived by a strict code in which loyalty was important above all else. Those who showed it were treated well by him; those who betrayed it could expect retaliation. While we might ask, as Zoé Oldenbourg did, why Montfort did not conform to standards more akin to ours by taking the moral high road and sparing the men of Bram, the fact remains that the chief crusader had to use any example he could to offset his weak position, something even Oldenbourg admits. Before indicting him as a war criminal in a modern court we should be aware that both sides bore responsibility for the continued pattern of mutilations and executions of prisoners during the Occitan War. As an additional justification for the mutilations at Bram, Peter Vaux-de-Cernay says that southerners habitually dismembered captured crusaders.

Though the arrival of reinforcements led by Alice of Montfort allowed the crusader army to capture Montlaur and Bram, the weather was still too cold and the army still too small to mount any major offensives or sieges. During the rest of March and until Easter (18 April) 1210, the crusading army conducted successful raids against crops and grapevines in the foothills of the Black Mountains north of Carcassonne, particularly near Cabaret and farther east around Minerve. These raids effectively isolated Minerve, a key Cathar refuge. By Easter the crusade had secured all the important sites near Minerve except for the fortress of Ventajou. Around Easter the army extended its operations south of Carcassonne in the Corbières mountains against targets that threatened the highway between Carcassonne and Béziers. This time the army blockaded another small mountain castrum called Alaric, only about eleven kilometers southeast of Carcassonne. Snow still covered the ground and the cold weather greatly hampered operations, but the crusading army continued the blockade for two weeks before the garrison attempted to flee during the night. Many of the garrison were caught and killed during the subsequent chase.

Meanwhile a number of southern lords, among them Peire-Roger of Cabaret, Raimon of Termes, and Aimeric of Montréal, though all now technically vassals of Simon of Montfort, took advantage of the King of Aragon’s presence in the region by asking him to become their direct overlord. All three of these lords had previously been lukewarm vassals of the Trencavel viscounts, but they clearly did not want to do homage to Simon of Montfort, partly because two of them had already suffered at his hands. Having the king as their protector but far away in Aragon seemed to be the optimum situation for keeping their own independence. In fact, appealing to King Pere might convince the monarch of Aragon to drive Montfort out of their territory entirely. Neither side apparently had any serious intention of making a settlement. The original meeting place was to be Montréal, but so impatient were these southern lords that they or their representatives met the king on the road and made their offer to become his vassals. Pere countered with his own proposal and the cost was steep. The king demanded that the castrum of Cabaret be turned over to him, and that all nobles interested in having him as direct lord agree to hand over their fortifications to the king if asked to do so. The barons demurred, requesting that the king enter Montréal before they agreed. He refused. Any possibility for agreement evaporated and no formal parley between Pere II and the southern lords ever occurred. Pere’s refusal to treat with the southern lords in the former Trencavel viscounty kept the door open to possible future relations between himself and Simon of Montfort.

At the same time as the southern lords converged on Montréal and King Pere approached the town, Simon of Montfort decided to perform some show of strength, even though with his small army he did not dare risk attacking the southern nobles in Montréal directly. He opted instead to besiege a small castle called Bellegarde, less than thirteen kilometers to the southwest of Montréal. While Montfort besieged this castle, which no one troubled to rescue, Pere II sent a note to him asking for a truce between Pere’s vassal, the Count of Foix, and Montfort, to last until Easter 1211. Montfort readily agreed to this, partly because it freed him from having to worry about threats to the southern borders of his territories from the aggressive Count of Foix. Bellegarde fell to the crusaders soon after, with the consequence that other castles and castra in the area were abandoned or capitulated. The beginning of May saw the truce between the chief crusader and the Count of Foix evaporate as Montfort and his men operated farther away from a secure base of operations south of Carcassonne. Passing through Pamiers, recently the site of a fruitless meeting between Pere II and Raimon VI, Montfort broke the truce by unexpectedly riding up to the city and castle of Foix with his men. Catching the defenders by surprise, at the head of his small band of raiders Montfort almost managed to get inside the fortress even though taking the castrum was not really his original intention. With the gates of the castle literally shut in his face he hastily retreated, though not before one of his companion knights was hit by rocks thrown from the considerable heights of the castle walls. Since what men he had with him amounted to no more than a large raiding party, he did not bother to besiege such a strong fortification so deep in enemy country. Instead the raiders spent several days in the vicinity of Foix destroying grain in the fields, grapevines, and fruit trees before heading back to Carcassonne.

FORTRESS PEYREPERTUSE

2009-06-12T23:28:00.001+08:00

Cathat Castles - Fortresses of the Albigensian Crusade 1209-1300

The fortress of Peyrepertuse became one of the most imposing defences along the southern border of France following its refortification in the second half of the 13th century. Here it is shown following these improvements, with a 120m-long curtain wall on the northern side containing the main entrance (I), protected by a barbican (2).The internal buildings consist of the keep complex (3), which housed the church of St Mary (4) and the commander of the castle's quarters (5), and a further domestic structure along the south wall (6). At the very tip of the fortress was a triangular-shaped bastion (7, shown in the inset) that dominated the valley below.

History

Although archaeologists have found evidence that the site of the fortress at Peyrepertuse had been occupied since the 1st century BC, and the territory called the pagus Petra Pertusense is mentioned as being part of the county of Razes from the 9th century AD onwards, it is not until the 11th century that a fortification is first recorded there. This first mention occurs in the will of Bernard Taillefer, the count of Besalu, dating from 1020. Mentions of the fortress are rare over the next 150 years, but it is clear that the site, along with the region of the Perapertuses associated with it, became part of the lands of the count of Barcelona in 1111, before being handed over to his vassal the viscount of Narbonne in 1112, along with the fortifications of the Fenouilledes, in return for assurances of his support.

As part of the domains of the viscount of Narbonne, Peyrepertuse played no part in the opening years of the Albigensian Crusade. It is only when the viscount of Narbonne's overlord, Pedro of Aragon, aligned himself with the counts of Toulouse and Foix in hostilities against Simon de Montfort, culminating in the battle of Muret in 1213, that this area of the Languedoc was drawn into the conflict.

Following his victory at Muret, Montfort claimed the titles of count of Toulouse and duke of Narbonne, with the viscount paying homage to him. In 1217, William of Peyrepertuse followed his overlord in acknowledging Montfort's mastery. However, by 1226 his fortress had been confiscated and granted to Nunyo Sanche, count of Roussillon, a vassal of Louis VIII and, later,

Louis IX. Sanche sold the castle directly to Louis IX in 1239. The following year it appears that William of Peyrepertuse occupied his old lands once more during the revolt of the faidits - the dispossessed southern lords. Jean de Beaumont, chamberlain of Louis IX, besieged Peyrepertuse and, on 16 November 1240, William of Peyrepertuse surrendered to the forces of the crown.

From this point onwards the castle remained firmly in French royal hands and, following the Treaty of Corbeil of 11 May 1258, Peyrepertuse stood on the front line between the kingdoms of France and Aragon-Castille - one of the 'five sons of Carcassonne' protecting the south from foreign invasion.

The fortifications

The fortress of Peyrepertuse is situated 800m above sea level on a rocky platform. The site consists of three separate sections: the lower enceinte, the middle enceinte, and the higher fortification of San Jordi.

It is difficult to state with any great certainty which, if any, of the fortifications that cover this rocky platform existed under the stewardship of William of Peyrepertuse prior to the occupation by royal forces. It is probable that the castrum of the Cathar period consisted only of elements of the central keep and the church of St Mary, surrounded by the dwelling places of the inhabitants.

Following the royal occupation in 1240, Peyrepertuse was the only fortification in the region directly controlled by the crown - nearby Queribus was still controlled by faidit lords. An intensive programme of fortification followed William of Peyrepertuse's surrender and, in the years 1250/51 over 100 men were at work refortifying the site. It was during this period, and later in the 13th century, that the fortifications that now dominate the site were erected.

The lower enceinte is triangular shaped and protected on its northern side by a 120m-long wall, 1.2m thick, with two semicircular towers projecting over the gorge below. The main entrance to the fortress is situated at the near end of this wall, protected by an exterior barbican covered by arrow slits in the main wall. At the far end of this wall stands a triangular-shaped bastion, consisting of three levels equipped with numerous arrow slits. The southern wall runs along the edge of a precipitous drop over which the fortresses latrines are situated. This wall would also have had a tower on it, though little of this remains. Further along stands the remains of a two-storey stone-built building, which may well have held water cisterns. Beyond this lies the keep of the fortification.

The keep consists of two main structures - one building consisting of living quarters and store rooms, the other housing the church of St Mary along with a water cistern. The two buildings are joined by thick walls to create a single structure with an open courtyard in between. There are two gateways to the keep: one opens onto the interior of the lower enceinte, the other leads outside the walls of the enceinte to the next level of fortifications.

The middle enceinte leads to the steps of St Louis, which in turn lead up to the fortification of San Jordi. This higher fortification, constructed during the great building project of 1250/51, contains a further chapel, two water cisterns, living quarters and towers over the lower and middle enceintes.

THE MARTYRDOM OF JAN HUS

2009-06-03T20:02:00.001+08:00

The society in which the Hussite Wars exploded was one that already had within it a huge potential for civil war. By the beginning of the 15th century there had developed a strong feeling of Czech nationalism directed against the powerful position occupied in society by the German-speaking minority. This spirit was particularly acute within the cities and monasteries of Bohemia and Moravia. There was also widespread dissatisfaction with the dominant position of the wealthy Church, and this was linked to a growing Europe-wide movement for religious reform derived from teachings such as those promoted in England by John Wycliffe.

These three elements came together in the life and personality of one man: Jan (John) Hus, the Rector of Prague University. Jan Hus was a religious reformer, and it is interesting to note that one of the first of many acts he performed that were to gain him the enmity of the ecclesiastical powers concerned a proposed crusade. This happened at a time when the Papacy was in turmoil, with two, and for a year even three rival Popes, in Rome, Avignon, and briefly in Bologna. In 1412 Pope John XXIII (the Bologna claimant) was planning a war against King Ladislas of Naples, who supported his Roman rival Gregory XII. The financing of this so-called crusade was based partly on the sale of indulgences. An indulgence was in effect a 'safe conduct pass' to heaven for someone who had died; such blessings had often been bestowed upon crusaders in the past by guaranteeing them the forgiveness of sins in return for their military services in some supposedly holy endeavour. To put indulgences up for sale for cash in order to finance a very questionable war was clearly an outrage to the truly devout, and Jan Hus of Bohemia emerged as one of Europe's strongest critics of the practice.

The reaction to Hus's criticism was severe. Pope John XXIII not only excommunicated him, but also demanded the demolition of his church in Prague, calling it a 'nest of heretics'. In the summer of 1412 Jan Hus went into voluntary exile for two years, during which he produced some of his most important writings. He soon attracted a large following, and his listeners were now no longer limited to university students or intellectuals from Prague, but peasants who flocked to his open-air meetings. They saw in his outspoken criticism of the misuse of power by the religious authorities a vision of how their own lot might be bettered. The seeds of a broader revolution were being sown.

Matters seemed to improve in 1414 when Jan Hus was provided with a welcome opportunity to present his ideas to a gathering of the Church hierarchy. The Council of Constance was due to begin in 1415; this was one of the periodic meetings called by the Church to settle doctrinal (and political) quarrels. In the name of restoring unity several factions of reformers and reactionaries argued and intrigued, but there were few more fateful matters for discussion than the heretical views of Jan Hus. Hus knew the bitterness of the opposition he faced from the Church hierarchy, and rightly feared for his life if he dared to put in an appearance. However, he was reassured by a personal guarantee of safe conduct from no less a person than Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary and younger brother of King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia, and Pope John's main ally.

As Jan Hus had expected, his opinions scandalized the assembled clergy, but instead of facing a theological debate Hus was imprisoned and put on trial for heresy. King Sigismund's pledge proved worthless, and at Constance on 6 July 1415 Jan Hus was burned to death at the stake. All Bohemia erupted at the news of the judicial murder of their hero. Jan 6 Hus was immediately proclaimed a martyr by his followers, and the Hussite movement, as it soon became known, crossed over the narrow dividing line between religious dissent and political rebellion.

One of the first ways in which the Hussites expressed their outrage was through a simple but defiant religious ritual. It had long been the rule under Canon Law that when the congregation took Holy Communion during the celebration of Mass they received only the consecrated bread, with the clergy alone partaking of the wine. One of the elements of religious reform already practised in Bohemia by Hus's priestly followers had been to share the consecrated wine with the congregation, thus giving them 'Communion in both kinds', as it was termed. As the Council of Constance had roundly condemned this ritual, it rapidly became the touchstone for expressing support for Hus's views. Priests who did not agree to give Communion in both kinds were hounded from their churches, which were then taken over by adherents of reform, who took the name of Ultraquists from a Latin expression for 'in both kinds' - sub ultraque parte. The chalice that held the wine became the symbol of the reformed Church of Bohemia, and was an image that would soon be displayed upon the banners of a revolutionary army.

For all the revolutionary fervour that was sweeping Bohemia there were at first few signs of the reaction from outside that would soon engulf the country in war. The Council of Constance plodded on for another three years and dissolved itself in 1418, having achieved one of its main tasks: the resolution of the Great Schism that had given the Church two Popes. The newly elected Pope Martin V represented a fresh state of unity, and was determined to eradicate the Bohemian heresy that was providing him with the first challenge of his papacy.

However, in practice much depended on the attitude of King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia. This hapless monarch was very much under the influence of his brother King Sigismund, who persuaded him by 1419 that his position as King of Bohemia would be under threat unless he took decisive measures against the Hussites. Wenceslas took action, and the results were a disaster.

THE PAPACY, THE HUSSITES, AND LAY PIETY

2009-05-24T18:40:00.001+08:00

Pope Martin V

The papal return to Rome under Gregory XI in 1378 brought no solution to the Church's problems. A body of cardinals opposed to the move from Avignon elected a rival pope and the western Church entered a period of schism which was to last until 1417. During that time various attempts were made to resolve the problems which had caused it, but it was left to a council of the Church to agree upon the election of Pope Martin V and to depose his rivals. The Conciliar Movement produced an important body of political theory and was to some extent an expression of a more general movement towards representative government in Europe as a whole. Conciliar theory, propounded at Pisa (1409), Constance (I4I4-I7), and Basle (143I-49), was to influence later reform movements within the Roman Church but it was a spent force by 1440. The Church was manifestly not a democracy, it was not suited to government by a representative assembly, and both theological and political divisions among the conciliarists themselves gravely undermined the authority of the council. From this period of aberration in the history of the hierarchical Church emerged the Italian papacy of the Renaissance. This was firmly grounded on a temporal, territorial foundation in the papal state, largely recovered by military force and purchase under Martin V and deeply involved in the politics of the Italian peninsula. Yet the tribulations of the Church during the Avignonese period and the schism had some positive results. Ideas of reform were in the air' and in England, France, and Germany reforming circles grew up inside the Church which were not without influence. Improved clerical education was undertaken in England under the aegis of the bishops, diocesan and provincial councils valiantly strove to check abuses in Germany, and the late fifteenth-century humanist reformers at Paris, such as Lefevre d'Etaples, contributed to the Church's development as a many-faceted institution which comprehended a remarkable diversity of pastoral, intellectual, and devotional styles.

The Church had experienced two great shocks during the schism: the rise of the Wycliffite or Lollard heresy in England and the outburst of Hussitism in Bohemia. Both movements had certain beliefs in common, particularly upon the sacramental role of the clergy and the disendowment of the Church, but the eventual outcome of their activities was very different. Whereas the Wycliffite heresy lost the support of members of the ruling classes (the so-called 'Lollard Knights'), Hussitism was taken up and championed by many of the Bohemian nobility. Before 1414 the English nobility had certainly harboured and patronized Wycliffite clergy, but the association of Lollardy with political sedition by that date meant that members of the knightly class, although they had welcomed proposals fQr the disendowment of the Church, rejected Lollard beliefs. The rising led by Sir John Oldcastle deprived the movement of the support which was crucial to its survival as anything more than an underground sect, though influential among the middle and lower strata of society. Infiltration of the Church by Lollard priests was stopped and the severe penalties laid down in the statute De haeretico comburendo (1401) gave England the equivalent of 'continental procedures against heresy, although the English Church and secular government, rather than the papacy or the Dominicans, exercised firm control over them. In Bohemia, the beliefs held by Jan Hus, scholar and preacher, were subsumed in a movement of more far-reaching proportions. Bohemian opposition to the papacy had grown since Charles IV's alliance with the popes at Avignon in pursuit of his political schemes and objectives. Bohemia was brought more fully into the western Church through the use of Czech benefices to reward German ecclesiastics. This could only fan the flames of Bohemian national sentiment which, when allied to religious fervour kindled by evangelical preaching at the Bethlehem Chapel of Prague, broke out in extreme form after Hus's condemnation and execution at the Council of Constance (1415). The Hussite revolt was many things-a political protest against the Emperor Sigismund, a doctrinal statement of the laity's right to take communion in both kinds, and a nationalistic assault on German immigrants in both Church and State. It threw central Europe into confusion and created the only alternative Church since the Cathars, out of communion with Rome, which northern Europe was to know before the sixteenth-century Reformation.

The challenge flung by the Hussites in the face of the Roman Church extended beyond the borders of Bohemia. A mass of organized peasant and town levies, officered by Bohemian nobles and gentry such as the knight John Zizka, were unleashed into territories held by the Emperor Sigismund and the German princes. Attacks on Austria and Franconia were launched by the Hussite armies, plundering and pillaging as they went, and the crusading forces of Catholic Christendom under German nobles met defeat at the hands of this common soldiery, armed with hand-guns as well as pikes and crossbows in their warwagons. Only with the defeat of the Taborite extremists, who had formed themselves into a communistic settlement on Mount Tabor, by the moderate Utraquist nobility in 1434 was the Hussite threat lifted. But the remnants of Hussite armies, ready to be hired by anyone in search of manpower, were scattered over central Europe and hardly contributed to its stability. Pope Martin V had viewed the spectacle of Bohemian revolt with considerable anxiety, preaching a crusade against the heretics in 1427, to which other western kingdoms and principalities were invited to contribute both men and money. England was particularly solicited by the papacy, for it had been the root, the pope wrote, of the pernicious heresy first planted by John Wycliffe and which had spread to infect the kingdom of Bohemia. But the monarchies of the west had other preoccupations and calls on their military and financial resources and a proposed English crusading army was diverted to the siege of Orleans in 1428. Popes might preach the crusade but, as was clear after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the concerns of western rulers lay elsewhere. Dynasticism and the defence or acquisition of territory, rather than crusading expeditions against Bohemian heretics or Turkish infidels, absorbed the diplomatic, military, and financial resources of the national monarchies and princely states of northern Europe.

Besides the more dramatic outbreaks of religious dissent, less spectacular forces were at work within the Church. The search for a more deeply personal relationship with God, mediated through the saints, was a common phenomenon in the later Middle Ages. Heretics, while seeking such a relationship, erred in the eyes of the Church because too often the clergy were eliminated or their significance greatly reduced as sacramental mediators between man and God. It was through the administration of the sacraments-of baptism, confession, absolution, and the Eucharist or mass-by ordained priests that the individual and sinful layman was brought into a proper relationship with Christ's redemptive power. The reconciliation of tensions between the formal offices of the Church, especially the mass, and the desires and promptings of individual conscience and devotional fervour was not an easy task. But between the extremes of dogmatic orthodoxy and heretical error lay more moderate forms of religious sentiment and behaviour. Among these one of the more important was the socalled devotio moderna, which had developed from modest beginnings in Holland in the late fourteenth century. Probably influenced initially by Rhineland devotional cults and by some of Meister Eckhardt's (d. 1327) teachings on the sanctity of the everyday and mundane, a Carthusian novice called Gerhard Groote (1340-84), who was ordained a deacon in 1380, established a community of brethren at Deventer. These Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life, as they came to be known, lived a communal existence, receiving lay people into their houses, and provided an excellent example of an attempt to channel lay piety into non-heretical, practical activities. One of the most important functions of the Brethren's houses was the production of books. Their inmates were scribes, bookbinders, and illuminators who formed veritable publishing houses for the production and dissemination of religious books, of which the house at Zwolle in north Holland was among the most noted. But houses were soon established in Westphalia and Wiirttemberg. Lay piety, practical work, and evangelism by means of the written word combined to make the brethren exponents of a devotional life which had a certain realism about it.

The days of heroic monasticism, such as that of St Bernard's early Cistercians, were over and the Brethren of the Common Life demonstrated the extent to which the laity actively sought a place within a clerically dominated Church. Although the houses of the Brethren became increasingly clerical in composition during the later fifteenth century their influence extended far beyond their walls. Among the older religious orders within the Church there were indeed attempted reforms-of the Carmelites and Cistercians in particular-but the order which gained most later medieval support and endowment from laymen were the Carthusian brothers. In England the only new monastic foundations of any significance were Charterhouses-at London (1370), and Mountgrace in North Yorkshire (1396). The Carthusian monk was essentially a hermit, occupying his own cell or small house within the cloister, but meeting for a common meal on certain specified occasions. His major occupation, apart from prayer and meditation, came to be very similar to that of the Brethren of the Common Life: the production and composition of books. The works of Richard Rolle, Nicholas Love, or Denis the Carthusian were popular and widely disseminated in their time and lay predilection for saintly hermits was institutionalized by the Charterhouses. Anchorites and recluses proliferated, often on the lands of the secular nobility, and their absolute renunciation of the world commended itself to the wealthier sections of later medieval society. There was perhaps an element of vicarious asceticism or self-denial by proxy in all this and the penitential literature of the period (some of it composed by laymen) would support such an idea. In his Livre de Seyntz Medicines (1351) Henry, duke of Lancaster, wrote of his sins and of the many temptations put by the world in the way of the rich and powerful. Atonement for sin could take many forms-from the performance of personal penance to the endowment of a religious house, hospital, almshouse, or school-and the more practical tone of much later medieval lay piety suggests that the performance of good works was becoming increasingly important. Entry into paradise and remission from the pains of purgatory could be achieved in many ways and it is an indication of the varied and multiform character of lay piety that so many charitable acts were undertaken. Popes might come and go, councils meet and disband, but the horizons of most inhabitants of northern Europe were bounded by their parish, collegiate, or cathedral church, in which all participated. Baptism was universal and obligatory, binding men and women together as the body of the faithful, not yet riven (outside Bohemia) by the doctrinal schism of the Reformation. But there were disturbing signs at the end of the Middle Ages that the traditional forms and institutions of the Roman Church were, unless reformed or adapted, insufficient to contain and satisfy the demands and aspirations of a more literate and educated laity.

Feature TV Series: Secret Files of the Inquisition

2009-05-19T15:32:00.001+08:00

Based on previously unreleased secret documents from European Archives including the Vatican, Secret Files of the Inquisition unveils the incredible true story of the Catholic Church's 500-year struggle to remain the world's only true Christian religion.

At the dawn of the second millennium Europe was slowly emerging from the blackness and ignorance of the Dark Ages. There were no nations and the people were loyal only to their immediate community and to God. The keeper of God's word was the Catholic Church, the only religion in all of Christendom. The supreme religious leader, the Pope in Rome, crowned the Kings who became rulers of the Holy Roman Empire stretching from Sicily north to Poland. The Emperor was ruler of the temporal world while the Pope and his Bishops reigned supreme over the Spiritual world.

By the 12th and 13th century, cracks began appearing in this ordered world. Emperors no longer submitted to being crowned by the Pope and across Europe Kings demanded the right to select their own Bishops. But for the Pope the most terrifying threat came from upstart Christian sects who challenged church doctrine and the absolute power of the Roman Pope. To preserve the purity of the faith and the unquestioned authority of the Pope, the Church began to crack down on all dissenting with a new weapon: the Inquisition. For over half a millennium a system of mass terror reigned. Thousands were subject to secret courts, torture and punishment.

Filmed in High Definition, this 4-hour series spans medieval France in Episode 1, 15th century Spain in Episode 2, Renaissance Italy in Episode 3 and mid-nineteenth century Europe in Episode 4. Historians, experts and Church authorities advise on the handling of this controversial subject matter.

Secret Files of the Inquisition was produced by Inquisition Productions, who also created the related website www.inquisitionproductions.com

Jan Hus Part I

2009-05-16T23:35:00.001+08:00

Jan Hus was burned at the stake

It was in this environment of failed political leadership, a growing religious reform movement, nationalistic animosities and Czech nationalism, and the arrival of the writings of John Wyclif that the great Czech reformer, Jan Hus, emerged. Hus was born of peasant stock in 1372 or 1373, or perhaps earlier (1369) – the date is uncertain – in the small village of Husinec on the River Blanice in southern Bohemia; little is known of his early life or family. He seems to have had a brother who predeceased him, as Hus asked a friend to look after his nephews shortly before his own death. All that is known of Hus’s father is his name, Michael, and he seems to have had little influence on the direction of his son’s life. Although the father may have receded from Jan’s memory, his mother seems to have had lasting influence on him, as he revealed in one of his treatises. It was she, he recalled, who taught him to say: ‘Amen, may God grant it.’ It seems that she was behind his decision to become a priest, concerned as she was for her son to find a respectable profession, which would provide the financial security she apparently did not enjoy. There is also a story from the late fifteenth century confi rming the important role of Hus’s mother in his life. According to this account, Hus was accompanied by her when he entered the grammar school in the nearby town of Prachatice in 1385. His mother brought a loaf of bread as a gift for the schoolmaster and, during the trip to the school, she knelt seven times to pray for her son. Although the story may be apocryphal, it demonstrates the central role Hus’s mother played in his first steps along the path to a clerical career. Beyond her lasting impact, though, little can be said of Hus’s early life.

Events in the life of Jan Hus come into sharper focus once he began his education and entered the priesthood. His first step, of course, was taken when he entered the school at Prachatice, where he learned Latin, an essential skill for those wishing to become priests. During his years at Prachatice, Hus supported himself by singing in church choirs and participated in a blasphemous Christmas ritual, the ‘Feast of the Ass’, in which a choir boy dressed as a bishop, rode a donkey, and led the other boys of the choir into a mock mass. He also was introduced to the basic elements of medieval education: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic. He would study these subjects more fully at university, along with the other four liberal arts: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music. In 1390, or perhaps as early as 1386, at the age of 18, Hus entered the University of Prague, enrolling under the name Jan of Husinec, which later on was shortened to Hus (the Czech word for ‘goose’). He was most likely introduced to the city and university by a friend from his village, Christian of Prachatice.

Hus’s university years were successful and enjoyable. He continued to support himself as a singer and developed a reputation for good humour, eloquence and wit. He seems to have been intent upon pursuing a clerical career, hoping to ascend into the ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. As he wrote later: ‘When I was a young student, I confess to have entertained an evil desire, for I thought to become a priest quickly in order to secure a good livelihood and dress well and to be held in esteem of man.’ A university education was the best way for a poor young man like Hus to accomplish this end, and he undertook his studies most diligently. At the University of Prague he was introduced to Aristotle, who was known as ‘the Philosopher’ in the Middle Ages and whose system laid the foundation for all the higher disciplines, including philosophy and theology. He continued his study of Latin and he learned German, which he may have started at Prachatice; he worked toward becoming a bachelor of arts. Following the traditional three-year course of study, Hus was awarded his bachelor’s degree in 1393, the first time that his name appears in an official document.

After receiving his degree, Hus immediately registered for study toward the master’s degree, which would open numerous doors for him as a teacher and scholar. He spent the next three years studying at the university under its Czech, and not German, masters. His situation was eased somewhat by his appointment to a position in one of the colleges as servant; he was responsible for keeping the masters’ rooms in order and for helping out in the kitchen, and he was given room and board for his labours. With less concern about financial matters, Hus was able to dedicate himself fully to his studies. Although it is uncertain whom he took as his primary master, Hus benefited from the possibility of studying at the university and living at its centre. During his time there he was probably introduced to the works of Thomas Aquinas, whom he held in high regard, as well as to the philosophical and theological trends current at the time. He was exposed to Nominalism and came to know the works of St Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and others. It was also at this time that Hus was first introduced to the ideas of John Wyclif, which had become popular with Czech scholars at just about the time when Hus had arrived at the university.

His first contact was with Wyclif ’s philosophical works, which Hus found to be of great worth. Later on he came to know Wyclif ’s theological works and even copied four of his treatises for his own use.

Completing his course of study in 1396, Hus was awarded the master of arts degree and began his teaching career. From 1396 to 1398, he devoted his lectures to the works of Aristotle, offered tutorials and presided over student disputations, and after 1398 he lectured on the works of John Wyclif. He seems to have been a popular and successful teacher, attracting many students to his lectures, where his natural eloquence enabled him to give consistently interesting and informative lessons. His talents as a professor were recognised by his colleagues in the faculty of the university and by his former masters, who helped advance Hus’s career. In 1398 he was given responsibility for the promotion of students to the rank of bachelor, and later he was granted the duty of promoting students to the level of master. His speeches at the promotion ceremonies reveal him as a man of good humour and kindliness and as a teacher able to establish close and warm relationships with his students. In 1401, he was named dean of the Faculty of Arts and served in that position until the following year, when he became rector and preacher of Bethlehem Chapel, having been ordained a priest in June 1400. At that time, Hus also enrolled in the university’s Faculty of Theology in pursuit of a doctorate in that field, which he never completed; yet he advanced toward his doctorate by earning lower degrees.

His ordination and interest in a theology degree signal a profound change in Hus’s personal and professional life. It was at some point prior to ordination that he seems to have undergone a religious conversion which led to his committing fully to the religious life and turning away from the life of the careerist ecclesiastic, who sought ecclesiastical benefices and other privileges. Up to that point, as Hus himself freely admitted, he indulged in ‘youthful follies’, playing chess and taking pride in his academic position and dress. He often wore elaborate university gowns, decorated with white fur. He willingly participated in the banquets of the university masters and generally enjoyed his life as a student and teacher, while ambitiously seeking advancement. All that ended sometime before 1400, but Hus provides no clear answer concerning the precise moment when this happened or the reason for such sudden and profound change. Near the end of his life, however, he noted that, when he was young, he had belonged to a ‘foolish sect’, but God had shown him the way through the scriptures and thereafter he abandoned the life of frivolity. As with his predecessors in the Czech reformation movement, Hus seems to have come to personal reform and to the religious life through the serious study of the Bible.

For twelve years following his appointment on 14 March 1402, Hus continued to hold his position as rector and as preacher of Bethlehem Chapel, which had been founded in 1391 by a wealthy Prague merchant. Thus he combined both popular and university reform traditions and made that Chapel the centre of the Czech reformation movement. During his tenure as rector, he delivered some three thousand sermons; many of them were originally composed or preserved in Latin.16 His sermons attracted to the Chapel large and enthusiastic crowds, including many noble women and even the Queen. Unlike earlier rectors, Hus preached only in Czech and not in Czech and German, demonstrating his own Czech nationalism and proclaiming the important role of Bohemia in God’s plan. He also identified himself more fully with the Czech reformation and its ideals, and his preaching was an essential stimulus to the growth and expansion of that movement. The goals of the movement moved beyond the academic and ecclesiastical circle and were adopted by Czech artisans and the Czech middle class. Indeed, as one historian has noted, through his sermons at the Bethlehem Chapel, Hus created the concerns of the reformers and the ecumenical agenda, transforming himself into a ‘national religious leader’.

The sermons Hus delivered at Bethlehem Chapel covered a wide range of topics concerned with the moral and institutional reform of the Church. In some of his early sermons, he exhorted his listeners to take up a life of repentance and holiness and to follow Christ. He challenged the laity, including nobles and kings, as well as his fellow clerics, to renounce corruption and immorality and to live a virtuous life without avarice, pride or other sins, and he taught that the highest goal of the religious life was to love God. In sermons delivered between 1405 and 1407, however, he moved beyond moral exhortation – of laity, clergy, and university masters and students – to address the problems facing the clergy and the Church. From this period on, his sermons became more aggressive and critical. He ferociously attacked the failings of the clergy, denouncing the corruption of the priestly office and demanding reform. In his sermons he proclaimed that corrupt and immoral priests were really the devil’s own, and he attacked priests who had concubines or committed adultery. Also of concern to Hus was simony, which, in his treatise on this topic, he defined in traditional terms, as ‘an evil consent to an exchange of spiritual goods for nonspiritual’. It is a ‘trafficking in holy things’, and ‘both he who buys and he who sell [sic] is a merchant, a simoniac is both he who buys and he who sells holy things’. He criticised the clergy for accepting money or gifts in exchange for performing the sacraments and he virulently attacked both the priests and the monks for various financial exactions. In these sermons Hus addressed the hierarchy of the Church as well, and criticised excessive claims to papal power and authority, raising questions, in particular, over indulgences and matters of excommunication. The Church itself was defined as the body of the elect, all those who had been predestined to salvation. Although both the predestined and the foreknown existed together in the Church militant, only the predestined were part of the true Church.

During his tenure as rector at Bethlehem Chapel, Hus continued his scholarly career and worked toward his doctorate in theology. He earned his bachelor’s degree in divinity in 1404, and from 1404 to 1406 he gave lectures on the Bible. In 1407 he earned the degree that would allow him to lecture on Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences, which he did from 1407 to 1409. He also engaged in academic disputations with other scholars as he prepared for the doctoral degree, and he wrote a commentary on Lombard’s Sentences, even though other duties prevented him from taking the doctoral degree. It was at this time that Hus also became better acquainted with Wyclif ’s views, some of which he accepted, others not. Wyclif ’s teachings would seem to have influenced Hus even though the Czech scholar was never a thoroughgoing disciple of the Oxford theologian. He would, however, defend Wyclif ’s teachings against the increasingly hostile and irrational attacks on them by the German masters at Prague.

Hus’s career at Bethlehem Chapel and at the University of Prague overlapped with broader changes in Czech society and culture, which included increasing tensions between the German and Czech populations. These changes were manifest in the reaction against Wyclif ’s teachings, led by the Dominican John Hübner and by the German masters at the University of Prague, which broke out in 1403. Hübner petitioned Rome about some forty-five of Wyclif ’s propositions as well as on the matter of the realism currently taught by the Czech masters of the university. Some twenty-four of the propositions listed by Hübner had previously been condemned at the Blackfriars’ Council in England in 1382, and the remaining twenty-one were compiled by Hübner himself. The Wyclifite teachings included positions on the papacy, on the Pope as Antichrist and on the monastic orders, among other things. Hübner argued that, since some of these propositions had already been condemned, they should be condemned in Bohemia as well. The repudiation of Wyclif ’s teachings was also sent to the Archbishop of Prague, who, in turn, asked the university for an opinion. When the university masters took up the debate, the underlying tensions between the German and Czech masters exploded into the open, since the German scholars had rejected Wyclif ’s ideas and the Czechs had adopted them as central to their reform programme. The Czechs strongly opposed Hübner’s condemnation and accused the Dominican of misquoting or taking passages out of context. They asserted that Wyclif ’s teachings were not in error and declared that they would continue to support these teachings. Despite the vehemence of their opposition to Hübner, the Czech masters lost the university debate when the vote was tallied. The three German nations at the university voted in favour of Hübner’s condemnation, whereas the Czech nation voted against it. It should perhaps be added that a ‘nation’ was a basic organisational structure of the medieval university, made up of students from the same country or religion.

The dispute, however, did not put an end to the general interest in Wyclif ’s ideas. The university did not forbid the study of Wyclif ’s books but only of the specific articles listed in the condemnation. The Archbishop, a well-respected former soldier and noble, Zbynevk, was ill-equipped to render a decision but sympathetic to reform, and he hesitated to make a pronouncement on the matter. The Czech masters, especially Hus, pursued their study of Wyclif more eagerly than before, and some of them went so far as to declare publicly their endorsement of the most controversial of Wyclif ’s ideas. Although Hus was not among them, he would defend Wyclif and approved of many of the Oxford theologian’s positions. In debate with Hübner in 1404, Hus rejected the Dominican’s denunciations of Wyclif and accused Hübner of distorting Wyclif ’s positions. Moreover, Hus ardently maintained that the forty-five articles had been taken out of context and that Wyclif himself was not a heretic. Despite this show of support by Hus and others, the acceptance of Wyclif ’s teachings faced serious setbacks. In 1407, two of the most active Czech supporters of Wyclif ’s ideas, Stanislav of Znojmo and Jan Pálecv, were called before the Pope and forced to recant their teachings. Under papal pressure, they rejected their former advocacy, and when they returned to Prague they were among the staunchest critics of Wyclif. And in 1408, the Archbishop prohibited the teaching of the forty-five articles condemned by Hübner, while the Czech masters agreed not to defend the articles ‘in their heretical, erroneous, and objectionable sense ’ – a most ambiguous acquiescence.

Another development of major significance in the life of Jan Hus was Wenceslas’s change of allegiance during the papal schism, which enhanced Hus’s standing but also contributed to the estrangement between him and Archbishop Zbynevk. Wenceslas and the university and clergy had supported the popes in Rome, most recently Gregory XII (1406–15), as the legitimate popes against those in Avignon. In an effort to end the schism, however, a number of cardinals withdrew their allegiance to their respective popes and, with the support of the French King and of the University of Paris, agreed to hold a general council to depose the reigning popes and to elect a new one. Meeting at the poorly attended Council of Pisa in 1409, the cardinals elected Peter of Candia, who took the name of Alexander V. Wenceslas, who received promise of support from the French if he backed the Council and the new Pope, saw his opportunity to undermine the authority of his brother, Emperor Rupert, and to gain greater power in the Empire. In order to switch his allegiance, the King needed the support of the University of Prague, but he faced the difficult proposition of persuading the German nations, which remained united in their support of Rome. To resolve that dilemma, Wenceslas issued the decree of Kutná Hora on 18 January 1409, which reorganised the nations at the university. The German nations had been divided into three voting blocks, but the decree merged them into one, and the Bohemian block was divided into three blocks from one. The Czech reformers, who made up the majority of the Bohemian nation, hoped to find backing from the conciliar Pope, and so they were supportive of the King’s move to endorse the Council and the Pope it chose, and voted in approval of the conciliar movement. The German nations abandoned the university, returning to new or established universities in other parts of the Empire, where they continued their opposition to Wyclif and to the Czechs at University of Prague.

Changes of papal affiliation affected Hus and the Czech reformation movement directly, in ways they had surely not anticipated. Rather than support the King and the new conciliar Pope, Archbishop Zbynevk refused, as any good soldier would, to break his oath to the Roman Pope, Gregory. This enraged Wenceslas, who took steps against the Archbishop. Zbynevk was forced to renounce his allegiance to Gregory and declared Alexander to be the legitimate Pope; he was also ordered to proclaim that Prague and its university were free from heresy. These humiliations drove Zbynevk away from the reform camp and led to his request that Alexander should issue a bull condemning Wyclif ’s teachings and prohibiting any preaching outside the cathedral church or monasteries. Issued on 20 December 1409, this bull clearly drove a wedge between the Archbishop and Hus, who was obviously the target – if not in the bull, at least as far as Zbynevk was concerned. Hus continued preaching and gained popular support against the Archbishop, whose high-handedness alienated not only the people of Prague but also the King. Zbynevk was not going to back down, and on 16 July 1410 he gathered together copies of Wyclif ’s books and had them burned. Although surrendering his own volumes, Hus protested Zbynevk’s actions as unwarranted and arbitrary, especially since Wyclif had not yet been declared a heretic. The Archbishop excommunicated Hus and reported the case to the papal curia, which then examined the matter to Hus’s disadvantage. Refusing to report to Rome to answer questions concerning his case, Hus was excommunicated in 1411 by the cardinal in charge of his case and by Zbynevk for a second time. The Archbishop also placed the city of Prague under an interdict, but the King declared it should not be obeyed. Efforts to resolve the crisis were made by all parties and nearly reached a successful conclusion. Zbynevk was charged with lifting both the interdict and the excommunication of Hus in exchange for concessions from the King, and Hus was to make a full confession of faith, declaring his adherence to orthodox teaching, which he sent to the Pope. The Archbishop, however, decided to flee Prague for territories of Wenceslas’s brother Sigismund, King of Hungary, before fulfilling his end of the agreement and died on the way there, in September 1411.

Hus assumed such a pivotal role in the dispute with Zbynevk in large measure because he, a charismatic preacher, had emerged as the leader of the Czech reformation movement by 1407. Earlier leaders, including some of his own teachers, had begun to pass away, while others, closer in age to Hus, notably Stanislav of Znojmo and Jan Pálecv, had defected from the reform camp and indeed had turned into harsh critics of the reform and of Wyclif. Preaching from the pulpit at Bethlehem Chapel attracted a large following for Hus from outside the university, but, more importantly still, it allowed him to give voice to his own criticisms of the Church, which coincided with broader reform goals. He was also guardedly sympathetic of Wycliffi te teachings and open to Czech nationalist ideas. Hus, therefore, seemed to be the natural leader of the movement, even though he was not the most radical theologian of his day. His stature was most clearly recognised when the masters at the university chose him as rector on 17 October 1409, an office he held throughout the rest of that year and the next. The election was one of the results of the Kutná Hora decree, which put control of university policy into the hands of the Czech nation.

Cathars and Catharism in the Languedoc: Cathar Castles:

2009-05-13T16:00:00.000+08:00

First the bad news. There is very little remaining from Cathar times, castles or anything else. All of the main "Cathar Castles" advertised to tourists as romantic vestiges of the Cathar period are no such thing. They are generally castles built by the French after the Cathar Crusade, and used to defend their new border with Aragon. These castles were slighted, or left to decay, after the Treaty of the Pyrenees in the seventeenth century. The justification for the deceit is that they are often built on the site of earlier castles occupied by vassals and allies of the Counts of Toulouse during the Cathar period.

Broadly there are five categories of "Cathar Castle".

Genuine Cathar Castles, advertised as Cathar Castles: There are very few of these, although you may find a few vestiges near to existing structures (eg castles at Peyrepertuse, and Puivert). Carcassonne probably has the best claim to be a Cathar Castle, followed by three quarters of Cabaret (Lastours).

Later French Castles built on the site of Cathar strongholds, advertised as Cathar Castles: Coustaussa, Puilaurens, Montségur, Queribus, Termes, Aguila.

French Castles with no Cathar connections, but sometimes advertised as Cathar Castles: such as Arques.

Cathar Castles not generally advertised as Cathar Castles although they are: Pieusse, Le Bézu, Usson.

Sites of Cathar Castles: Béziers, Toulouse, Bram, Marmande, Lavaur, Minerve, Beaucaire, Castelnaudry.

There are also castles of interest because of their links with events during the Cathar period, for example: Avignonet, where Cathar sympathisers helped some particularly unpleasant Inquisitors into their next incarnations. Villerouge Termenès, a castle belonging the the Archbishop of Narbonne, where the last known Cathar Parfait in the Languedoc was burned alive, and Montaillou, the home of Beatrice de Plannissols, a major character in the events following the arrest of a whole village by the Inquisition on suspicion of Cathar sympathies.

Bohemian Heresy

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The arrival of Conrad of Waldhauser (d. 1369) in Prague in 1360 set the stage for more dramatic reform efforts and initiated a line of reformist preachers who advocated the ideas of John Wyclif and paved the way for Jan Hus. He began to preach against clerical abuses and corruption and was particularly critical of the monks and mendicant friars. He preached against false prophets and denounced simony and the cult of relics. His denunciations of moral laxity attracted the support of both clergy and laity, including women who abandoned their fi nery, usurers who paid back excessive interest, and the youth who gave up affected manners.5 But his harsh critique of the Church and clergy endowed his enemies with the tools necessary to force him to answer before the Pope in Rome. He was acquitted, but died in December 1369, on his way back to Prague from the papal court. He none the less attracted a sizeable following, including a number of prominent reformers who were active throughout the rest of the century. Among these reformers was his Jan Milicv of Kromevrvízv (c.1325–74), the father of Czech reform. Milicv, an imperial notary from Bohemia, underwent a religious conversion after witnessing clerical corruption and hearing Waldhauser preach. He was ordained a priest, then granted a canonry by Charles IV in 1363, only to give up his offices and take up a life of poverty and preaching in Latin, German and, most importantly, Czech. He preached penitence and Church reform, denouncing the sins of the clergy, and even, for a time, identified Charles IV as Antichrist, of whom Milicv predicted that he would come in 1368. He founded a hospice, which he called Jerusalem, for reformed prostitutes, which was viewed critically by his enemies. Along with his harsh condemnations of the clergy, he advocated frequent communion and reform of the clergy and Church. Despite being called to the papal court, Milicv inspired a number of followers who furthered the cause of reform.

Milicv had numerous disciples, most notable Matthew, or Matthias, of Janov (c.1355–93), the great theorist of Czech reform who studied at the University of Paris and brought scholarly weight to the effort at reformation in Bohemia. Returning from Paris after the university’s decision to accept the Pope at Avignon – Matthew was a supporter of the Roman Pope – Janov became a canon at the Cathedral in Prague in 1379. He later acquired further ecclesiastical benefices, but nothing that would lift him far beyond poverty, which he came to accept as the true Christian lifestyle. Devoted to the study of the scriptures, Janov carried the Bible with him at all times and found the answer to all his questions in its pages. Central to his own beliefs and one of the reasons why he took up Milicv’s reform, the Bible was so important to Janov that he advocated its translation, so as to make it accessible to those unlettered in Latin; he was also involved in the first translation of the Bible into Czech. Janov was deeply concerned about the imminence of Antichrist, whom he saw operating in his day. Antichrist stood for all that was contrary to the true faith and to Christ, and, as such, the Pope at Avignon, a false Pope, embodied Antichrist according to Janov. He also criticised, as did his mentor, the corruption of the Church. He opposed too much devotion to images, ritualism and ceremonialism, and excessive concern with pilgrimage, indulgences and the miraculous.6 He demanded the return to the simple purity of the Bible and of the apostolic Church, which he praised over the elaborate and worldly Church of his day. To cure the ills of the latter, Janov prescribed frequent, even daily participation in the Eucharist. His calls for reform and frequent communion were met with stern opposition by the Church, which forced him to recant and forbade him to preach or hear confessions for some eighteen months. He put this time to good use, however, writing the great treatise of Czech reform, Regulae veteris et novi testamenti (1392; ‘Rules of the Old and New Testaments’).

Although Janov died in the year following the completion of his great work, the Czech reformation movement continued to grow and was further shaped by the influence of the teachings of John Wyclif. The Oxford theologian’s works arrived in Bohemia because of the close connection between his university and the University of Prague, brought about by the marriage of Anne of Bohemia and King Richard II of England. Even as Wyclif ’s works were being condemned in England, Czech scholars were copying them and returning to Bohemia with them. Wyclif ’s philosophy had a profound effect on thinkers in Bohemia, but perhaps even more influential were his attacks on the corruption of the Church and his ecclesiology and theology; they resonated within Czech reformation circles, which had begun to make similar criticisms. His virulent denunciations of the papacy broke out in 1378, together with the Great Schism, and his increasing disdain for the visible Church, to which he had denied any connection with the true Church, influenced the way Czech reformers regarded both Church and papacy. Czech reformers like Waldhauser and Janov shared with Wyclif an understanding of the centrality of the Bible and of its character as the truth because it was the word of God. Wyclif also found greater support among the Czech masters and students at the University of Prague than among the German contingent, which on the whole opposed his ideas. This response to Wyclif drove a further wedge, reinforcing the social and political tension that already existed between Czechs and Germans.9 Although an official attempt was made to suppress Wyclif ’s teachings in Bohemia, it failed, and the writings of the Oxford theologian continued to shape the Czech reformation movement into the fifteenth century.

ALBI

2009-05-06T11:22:00.001+08:00

The city of Albi (Tarn) in southern France, whose name became associated with heresy, crusades, and the Inquisition, remained until the 11th century a town of modest size and importance. It was endowed with a bishopric from the 5th century and in 778 became the seat of a county. Following the collapse of Carolingian authority, Albi fell under the power of the counts of Toulouse-Rouergue, who administered it through hereditary viscounts. The viscounts thereafter extended their domains through marriages, culminating with the union of Viscount Raymond-Bernard, called Trencavel, and Ermengarde, heiress of the counties of Carcassonne, Béziers, and Agde (ca. 1066).

The power of the viscounts of Albi, however, did not efface that of the bishops, who retained broad regalia rights and secular jurisdiction. After 1066, the overextension of the Trencavels allowed the bishops to achieve practical autonomy and effective control over their city. At the same time, the burghers, whose numbers and importance increased with growing economic prosperity, allied with the bishops in their struggle for autonomy. During the Albigensian Crusade (1209–29), the burghers and bishop alike collaborated faithfully with Simon de Montfort, and in 1220 Bishop Guilhem Peire recognized the citizens’ rights in a charter of liberties and franchises.

The political crisis of Albi came in the reign of Bishop Bernard de Castanet (r. 1277– 1308) with the end of the alliance between the bishop and burghers. The latter, seeking increased independence, appealed to the royal government. Bishop Bernard responded by using the power of the Inquisition. In 1299 and 1300, thirty-two of the leading citizens were arrested and condemned for involvement with heresy. Thereafter, the fate of the Albigeois became a rallying point in the great struggle of the Midi against the Inquisition. Both the episcopal and communal power emerged from this struggle diminished; effective authority passed after 1320 to the government of the king, which retained control of Albi through the crises of the Hundred Years’ War and the 15th century.

The cathedral of Sainte-Cécile at Albi stands as a monumental symbol of the crusade against the Albigensian heresy in southern France. It was begun in 1282 in the wake of extirpation of the heresy by Bernard de Castanet, bishop of Albi and inquisitor of Languedoc, to be a fortress as well as a cathedral. Although it was built primarily in the 14th century from 1282 to 1347, its massive military appearance remains its major characteristic.

The cathedral is a single-nave structure of red brick whose compact mass is broken only by a tall tower rising from a square base at the west end. The exterior presents a regular alternation of the rounded buttresses that rise from splayed feet up the 130-foot height of the cathedral, with wall surfaces broken by narrow windows. The main entrance is on the south side through the Porch of Dominic of Florence, bishop of Albi from 1397 to 1410. This portal represents the artistic contrasts found in Albi cathedral, since it connects a sturdy crenellated tower that was once part of the surrounding fortification wall with the ornate 15th-century openwork carving of the four arches above the entrance portal.

The vast space of the single nave without aisles or transepts dominates the interior. It is 320 feet long, 63 feet wide, and the vaults reach to 100 feet high. Wall partitions that correspond to the external buttresses create twelve bays with side chapels surmounted by galleries. The ribs of the vaults, which are continued down the partitions by colonnettes, add definition to the bays. The main vaults are supported by the smaller vaults of the chapels, as well as by external buttresses.

Late Gothic decoration of the 15th and 16th centuries brings a delicacy to the appearance of the interior. The Amboise family, who were bishops at Albi at this period, commissioned painters, primarily from Italy, to cover the vaults and walls. A Last Judgment is on the west wall, and Old and New Testament subjects, painted by Bolognese artists between 1508 and 1514, adorn the vaults. The choir screen is a late 15th-century masterpiece of intricately carved canopies, pinnacles, and sculpted figures. This decoration transforms a fortress-cathedral of the 13th and 14th centuries into a refined expression of Late Gothic taste.

The Beguines

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The Beguines are perhaps the more important and more influential of the two groups associated with Marguerite Porete, and the movement with which she readily identified herself. This self-identification, however, is complicated by the very nature of the Beguine heresy, as well as by Marguerite ’s understanding of it. Indeed, the lifestyle she chose to follow as a Beguine in some ways helps to explain why she was executed and reveals the difficulties that the Beguines as a whole experienced at the end of the thirteenth century and beginning of the next – a period when increasing restrictions were placed on them, and the term beguine came to be synonymous with ‘heretic’.

Despite the difficulties the Beguines faced during Marguerite ’s lifetime and for much of the rest of the Middle Ages, they first emerged in Liège in the late twelfth century, and by the middle of the next they were a popular and well-received religious movement (or movements). The designation beguine appeared in the 1230s. Although at first suspected of heresy because of their lifestyle, the Beguines were welcomed by the Church hierarchy already by the early thirteenth century; they clearly addressed the need of the Church to respond to the spiritual demands of women, notably of urban ones. The Beguines were pious religious women, who lived alone or in small communities in cities which had grown larger and more populous in the course of the twelfth century. The emergence of these religious communities was, in fact, a reaction to social changes associated with the new towns and cities as well as to the changes in spirituality generated by these social changes. Beguine communities and their way of life became necessary because the traditional outlets for women’s piety no longer proved suitable in the new urban environment: these communities offered a means for pious living to the economically less well-todo. The established monastic communities of women did not fully adapt to the changing spirituality of the twelfth century, which, among other things, emphasised the apostolic life and a more internalised form of religious piety. Moreover, those traditional communities required of their novices to bring a dowry with them. Although the size of the dowry was less demanding than in the case of arranging a good marriage, it was still large enough to bar many women. Traditionally, the established monastic communities had been the preserve of aristocratic and even royal women, and thus social status also limited that accessibility of the convents to many women. At the same time, the new orders that emerged in the twelfth century, particularly the Cistercian monastic Order, were reluctant to welcome women into their ranks. Although Robert of Arbrissel and other, more progressive, thinkers implemented reforms which encouraged the involvement of women, the newly forming orders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries tended to limit their participation.

The first of the Beguine communities appeared in the urban centres of northern Europe, spreading throughout Flanders, France and the Rhineland. These devout women who were unable to join traditional communities because of a lack of wealth or social status first formed associations around local churches. By the early thirteenth century they had started to occupy houses where they could live according to their own lifestyle. The earliest of these houses were established by prosperous bourgeois women who also welcomed those less well off, and they were all bound by religious piety. They lived simply, supporting themselves by sewing, weaving, embroidery and the copying of books, and they regularly attended mass and the canonical hours of the day at the local church. Beguine women seemed intent on living in voluntary poverty and chastity, and thus their movement tapped into the growing interest in the life of apostolic poverty. The Beguines were unique, however, in that they took no vows and had no formal institutional structure, local conditions often shaping the individual community or beguinage. It was this lack of formal organisation and the absence of a religious vow that contributed to the great popularity and success of the movement, but also laid the foundation for its downfall.

Although the Beguines would eventually face increasing suspicion from Church leaders, they found widespread support for a period during the early and mid-thirteenth century. One of their earliest and most influential advocates was Jacques de Vitry (c.1160/70–1240), confessor to one of the important early Beguines, Marie d’Oignies (c.1177–1213), and the Bishop who convinced Pope Honorius III (1216–27) to approve the way of life of Beguines. Many other bishops came to support the communities of Beguines, as did some members of the Franciscan Order, with whom the Beguines shared a certain affinity. Most notably, the great English Bishop and scholar Robert Grosseteste (c.1170–1253) staunchly supported them, declaring that the life of the Beguines was superior to that of the mendicants. And in France, the Beguines found support from the King himself. By the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, however, this situation had changed; various questions about the life of the Beguines and rumours of their sexual immorality had surfaced. The very lack of a rule, or vow, now reflected badly on them since no formal restraints could be imposed on the behaviour of these women. Beguines could live in community or independently; and the itinerant Beguine, who often followed her own understanding of the scriptures, was deemed a particular threat to society and to the Church. As a result of this growing distrust, in 1312 the Council of Vienne issued two decrees against the women who called themselves Beguines, declaring that there was ‘an abominable sect of malignant men known as beghards and faithless women known as beguines’.

MARGUERITE PORETE

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On the first of June 1310 at the Place de Grève in Paris, Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake, enduring what the great nineteenth-century historian of the Inquisition, H. C. Lea, called the first formal auto-da-fé in Paris. Condemned as a relapsed heretic, Marguerite accepted her fate calmly and without fear, and she was regarded with great admiration by those who witnessed her death, many of whom burst into tears during the execution. Her condemnation came as the result of her unwillingness to discuss or denounce the teachings found in her great mystical work the Mirror of Simple Souls, which was written in Old French. Although judged heretical, the Mirror was a work of great popularity and influence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and beyond; it was published in the twentieth century as an orthodox text. Indeed, both the reception and the contents of Marguerite ’s great work raise the question of the orthodoxy of her own beliefs. Was she, like her contemporary Fra Dolcino, a heretic clearly opposed to the Church and its teachings? Or was she a devout mystic and a victim of circumstances? Her life and death, in fact, intersected with several broader historical movements of her day, so that both her fate and the extent of her heresy can be truly understood only in the context of the religious and political developments of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

Little is known about Marguerite’s life until in the mid-1290s, when she first ran afoul of the ecclesiastical authorities, and what is known comes from her writings and from the inquisitorial documents compiled at her trial. Her date of birth is not known with any certainty, nor is the exact place of her birth, although she was most likely from Hainaut, a county in the Low Countries that was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Cambria, and it has been suggested that she was from the town of Valenciennes. Passages from her Mirror, however, provide some background on her social class. Echoes of the tradition of courtly literature are found throughout her work, which suggests that she may have come from the aristocracy. Other passages of the text demonstrate the author’s knowledge of important mystical texts of the twelfth century and of the Bible, which indicates that Marguerite was well educated. Indeed, the extent of her learning is revealed by a chronicler’s claim that she even translated the Bible into the vernacular; no evidence of this, however, can be found in the trial records, and there is no surviving copy of any such Bible. Condemned and burned as a pseudomulier or (‘false woman’), Marguerite identified herself as a Beguine, as did most contemporary texts that described her. One contemporary chronicle in particular, however, noted that she wrote a book which taught that ‘a soul annihilated in the love of the Creator could, and should, grant to nature all that it desires’, which raises the possibility that she was connected to another movement. The antinomian and pantheistic, even autotheistic, qualities of her teachings, as described by the contemporary chronicler, led H. C. Lea to proclaim her as the first member of the German heresy of the Free Spirit to appear in France, and Robert Lerner has identified her as one of the most important representatives of that heresy. The nature of both movements, of the Beguines and of the Free Spirit, provides important insights into the life and death of Marguerite Porete.

CONRAD OF URACH (FL . LATE 12TH C.)

2009-04-26T22:42:00.000+08:00

Conrad of Urach was the son of Count Egino the Bearded of Urach; his mother came from the family of the dukes of Zähringen. His birth fell before 1170. Apparently determined for a clerical career early on, he received his training at the cathedral school of Liège (St. Lambert’s), where his maternal great-uncle, Rudolf of Zähringen, sat as bishop 1167–1191. At some point (probably while his uncle was still bishop), Conrad acquired a canonate in the cathedral; in 1196 he appears as cathedral dean, charged with maintaining order among the community. That the canons were in need of reform can be seen from the statutes issued in 1202 by Cardinal legate Guy Poré. By that time, however, Conrad had left the chapter.

Conrad’s uncle, Duke Berthold V of Zähringen, was a candidate for the throne of Germany in the disputed election which followed the untimely death of Henry VI in 1197. As guarantees that he would produce the money needed to secure his election, Berthold offered his nephews—Conrad and Berthold of Urach—to the archbishops of Cologne and Trier; meanwhile, most other German princes had elected Philip of Swabia, brother of the deceased king. Hearing this, the duke renounced his claims, but the two archbishops retained their hostages for some time longer. This use of them as pawns in the political game of chess apparently had a profound effect upon both hostages: should they be released, they vowed to become monks, and, in fact, both became Cistercians. In 1199, Conrad entered the Cistercian house at Villers-on-the-Dyle in Brabant.

Meanwhile, on February 1, 1200, Albert of Cuyck, the successor to Rudolf of Zähringen as bishop of Liège, died, and the see was left vacant. Part of the cathedral chapter elected Conrad of Urach, who had not yet made his final profession at Villers, as bishop; another faction elected an archdeacon who was studying at Paris at the time. Conrad renounced any claim to the office, however, apparently preferring the vita contemplativa (contemplative life) to the vita activa (active life) required of a German prince bishop. He made his final vows at Villers. His family ties, as well as his obvious abilities, led to his becoming prior at Villers by ca. 1204, and in 1208/1209 he was elected abbot. His reputation as an ardent reformer and as a rigorous administrator led to his elevation as abbot of Clairvaux in 1214, and, as such, he attended the Fourth Lateran Council.

Despite his having become a monk, Conrad could not escape the responsibilities placed on him as one of the most influential individuals in the Latin Christendom of his day. In December 1216, he was sent with Abbot Arnald of Citeaux to Philip II and Louis of France to negotiate peace with England. In 1217 Conrad became abbot of Citeaux and general of the Cistercian Order; he probably assumed offi ce at the general meeting of the chapter of the order held at the end of the year.

In January 1219, Pope Honorius III consecrated Conrad as cardinal bishop of Porto and San Rufi na. At the time, there were twenty members of the College of Cardinals: four cardinal bishops, eight cardinal priests, and eight cardinal deacons. Of these, sixteen were from Italian provinces, two from Iberia, one from England, and one from Languedoc. Conrad thus joined the college as its only German member and remained so thus until 1225. During Lent 1220, he was appointed as the successor of Cardinal Bertrand as legate to the Albigensian lands, and given a mandate to support Amalrich de Montfort against Count Raymond of Toulouse. His fame spread, to the extent that soon thereafter, he was nominated to the archbishopric of Besançon. Honorius III would not allow this, however, claiming that Conrad’s talents were needed throughout the Church.

In 1224 Conrad was given the legation as crusade preacher in Germany, but he also participated in various other activities, such as the condemnation of the accused renegade prior Henry Minneke at Hildesheim in October 1224, the national synod held at Mainz in November and December 1225, and the burial of Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne in December 1225. By May 1226 he was back in Rome, and he was present on March 18, 1227, when Honorius III died. According to tradition, Conrad was the fi rst to be offered the tiara, but, again, he rejected an episcopal offi ce. Only then was Gregory IX chosen. Even had Conrad accepted, however, his pontifi cate might well have been a brief one: he died on September 29, 1227, and was buried at Clairvaux, at the side of the smaller altar.

Further Reading

Neiningen, Fulk. Konrad von Urach (†1227): Zähringer, Zisterzienser, Kardinallegat. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1994.

Pixton, Paul B. “Cardinal Bishop Conrad of Porto and S. Rufina and the Implementation of Innocent Ill’s Conciliar Decrees in Germany, 1224–1226.” In Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law [. . .] 1996.

Schreckenstein, Karl Heinrich Freiherr Roth von. “Konrad von Urach, Bischof von Porto und S. Rufi na, als Cardinallegat in Deutschland 1224–1226.” Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, 7 (1867):319–393.

Winter, F. “Ergänzungen der Regesten zur Geschichte des Cardinallegaten Conrad von Urach, Bischof von Porto und St. Rufina.” Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte 11(1871):631–632.

BULGARIAN BOGOMIL AND APOCRYPHAL IDEAS IN MEDIEVAL ENGLISH CULTURE

2009-04-23T17:25:00.000+08:00

SUMMARY

This book will offer its readers an unusual trip in the medieval culture of Europe, following and proving as it does the conveyance of a large number of apocrypha and Bogomil literature to England. It is a well-known fact that Bogomilism, or haeresia Bulgarorum, spread all over Europe by branches like the Cathars, the Patarenes, the Poblicans (same Popelicani), the Begins, the Spirituals and even later offshoots. Until now, however, it was assumed - particularly by 20th century medieval studies - that the heresy reached England only occasionally, appearing in Oxford in 1162. The heretics were stigmatised and banished then and there is no other record of Cathar presence.

This incorrect assumption is due to the fact that the British medievalists have overlooked three very impressive scholars from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, i.e. Moses Gaster (1887), Alexander Vesselovsky (1872) and Ivan Franko (1899). (Chapter One: The History of Christ as Piers Plowman). All three,

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particularly Gaster and Franko, published reliable information about the transfer of apocrypha and Bogomil ideas to medieval England. The main titles one could mention include pieces like De arbore crucis (The Legend of the Cross, or the Legend of the Tree) of Father Jeremiah, the Oration on the Holy Cross and the Two Outlaws, ascribed to St. Gregory, The Secret Book of the Bogomils, On Adam and Eve and the End of the World, the Gospel of Nicodemus, The Vision of Isaiah and The Book of Enoch, to mention but a few.

So, believing that their observations were true, this author spent the last ten years in research and amassed empirical material allowing the following systematisation. There are three more noticeable instances of transfer of apocryphal writings and dualistic plots in England.

First, one discovers them in several famous manuscripts dating from the Early Middle Ages, including Beowulf MS (MS Cotton Vitellius), MS Junius, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book (Chapter One: The History of Christ As Piers Plowman). They were usually dated in the 9th, and sometimes even in the 8th century, or as

belonging to the Old English period. A gradual revision of this dating, however, began after the Second World War. For example, one could mention the following familiar Bogomil-Cathar themes: Christ and Satan, The Harrowing of Hell and The Lament of the Fallen Angels in MS Junius. The Lament of the Fallen Angels retells a fragment of The Secret Book of the Bogomils, the English text probably being the result of median versions.

We shall agree with Ivan Franko and assume that the second occasion was the period after the 11th century, i.e. after the Norman invasion, with a proven transfer of apocryphal literature. This was when the beginnings of English literature were laid and this was also the time when versions of apocryphal gospels were written.

The third stage covered the end of the 13th and the entire 14th century, including William Langland’s poem, The Vision of Piers Plowman (14th c.) and John Wycliff’s philosophy and social activity, Ivan Franko also adding a considerable number of medieval dramas teeming with dualistic plots. This poem is the subject of the second chapter in our book, The Image of Christ Plowman in Medieval English Culture. The Vision of Piers Plowman is full of Bogomil-Cathar imagery and theology. Suffice it to mention the Fall of Lucifer, the Descent of Christ into Hell or the liberation of all sinful souls ('and al that man hath mysdo, I, man wole amende' - says Christ). In Chapter XIX, Christ teaches Piers Plowman how to plough the spiritual field of the world, actually an English version of the scene in De arbore crucis in which Christ teaches the ploughman to plough. Then again, we have the covenant whereby the land is given to Adam - in Langland’s poem it is given to Piers Plowman, or the use of Bogomil vocabulary like “good people”, “the Perfect” and Spiritus Paraclitus, among others. According to the famous art historians T. Borenius and E. W. Tristram (1927), the protagonist Pierce Plowman gave birth to a specific Lollard iconography, including the appearance of Christ of the Trades in poor Lollard churches in

the period from the 14th to the 15th century, particularly the St. Mary Church in Ampney, Gloucestershire; the churches in Stedham and West Chiltington in Sussex; Breage Church in Cornwall; the churches in Poundstok, Penwith and Lanivet, and St. Just in Penwith.

According to T. Borenius and E. W. Tristram, the image of Piers Plowman from The Vision of Piers Plowman is the main source of iconography in the cases quoted so far. In other words, this is an indirect transfer of the figure of Christ as Ploughman teaching the ploughman to plough correctly in De arbore crucis (The Legend of the Tree, or The Legend of the Cross - 11th c.).

Yet, we find also a direct transfer. This is scene 27 of the famous series of 14th century ceramic tiles from no longer existing church in Tring, Herdfordshire, with scenes from the apocryphal Evangelium Thomae Infantiae (Infancy Gospel).

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Fig.A (Scene 27)

Fig. B. (Scene 28)

This is the place to make a direct comparison of scene 27 of the tile series from Tring and the scene of Christ as Ploughman in De arbore crucis (The Legend of the Tree).

Fig. A: Episode 27: Christ raises the plough beam - a scene from a variant of the apocryphal Evangelium Thomae Infantiae (Infancy Gospel, Les enfaunces de Jesu Christ).

Fig. B: Episode 28 in the same series. Christ teaches the ploughman the right way to plough while the latter regards Him in amazement and gratitude. The scene reproduces a fundamental episode from Father Jeremiah’s De arbore crucis (The Legend of the Tree) (11th century, or even the last quarter of the 10th century). The text goes: “One day Jesus went to Bethlehem and saw a man who was ploughing and throwing the earth on one side, going round and round the field. And the Lord saw that the day was passing [fruitlessly] and took the plough in His hands, plough three furrows, then turned the plough, gave it to the man and said: “Fare thee well, brother, plough!” (Old Bulgarian literature1. Apocrypha, Sofia, 1982, p. 282 -in Bulgarian). The British medievalist M. R. James (1923) failed to understand the contents of this scene. “In D.2 is a scene of ploughing,” he wrote. “A ploughman guides the plough, which is drawn by a yoke of oxen. A man with a goad, probably the master, seems surprised.”M. R. James added that he also failed to find such an episode in K. Tischendorf (Evangelia apocrypha, 1852), and that 'the scene was either altered or not understood'. In this way, however, without knowing it himself, the British scholar has indicated the Bulgarian alteration in this version of Evangelium Thomae Infantiae, which consists of the following:

- “in Latin is a grabatum that has to be made: here is a plough,” M. R. James commented (Fig. A, Episode 27). It is true, that in the traditional version of Evangelium Thomae Infantiae Christ extends a plank for a simple, low-lying bed (grabatum), while in the Tring tile series Christ extends a plough beam;

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- the introduction of an entire new scene, “Christ teaches the ploughman to plough”, taken from Father Jeremiah’s 'De arbore crucis'.

One should add here, that the ploughman really does hold a goad. The very same goad, which made Father Jeremiah exclaim: “Oh, blessed tree, that the Lord took in His hands! Oh, blessed plough and blessed goad!”. (Old Bulgarian literature1. Apocrypha, Sofia, 1982, p. 282 -in Bulgarian). Of course, this literature and iconography enjoyed a number of mass consumers, the stable heretical centres of the Lollards (Chapter Four: Social Structures of the Heresy). British historiography abounds in books on the Lollards and their literary activity. Suffice it to mention the names of M. Deanesly, Anne Hudson, Norman Tanner, Margaret Aston, or J. Thomson. The new element in this work is that it proves that the beliefs of the Lollards were identical to those of the Bogomil-Cathar tradition on the basis of data taken from the British scholars and on this author’s own observations. A series of detailed comparisons are made, which prove a coincidence in common myths (the fall of Lucifer and his angels, Satan as creator and ruler of the visible world), ritual practices (direct confession to God, preference for the prayer Pater Noster, denial of hell and purgatory), anti-clericalism (the official Church is seen as a community of Herod or of Antichrist, church buildings are considered synagogues, cross-roads or wastelands), rejection of official Church ritual (negation of the Holy Cross and the icons, refusal to worship the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints) and social ideas (negation of legal authority and oath-taking, condemnation of bloodshed and war).

One cannot but notice the same likeness between the Bogomil theology and John Wycliffe’s reformational and literary activity (Chapter Three: John Wycliffe’s Mellowed Bulgarian Dualism). Once again, the author undertakes a detailed comparative analysis,

which indicates that: with the phrase Deus debet obedite diabolo Wycliffe repeats the well-known Bogomil assertion that “the Devil is master of the world” (Synodicon of Tsar Boril of 1211); Wycliffe repeatedly quotes the dualistic myth of the pride and fall of Lucifer and his angels; he also attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation, adopting the Bogomil-Cathar thesis that God's word is “our supersubstantial bread” (supersubstantialem); like the Cathars, he insisted on sermons in the native language etc.

The book also deals with a barely studied aspect of the Bogomil-Cathar heresy, i.e. the fact that in many respects it is a synthesis of influences of old civilisations and cultures (Chapter Five: The Pre-Renaissance Potential of the Dualists). The author develops already voiced assumptions of a connection between the Bogomil movement and Orphysm, and proves that the scene of Christ descending in hell, so beloved of the Dualists, is a Christian version of Orpheus’ descent in the kingdom of Hades. Readers will also find research of the influence of Zoroastrism on the Bogomil movement, more particularly the borrowing of the well-known triad “good thoughts - good words - good deeds”. In a similar way, Father Jeremiah borrowed plot elements like “the magian material of Tobit” (J. Moulton, 1913) from the Zoroastrian tradition. One can also find an outline of usage of Bogomil apocryphal material by Dante, as well as other cases of pre-Renaissance influence of dualistic culture.

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Since the idea of transfer of Bogomil ideas and apocryphal imagery in medieval England seems unusual to many British medievalists, the author has appended the following table with some established cases of such a transfer:

Author or document	Period	Instances and activity
Gillelmus Novoburgensis	1162	German-speaking sectarians who preached dualism and came from Europe. Stigmatised at Oxford and banished from England.
	William the Conqueror, 1066	As a result of William’s invasion, a large number of Anglo-Norman apocrypha were introduced, including Les enfaunces de Jesu Christ and Apocalypses.
Translations from France	Cursor mundi (1325-1330) and Ayenbite of Inwit or Remorse of Conscience (1340)	A collection of Dualist apocrypha. Numerous copies which influenced the creation of Piers Plowman.
Undoubted transfer from France, according to M. R. James Lollard churches Probable transfer from France according to E. Eames.	MS Bodleian Seiden supra 38 dated in the 14th century. Graffiti from the church near Tring, 14th c.	Contains the Evangelium Thomae Infantiae with a picture of Christ as Piers Plowman from the De arbore crucis.
	Lollard churches in Gloucestershire, Cornwall and Sussex, 14th-15th c.	The iconography of Christ as Farmer
The trial of the Lollards from Norwich 1428-1431.	Records of the trial	The Lollard John Fynche admits to a connection with the Dane Laurence Tyler; a book transported de partibus ultramarinis (from beyond the sea).
John Milton	1608-1674	Crucial elements of The Secret Book of the Bogomils are retold in his Paradise Lost. He wrote a poem in defence of the Waldensians from Piedmont, On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (1655). It is assumed he helped in the transportation of Waldensian archives to England.
A Waldensian fund in Dublin, collected in Piedmont in the 17th century for the Archbishop of Armagh, James Usher

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Illustrations, charts, maps:

Map of the spread of Balkan dualism in Western Europe according to R. I. Moore	p. 22
The trees of Old Adam and New Adam, chart of H. De Saint Victor	p. 130
Christ teaches the ploughman to plough - episodes 27 and 28 (pictures) from the Tring tiles	p.152
Christ as Piers Plowman. Ampney St. Mary Church, Gloucestershire	p.161
St. Peter receiving the labourers in heaven. Ampney St. Mary Church, Gloucestershire	p.162
The Virgin of Mercy and Christ as Piers Plowman. Stedham Church, Sussex (now destroyed)	p.163
Christ as Piers Plowman. West Chiltington Church, Sussex	p.164
Christ as Piers Plowman. Breage Church, Cornwall	p.165
Map of Lollardy underground in the period between 1414 and 1522 according to Malcolm Lambert	p.191

p.286

Featured Book: The Cathars

2009-04-15T17:39:00.002+08:00

Amazon.com Review
The Cathars of medieval Europe were so named, wrote one German theologian, because in their satanic rituals they kissed the backsides of black cats. Had he known his Greek, he would have recognized that the Cathars took their name from a word meaning "purified," but he certainly had a firm grasp on Christendom's official sentiments: the Cathars, members of various sects who rejected the opulence of Roman and Byzantine Christianity alike and took vows of poverty and chastity, were despised wherever their heresy traveled.

Originating in Asia Minor and brought to Europe by way of Bulgaria, the rise of Catharism prompted the first recorded burnings at the stake in France, led to the establishment of the papal Inquisition and the Dominican order of monks who conducted it, and caused the deaths of untold thousands of men, women, and children over a three-century period from about 1200 to 1459, when the official Cathar church was outlawed in its final stronghold, Bosnia. Lambert writes with dry authority on the curious history of this doctrine and official response to it. --Gregory McNamee

Review
"Catharism was the most radical of medieval heresies. Since it touched most areas of Europe in some degree, research on its character and fortunes makes formidable demands on the learning and linguistic ability of any scholar who tackles it, not to mention demands also on his judgement. Malcolm Lambert, well known for his lucid and authoritative writings on medieval heresy, is a match for this challenging task. His new book, The Cathars, is to be welcomed as the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the subject now available in English." Alexander Murray, University College, London

"Lambert's command of the literature and his ability to integrate it into a coherent narrative are unmatched. His book deserves to become the standard account of medieval Catharism." Medieval Review

"This is the first comprehensive study in English of the most mysterious and radical of medieval heresies. Malcolm Lambert ... 'combines scholarly investigation with lucid narrative.'" TD Book Survey

"Malcolm Lambert, with deep erudition allied to pristine sensitive prose, masterfully narrates [the] distinctive history [of] the cathars ... The Cathars ... is, quite simply, indispensible." Catholic Historical Review

Product Description
This is the first comprehensive account in English of the most feared and the most mysterious of medieval heretics. A crusade was launched to uproot them in the south of France, the Inquisition was developed to suppress them, and St Dominic founded his friars to preach against them. Their history and that of the medieval Church are inextricably mingled. This book puts the Cathars back into the context of medieval Catholicism. It studies the rise and fall of the heresy from twelfth-century Rhineland to fifteenth-century Bosnia and the Church's counteraction, peaceful and violent. Some argue that our knowledge of the Cathars is fatally distorted by prejudice; in fact, the author shows, we can now acquire an understanding of their beliefs and internal disputes, and the reasons why they once made so powerful an appeal. Using and assessing a rich volume of international research, the author re-examines the problems of the Cathars' origins, the heroism of their leading class, and the balance between inner decline and external pressure in accounting for their disappearance. In this exposition, Italian Cathars are restored to their rightful place, a chapter is devoted to the puzzle of the Bosnian church, and perspective is given to Le Roy Ladurie's brilliant but wayward Montaillou. A final survey assesses the legacy of a heresy which still exerts a strange fascination.

From the Back Cover
This is the first comprehensive account in English of the most feared and the most mysterious of medieval heretics. A crusade was launched to uproot them in the south of France, the Inquisition was developed to suppress them, and St Dominic founded his friars to preach against them. Their history and that of the medieval Church are inextricably mingled.

This book puts the Cathars back into the context where they belong - that of medieval Catholicism. It studies the rise and fall of the heresy from the twelfth-century Rhineland to fifteenth-century Bosnia and the Church's counteraction, peaceful and violent. Within the exposition, Italian Cathars are given their rightful place, a chapter is devoted to the puzzle of the Bosnian Church, and perspective is given to Le Roy Ladurie's brilliant but wayward Montaillou. A final survey assesses the legacy of a heresy which still exerts its strange fascination.

This book combines scholarly investigation with lucid narrative. It is, in short, historical writing at its best and likely to become the definitive account of a subject of enduring interest and importance.

About the Author
Malcolm Lambert was Reader in Medieval History at the University of Bristol until 1991 when he retired to devote himself to writing and research. His previous books are Franciscan Poverty (1961, reissued 1998) and Medieval Heresy (2nd edition, 1992).

Featured Website: Cathars and Cathar Beliefs in the Languedoc

2009-04-11T10:55:00.001+08:00

Afrikaans Kathaar, Catalan càtar, Czech Albigenští, German Katharer, Eesti Katarid, Spanish Catarismo, Esperanto Katarismo, French Cathares, Italian Catari, Dutch Katharen, Norwegian Katarer, Polish Katarzy, Portuguese Catarismo, Slovenian Albigénstvo, Finnish Kataarit, Swedish Katarer.

The Cathars were a religious group who appeared in Europe in the eleventh century, their origins something of a mystery though there is reason to believe their ideas came from Persia by way of the Byzantine Empire, the Balkans and Northern Italy. Records from the Roman Catholic Church mention them under various names and in various places. Catholic theologians debated with themselves for centuries whether Cathars were Christian heretics or whether they were not Christians at all. The question is apparently still open. Roman Catholics still refer to Cathar belief as "the Great Heresy" though the official Catholic position is that Catharism is not Christian at all.

Cathars believed in two principles, a good creator god and his evil adversary (much like God and Satan of mainstream Christianity). Cathars called themselves Christians; their neighbours distinguished them as "Good Christians". The Catholic Church called them Albigenses, or less frequently Cathars.

PAULICIANS

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Armenian sect whose state was centered at Tephrike in northeastern Cappadocia. It flourished briefly from ca. 843, until Byzantine forces stormed it in 878, establishing on its ruins first a kleisoura, then a theme. What is known about Paulician doctrine is that it embraced Iconoclasm. Paulician beliefs may have had roots in ancient Manichaeanism.

The Paulicians represented an Eastern dualistic religious sect, one of the chief branches of Manichaeism, which had been founded in the third century A.D. by Paul of Samosata and reformed in the seventh century. Living in Asia Minor, on the eastern border of the Empire, and firmly adhering to their doctrine, they sometimes caused grave trouble to the Byzantine government by their warlike energy. One of the familiar methods of Byzantine internal policy was to transport various nationalities from one place to another; for example, the Slavs were moved to Asia Minor and Armenians to the Balkan Peninsula. The Paulicians also had been transported in great numbers from the eastern border to Thrace in the eighth century by Constantine V Copronymus, as well as in the tenth century by John Tzimisces. The city of Philippopolis in the Balkan Peninsula became the center of the Paulicians. Tzimisces, by settling the eastern colony in the vicinity of that city, succeeded first in removing the stubborn sectarians from their strongholds and castles on the eastern border, where it was very difficult to manage them, and also he hoped that in their new settlement the Paulicians would serve as a strong bulwark against the frequent invasions of the northern “Scythian” barbarians. In the tenth century the Paulician doctrine had been carried into Bulgaria by the reformer of that doctrine, Pope Bogomile, after whom the Byzantine writers named his followers Bogomiles. From Bulgaria the Bogomile doctrine later passed into Serbia and Bosnia, and then into western Europe, where the followers of the eastern dualistic doctrine bore different names: Patarins in Italy, Cathari in Germany and Italy, Poblicans (i.e. Paulicians) and Albigensians in France.

DIGENES AKRITAS.

Epic romance, whose setting is the Byzantine- Arab frontier, written in the second half of the 11th century (or in the 12th century). The poem derives from a previous oral tradition (ninth or 10th century in date) about a legendary hero named Basil who is subsequently called Digenes Akritas. Digenes means “born of two peoples,” for in the poem Basil’s father is said to have been an Arab emir, and his mother the daughter of a Byzantine general of the Doukas family. An akritas was an inhabitant of the eastern frontier (that included Cappadocia and the region between Samosata and Melitene). Much of the story concerns Basil’s exploits along this frontier. In the poem his fame reaches the emperor, who rides to the Euphrates River to honor him. Some of Digenes’s foes have been identified as leaders of the heretical Paulicians. Emir Monsour, for example, his father in the tale, must refer to the real-life Omar of Melitene, an ally of the Paulicians. In the description of Digenes’s palace (including its ceilings covered in glittering mosaic with scenes from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, from the life of Alexander the Great, and from the Old Testament), one gains an understanding of how splendid were the residences of wealthy landowners (the dynatoi) in Asia Minor. When the poem was written (during the half century or so after the Seljuk victory at Mantzikert) such families had already left the eastern frontier for more secure surroundings at the Byzantine court in Constantinople. Thus, the poem can be viewed as a romantic retrospective of the recent past.

RETRENCHMENT AND REVENGE: SEPTEMBER –DECEMBER 1209

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The peace between the Count of Foix and Simon of Montfort was the high-water mark for the year as far as the military conduct of the crusade was concerned. Though they took some time to reach him, in response to the letter he had earlier sent the pope Montfort received two letters from the pontiff promising full support. On 11 November Innocent wrote of his pleasure on hearing of Montfort’s leadership, and notified the chief crusader that he would be sending letters to various crowned heads of Europe, including the King of Aragon, asking for their help, which he later did. In a second letter dated the next day, Innocent confirmed Montfort as Viscount of Carcassonne and Béziers partially because the judgment of God and the acclamation of the army had already given the viscounty to him. Through conquest, God’s verdict, the strong approval of the crusade army and the pope’s backing, Montfort now lacked only the support of the feudal suzerain of the Trencavel lands, Pere II of Aragon.

Initially it appeared that November would bring secular confirmation. On 10 November Raimon-Roger Trencavel died in the dungeons of Carcassonne, removing a large impediment to Montfort’s gaining title to the viscounty. In late November King Pere traveled north again and agreed to meet with Simon of Montfort to negotiate accepting Montfort’s homage, thus giving the authority of secular custom to what the chief crusader had already gained. The two men chose to meet on neutral ground in Narbonne, but by 24 November had traveled together to King Pere’s city of Montpellier. While in Montpellier Montfort received the dowry lands of Raimon-Roger’s widow, Agnes of Montpellier, consisting of the towns of Pénzenas and Tourbes, in exchange for an annuity. Though the king and chief crusader talked for some fifteen days in Montpellier, the king ultimately refused to accept Montfort’s homage for the Trencavel viscounty. Montfort therefore left empty-handed amid reports of defections among his lordships.

Taking advantage of the fact that Montfort now had no more than a miniscule army, knights and lords throughout the region began to withdraw their allegiance to him. A particularly revealing incident demonstrating some of the obstacles Montfort faced in holding on that first fall and winter was the capture of Bouchard of Marly by southerners. Bouchard of Marly was one of Montfort’s loyal lieutenants and cousin to Simon’s wife Alice. Together with another knight, Gaubert d’Essigny, Bouchard of Marly went to Cabaret with a party of fifty men in November 1209. The crusading army had briefly flirted with taking this mountain-top fortress a few months before, but abandoned the effort almost immediately after seeing how hard it would be. As the newly invested lord of Saissac, about seventeen kilometers west of Cabaret, Bouchard had a vested interest in pacifying areas eastward. He therefore went into the region around Cabaret to raid. As his party of fifty drew close to the area they were surrounded and ambushed by men of the garrison, consisting of ninety horse and foot (‘‘que a caval que a petz’’) and fourteen archers (‘‘arquiers’’). Even though they were taken by surprise, for a time Bouchard’s men defended themselves without panicking before many were killed, including Gaubert d’Essigny. The rest managed to get away except for Bouchard of Marly, who remained in dreary captivity for sixteen months at Cabaret.

The man who engineered the ambush was Peire-Roger, lord of Cabaret. Peire-Roger was one of the petty mountain lords of the region whose ostensible loyalty had been to the Trencavel viscounts, and he had served the viscount in at least part of the siege of Carcassonne. Since Simon of Montfort was now viscount, Peire-Roger theoretically owed loyalty to him, though the southerner had never formally given it. Yet he had never obeyed the Trencavels either, basically doing as he pleased. In 1209 Cabaret actually contained three castles called Quertinheux, Surdespine and Cabaret, ranged in a line across a desolate mountain ridge more than 300 meters above sea level. The fact that Peire-Roger believed he made himself safest by building and maintaining castles in this bleak location suggests he was more worried by his enemies than his enemies were by him. On the one hand Cabaret guarded a road, but it was a road easily bypassed around the mountains. On the other hand Cabaret was only fourteen kilometers from Carcassonne, close enough for Peire-Roger’s men to be a potential nuisance, as they proved on several occasions after 1209. The unproductive land surrounding Cabaret could not have furnished Peire-Roger a lavish lifestyle. The castles themselves are so remote and high up from the main road that almost everything edible in them would had to have been carried in by single-file mule teams or on the backs of human porters. Poor but proud, and quite dangerous under certain conditions, Peire-Roger was essentially a gentrified robber-bandit, sympathetic to Catharism but most interested in self-preservation. He struck targets of opportunity, but his goal was to remain independent of any higher authority, not simply that of the crusade. Still, he and Cabaret well represented the kind of men and sites Simon of Montfort was going to have to deal with in order to subdue the country. For the moment Montfort and the crusade could do nothing, so Peire-Roger continued to live as he always had.

While the lord of Cabaret had never given homage to Simon of Montfort and was therefore not guilty of treason, other southern lords who had earlier sworn homage or pledges of loyalty to Montfort now began to withdraw them. Montfort abhorred disloyalty and never forgot those who broke their word to him. After returning to Carcassonne from Montpellier in late November or early December, Montfort learned that two of his knights, Amaury and William of Poissy, were besieged by ‘‘traitors’’ (traditores) and captured in a ‘‘tower’’ (turrem castri) somewhere north of the Aude around Carcassonne. Though the chief crusader desperately tried to reach them in time, autumn floods prevented him from crossing the Aude and rescuing them. As Montfort moved close to Narbonne, he received word that Giraud of Pépieux, lord of a small castrum twenty-six kilometers northeast of Carcassonne who had previously pledged loyalty to Montfort, had broken his word and rebelled. Giraud did so partially because at some earlier point a Frenchman of the crusading army had killed his uncle. Though the Frenchman who committed the murder is not named, apparently he was a fairly prominent knight or noble. Nonetheless, as proof of his willingness to mete out justice fairly, Montfort had this Frenchman buried alive. This was not enough for Giraud of Pépieux, who continued to nurse a grudge. Instead of uttering public defiance and renunciation of loyalty more in accordance with northern feudal custom, he secretly engineered a surprise attack.

To what degree feudalism existed in Occitania has always been a topic of debate among scholars. One might legitimately argue that southern lords like Giraud of Pépieux were not used to the practices of the north and therefore reacted according to their own customs, and perhaps should not have been found culpable when they broke their word. True enough perhaps, but Simon of Montfort responded in the familiar ways of northern France. He envisioned his lordship in a northern French context and saw acts such as Giraud’s as treachery, particularly when they had not been preceded by public declaration or renunciation of loyalty. Each side, then, operated on a different set of assumptions, and it should be no surprise that these misunderstandings only made the punishment of real or imagined transgressions that much more brutal.

Along with some other disloyal knights Giraud of Pépieux traveled to the castrum of Puisserguier about fourteen kilometers west of Béziers. Somehow he managed to trick the Montfortian garrison of two knights and fifty sergeants into admitting him and his men, where he then overwhelmed and imprisoned them. Under oath he promised to spare their lives and allow them to keep their possessions when he and his men left. Montfort soon learned what had happened, and as he was close by he responded quickly to the news. He rushed to Puisserguier, bringing Aimery of Narbonne and the Narbonnais civic militia with him. As soon as they arrived, however, Aimery and his townsmen inexplicably refused to lay the place under siege and abandoned Montfort and his tiny field army. Since it was late in the day and Montfort now had few men with him, instead of blockading the place as he intended, for safety’s sake he took quarters for the night in the nearby town of Capestang, less than five kilometers away to the south.

The fortifications of Puisserguier were not very strong, and the place, located on fairly level ground, was easy to surround. Perhaps not knowing that Montfort had lost the services of the Narbonnais militia, and believing that he would certainly besiege Puisserguier the next morning, Giraud of Pépieux took advantage of this reprieve to flee during the night. The captured garrison posed a problem for him, however. Dragging the prisoners along would only slow him down, especially since he had starved them for the past three days. Equally he was not anxious to allow more than fifty prisoners to go free. Rather than murder them face-to-face, Giraud of Pépieux had the captured sergeants placed in the dry ditch surrounding the fortifications. He and his men then proceeded to stone the prisoners as well as throwing straw and combustibles down to burn them alive. Leaving the sergeants for dead, he then fled to the Cathar stronghold of Minerve, taking with him only his own men and the two knights who commanded the garrison, for whom he planned another fate. The next morning Montfort arrived before Puisserguier only to see the place abandoned, though at least some, perhaps all, of the sergeants had survived their ordeal in the ditch. In a rage Montfort had the citadel of Puisserguier destroyed and proceeded to lay waste Giraud of Pépieux’s lands. The aftermath of the story had ominous overtones briefly worth discussing here. Once safe at Minerve, Giraud had the two captured knights mutilated, their eyes gouged out, and their ears, lips, and noses cut off.

They were then set free to find Montfort in the cold, late autumn weather. One died, but the other eventually made it to Carcassonne.161 Montfort was not an inherently cruel man, but he certainly believed in an-eye-for-an-eye plus raising the ante. He would remember Giraud of Pépieux’s treachery and the mutilation of the knights, and exact payment for it both in the near future and even years later.

The treacheries, seizures, and assassinations against crusaders or crusade sympathizers continued throughout this whole period. An abbot of the Cistercian house of Eaunes, traveling back with three companions from a meeting of the papal legates at Saint-Gilles, was stabbed to death along with a lay brother just outside the city of Carcassonne. The perpetrators let one monk go because they knew him, but when he reached safety he reported that the killers were led by Guilhem of Roquefort, local lord and brother of none other than the Bishop of Carcassonne, Bernard-Raimon. Montfort received word that two important castra in the Albi region, Castres and Lombers, which had granted their loyalty to him only the previous September, now withdrew it and imprisoned the garrisons of sergeants and knights Montfort had left there. At some point the Count of Foix also broke the peace he had agreed with Montfort and took back Preixan. One night he and his men also attempted to take back Fanjeaux, though the garrison managed to repel the attack. Montfort had left a French cleric in charge of the garrison of Montréal, less than eighteen kilometers away from Carcassonne. This unnamed clerk turned Montréal back over to its original lord, Aimeric of Montréal. Aimeric had deserted Montréal during the siege of Carcassonne to come to Montfort’s camp and pledge his loyalty to the crusade, but reneged a few days after leaving. Montfort forgot neither the French clerk nor Aimeric of Montréal, and eventually settled scores with both. Further defections and assassinations took place so that by Christmas 1209 Montfort had lost more than forty castles and castra. He was left with Béziers, Carcassonne, Fanjeaux, Saissac, Limoux, Pamiers, Saverdun, Albi, and the small castrum of Ambialet.

By the end of the year the crusade had accomplished little, although it had already cost many lives on both sides. It had put the inhabitants of Occitania on their guard, yet they had recovered much of their territory. While Béziers, Carcassonne, and Albi constituted the critical population centers of the Trencavel viscounty and remained in crusader hands, these castra could rebel at any time. Hostile lords and towns surrounded all three places. Though Cathars from Béziers to Lombers had lost their lives to the crusade already, the religious movement itself had yet to suffer permanent damage. Thus by Christmas 1209 the military campaign to exterminate Catharism and win control over the region had only just begun.

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1209 PART III AUGUST– SEPTEMBER 1209

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Though the legates and army had chosen a leader of high resolve, unimpeachable faith, and unquestioned integrity, the struggle to carry out the mission of the crusade had only begun. By late August, many in the army decided they had met the requirements for an indulgence and were anxious to return north before colder weather set in. Nobles and ordinary crusaders began to leave the army in a steady stream. Montfort and the Abbot of Cîteaux begged the Duke of Burgundy and the Count of Nevers to stay, pointing out to them that three strongly defended, hostile castra close by – Minerve, Termes, and Cabaret – remained unsubdued. While the Duke of Burgundy readily agreed to stay, particularly because of his friendship with Montfort, the Count of Nevers could not be persuaded, partly because he could not stand the Duke of Burgundy. With the Count of Nevers went the vast majority of the crusaders. The stream of men leaving the army soon became a flood. This created a crisis, because gains so easily won by a huge army in optimum campaigning conditions could just as easily be lost by a much smaller army as the seasons changed. The captured cities now held by Montfort represented no more than a few islands in the midst of a sea of hostile population centers and nobles with local power bases still quite capable of defending themselves. While the crusade army could successfully besiege cities in open country, it had not been tested against fortresses up in the mountains, which would provide far more frustration and danger relative to their strategic or financial importance. In particular the castra of Cabaret, Termes, and Minerve could not be easily taken in any but the summer months, when the narrow paths leading to the fortresses would be free of snow and mud, and a sure supply of food could be secured to sustain a blockade and siege. The conditional loyalty of southern nobles and captured towns would eventually prove as problematic to Montfort and the crusade as manpower, supplies, and the weather. As the crusading army became smaller, surrendered populations were more likely to withdraw their loyalty and rebel. This is in fact what many of them did in the coming months.

By taking the job of chief crusader Simon of Montfort inherited a nightmare that haunted him until his death less than nine years later. He had no secular sponsor to provide steady logistical and personnel support. The papacy could only provide undependable revenue from occasional crusading taxes and the moral suasion of crusade preachers for recruitment. To his credit, Montfort quickly recognized the immensity of his task. In the only known letter written by him to the pope, sent sometime in the first few months after he took command of the crusade, Montfort not only introduces himself and the position from which he will command the crusade, as Viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, but also outlines for the pontiff the problems he faces and asks for support. He informs the pope that he has become leader of the crusade by selection by the other crusaders and that he will remain in the south until the heresy is exterminated. (On that last point he was as good as his word.) In an almost plaintive tone, he says he has been left with only a few knights to assist him. Because of the danger in which the crusaders find themselves, Montfort not only has to pay men to serve him but has to pay double the normal wages in order to keep them. His plaint reached a sympathetic audience, and Innocent III in turn attempted to assist the crusade in any way he could.

Though Montfort’s army soon dwindled to practically nothing, it was the hard kernel which remained that provided the subordinate leadership, experience, and expertise necessary to continue the war. William of Tudela mentions by name or title at least fourteen knights, lords or nobles who remained with Montfort that first fall and winter of the crusade. These men were even farther down on the social scale than Montfort, being younger sons or hard-scrabble lords who stood to gain by remaining in the south. Montfort came to be fanatically loyal to his close followers, something they reciprocated. These veterans formed the core of all subsequent field armies which crusaded in the south and served as the castellans who defended fortifications against hostile townspeople. In addition to this inner circle, Montfort had some paid troops. If we include the men who comprised the garrisons of various places, he may technically have had an army of several hundred in the fall of 1209, though we have no numbers from which to tabulate or estimate a total. Clearly it was a small number, since so many southern lords were tempted to rebel by the late fall of 1209.

The time line of events between late August and late November 1209 is very unclear. We are largely dependent on Peter Vaux-de-Cernay’s account. Montfort continued to campaign throughout the fall, but none of the sources mentions any dates until November. Planning his next moves, Montfort sent some of his lieutenants to command garrisons in strategic places within his newly-won dominions. To Béziers went William of Contres and to Limoux went Lambert of Crécy, who later took the town’s name as his own. Though the Count of Toulouse and his namesake city had escaped the wrath of the crusade, apparently doubts remained about both his culpability and whether the people of Toulouse had made their peace with the crusade. Raimon VI would eventually go to Rome to resolve any problems. The crusade leadership sent messengers to Toulouse to work out a peace with the townspeople, but the Toulousans preferred to settle their grievances with the pope directly. Soon a delegation from the city went to Rome to plead its case.

Before any more of the army left for home, Montfort decided to perambulate his western domains since most of them had not actually been visited by the crusade. He intended a show of force to cement the loyalty of these places before they would even contemplate rebellion. Though this is not stated by the sources, it seems likely that Montfort moved west deliberately to put the Count of Toulouse on notice that the chief crusader would be an aggressive lord on the border between them. As a professed crusader himself, Raimon VI had already used the legality of the crusade to settle personal scores in various places by destroying several castra in the border region. Leaving Carcassonne sixteen kilometers to the northwest, the crusader army occupied Alzonne, then moved a further fourteen kilometers southwest to Fanjeaux. Earlier, when the crusaders had been besieging Carcassonne, Fanjeaux had been abandoned and perhaps burned by its own population. Curiously, the men who, on behalf of the crusaders, occupied both Fanjeaux and the castrum of Montre´al, nine kilometers away, appear to have been Aragonese routiers led by one Peter of Aragon, who methodically stripped the castrum of Fanjeaux of all the moveable wealth he could find. Perhaps doubtful of these routiers’ loyalty and ultimate allegiance, Montfort moved into Fanjeaux and installed a new garrison. Many other towns and fortifications in the area were abandoned by their inhabitants as the crusade moved close by.

While the chief crusader was at Fanjeaux a delegation from the large castrum of Castres, some forty-six kilometers north of Carcassonne, submitted to him. Castres was one of the most prominent towns in the Albi region, and making an appearance there was important, partly because this region’s loyalty had been neither tested nor assured. Montfort traveled to Castres with only a token force, leaving the army under the command of the Duke of Burgundy, who began moving back towards Carcassonne. From Fanjeaux the journey to Castres would be about fifty-two kilometers if one skirted the Black Mountain range falling in between. While Montfort stayed at Castres, a delegation from Lombers, twenty-three kilometers further north of Castres on the way to Albi, met Montfort at Castres and asked him to make an appearance in their town. For some reason he declined the request and quickly returned to the main army. Perhaps he was afraid the army would soon fall apart as more and more men departed for home. At any rate Montfort traveled back towards Carcassonne where he met up with the army again.

Upon Montfort’s arrival back to the main crusader army the Duke of Burgundy suggested the army move towards Cabaret to harass its defenders or perhaps seize it. Cabaret was fourteen kilometers north of Carcassonne, high in the Black Mountains, so-called because of their dark color when seen from a distance. Now known as Lastours, Cabaret is an incredibly remote and desolate location. Perhaps the crusaders did not realize just how formidable Cabaret was until they moved the remainder of the army into the mountains, because even though they got within ‘‘half a league’’ of the fortifications they soon abandoned their attempts to take it. By this time the Duke of Burgundy had more than earned his indulgence, and he finally departed for the north, along with most of what was left of the army. According to Peter Vaux-de-Cernay, Montfort had no more than thirty knights left in the army. These knights had to control a region twice the size of Rhode Island.

Montfort now moved south into the border zone between the Trencavel lands and those of the Count of Foix. He did so as a demonstration of what even a small crusader army could do. The Count of Foix was overlord of various places just to the southwest of Carcassonne and was suspected of protecting heretics. By attacking the Count of Foix’s territory beyond the Trencavel lands, Simon of Montfort exceeded his mandate, though he probably justified it on the grounds that he was acting against a protector of heretics. In doing so however, he gained one of the most stalwart and formidable enemies the crusade ever had. Montfort captured several places belonging to the Count of Foix, including Mirepoix. He then took the allegiance of the people of Pamiers and occupied Saverdun. Leaving the Foix region and returning to Fanjeaux, Montfort and the army moved north again into the Albi region. He actually got as far as Lombers this time, taking the allegiance of the reluctant knights defending it. From there Montfort traveled to Albi, which constituted the northernmost zone of the Trencavel viscounty. Technically Albi belonged to the King of Aragon, to whom the Trencavels did homage for it, but even the latter’s authority was weak, as the Bishop of Albi had long been the de facto lord of the castrum. Still, upon entrance of the chief crusader into the city, the Bishop of Albi acknowledged Montfort as overlord and did homage for Albi. For the moment Montfort was lord of the viscounty with the exception of a few hold-outs to the Count of Toulouse.

Moving south yet again he fortified Limoux, which his lieutenant Lambert had occupied previously, seized some other unnamed castra, hanged some of their inhabitants as an example to the rest, and besieged the castrum of Preixan, another possession of the Count of Foix but only nine kilometers south of Carcassonne. Temporarily worn out by the blows he had suffered in quick succession, the Count of Foix came to Montfort’s camp before Preixan to make peace. According to the terms Raimon-Roger of Foix agreed to support the church, surrender his rights in Preixan to Montfort, and offer his youngest son as a hostage. Though the chief crusader had cowed a possible enemy and seemingly removed a potential trouble spot close to Carcassonne, the peace between Simon of Montfort and Raimon-Roger of Foix appears to have lasted little longer than it took for the ink to dry on the parchment.

THE BOGOMIL HERESY IN THE TENTH CENTURY

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Bogomil cemetery

This remarkable doctrine, founded on the dualism of the Paulicians, who had become an important political force in the eastern empire, was preached in the Balkan peninsula by one Jeremiah Bogomil, for the rest a man of uncertain identity, who made Philippopolis the centre of his activity. Its principal features were of a negative character, and consequently it was very difficult successfully to apply force against them. The Bogomils recognized the authority neither of Church nor of State; the validity neither of oaths nor of human laws. They refused to pay taxes, to fight, or to obey; they sanctioned theft, but looked upon any kind of punishment as unjustifiable; they discountenanced marriage and were strict vegetarians. Naturally a heresy so alarming in its individualism shook to its foundations the not very firmly established Bulgarian society. Nevertheless it spread with rapidity in spite of all persecutions, and its popularity amongst the Bulgarians, and indeed amongst all the Slavs of the peninsula, is without doubt partly explained by political reasons. The hierarchy of the Greek Church, which supported the ruling classes of the country and lent them authority at the same time that it increased its own, was antipathetic to the Slavs, and the Bogomil heresy drew much strength from its nationalistic colouring and from the appeal which it made to the character of the Balkan Slavs, who have always been intolerant of government by the Church. But neither the civil nor the ecclesiastical authorities were able to cope with the problem; indeed they were apt to minimize its importance, and the heresy was never eradicated till the arrival on the scene of Islam, which proved as attractive to the schismatics as the well-regulated Orthodox Church had been the reverse.