This bit of medieval history was rightly a first serious round of direct challenges to the encroaching hegemony of the Catholic Church. While the doctrinal issues were important, the core problem was that the church became a serious land owner almost by default. This made it a ripe target for schism. The same dynamic drove the rise of Protestantism. The doctrinal issues however important would have been still born without the coin of advantage to inspire.
Now that advantage
is no longer involved, we see that the compelling issues of most past heresies
find no traction whatsoever. Was Martin Luther
right? Of course he was. He still on his own would have simply joined
a host of other devout individuals who were appalled by mortal failing in the
church, just as today we also are appalled by problem of priestly abuse now
been addressed.
He became
important because it allowed rulers to liberate church wealth. Henry VIII had shown them all the way and the
lack of consequences emboldened them.
The War on the
Cathars
September 14, 2013 By david jones
By PHILIP COPPENS
The “Cathar heresy” that struck Southern France in
the 13th century, and was viciously persecuted by the Roman Catholic
Church, remains a pool of interest and intrigue. What really happened, and what
did the Cathars actually believe?
Wars between nations or faiths are commonplace.
Sometimes, the leaders of nations turn against a minority resident within their
own borders. But the Albigensian Crusade is unique in history, as the Pope on
March 10, 1208 proclaimed a crusade against a ‘heresy’ that was present inside
Catholic Europe itself. “These heretics are worse than the Saracens!” he
proclaimed.
In retrospect, the crusade was one of the bloodiest
episodes in European history. Indeed, the decades-long persecution of simple
folk has often been seen as the event that prepared the way for the birth of
Protestantism, as it awakened ordinary Europeans to the realisation that
something was not ‘quite’ right within the papal corridors.
Today, the ‘heretics’ are most commonly known as
Cathars, but historically they went under a number of guises for, in fact, they
were not a uniform organisation at all.
The main focus, however, has always been on the
Cathars (from the Greek word meaning ‘pure’), a name that is normally reserved
for the dissident Christians who lived in Southern France and Northern Spain.
Catharism arrived in southern France and northern
Italy in the 11th century. It was present in Orléans as early as 1022,
when thirteen Parfaits – the name for the ascetic Cathar elders – were
condemned to the stake. At the time, the south of France (the Languedoc) was
not yet under the political control of Northern France. In the Languedoc, Catharism,
endorsed by the local nobility, became a popular alternative to the Catholic
Church. The likes of the Count of Toulouse – one of the most important
rulers of Southern France – supported Catharism.
Cathar Beginnings
The first Cathar Synod was held between 1167 and
1176 at St. Felix-de-Caraman, near Toulouse. The event, attended by many local
notables, was presided over by the Bogomil papa Nicetas of the Balkan dualist
church (see ‘The Bogomils: Europe’s Forgotten Gnostics’ by Paul Tice, New
Dawn No. 106, January-February 2008), assisted by the Cathar bishop of
(Northern) France and a leader of the Cathars of Lombardy.
The Synod marked the start of the real struggle
between the Catholic Church and Catharism, as the Church now had an organised
body to fight. Of course, it meant ‘the enemy’ now had a name, and could thus
be more easily fought.
As early as 1178, Louis VII of France asked for a
forceful intervention to stamp out the New Church. In 1208, Pope Innocent III
repeatedly tried to use diplomacy to stop the spread of Catharism, but in that
year his papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered (allegedly by an agent serving
the Count of Toulouse). The event pushed him from diplomacy into military
action. Some now consider the death of de Castelnau a false flag operation,
engineered so that the crusade would be declared.
Whichever scenario is true, the end remains the same:
an estimated 200,000 to one million people died during the twenty year
campaign, which began in earnest in Béziers in July 1209. Papal troops marched
to Béziers where they ordered that 222 people, suspected of being Cathars, be
handed over to them by the town’s citizens. When this was refused, the papal
troops decided to attack. One of the crusaders asked their leader, the Papal
Legate Arnaud-Amaury, how to distinguish between the 222 heretics and the
thousands of faithful Catholics that lived in the city. “Kill them all,” was
the abbot’s alleged reply. “God will recognise his own!” The number of dead
that day was between 7,000 and 20,000, the latter figure being the one quoted
when Arnaud-Amaury reported back to the Pope.
With such carnage, the other towns (e.g. Narbonne
and Carcassonne) offered no resistance and soon the Southern counts had lost
their territories and powers to the King of France and his allies. For these
Northern lords, attaining the lands of the Languedoc had always been paramount;
their mission had been accomplished.
Though the crusade was over, only the powerbrokers
who supported the spread of Catharism had been removed from power, their lands
confiscated. What about the people? It is a known fact that the more one hunts
down a group, the more convinced it becomes in its ways. Hence, at the end of
the Albigensian Crusade, Catharism wasn’t by any means eradicated.
For this purpose, the Inquisition was established in
Toulouse in 1229 to guarantee that any future resurgence of this ‘heresy’ was
nipped in the bud – literally – but also that a new phase of the campaign could
commence: individual manhunts to track down Parfaits (the Cathars elders) who
were still hiding and preaching within the general population.
From 1233 onwards, hunting down Catharism was no
longer done via wide-sweeping crusades, but on an individual basis. This meant
any Cathars caught were ferociously interrogated about the secret network they
were part of, their hideouts, their clandestine financiers and supporters, etc.
Faced with the incredible pains subjected to their
bodies, and the Cathar oath not to lie, the Inquisition learned important
secrets about the underground network. Despite this, René Weis, author of The
Yellow Cross, states: “The Cathar movement in the late-thirteenth-century
Sabartès was an underground organisation, and the Inquisition of Geoffroy
d’Ablis never penetrated to its core in spite of the fact that it executed most
of their leaders.”
Many Cathar elders realised the lethal dangers they
faced and began to take refuge in the fortresses at Fenouillèdes and Montségur,
while others were able to incite uprisings, which forced the Inquisition out of
Albi, Narbonne and Toulouse. Count Raymond-Roger de Trencavel even led a
military campaign in 1240, but was defeated at Carcassonne, surrendered and was
exiled to Aragon.
The Church felt victory was near and only those
Cathars hiding in the castles remained to be eradicated. A siege began of the
castle of Montségur, where 300 soldiers and 200 Parfaits stood off an army of
10,000. Among the Cathars inside Montségur were the Cathar bishop of Toulouse
and the Cathar bishop of the Razès, Raymond Aguilher, leading members of the
‘heresy’.
After a ten month siege, in March 1244, the castle
surrendered. Though their life would be spared if they recanted, the Cathars
preferred to be burnt, rather than reject their faith – a true sign of their
conviction, which is one of the key reasons why Catharism today has such a wide
appeal with the local people of Southern France.
The fall of a small, isolated but very idyllic fort,
that of Quéribus, in August 1255, is often seen as the final demise of
Catharism, but that is not true. In fact, in the following decades, there was
something of a Cathar revival. The much hunted Cathar Parfait Pierre Authié
even consoled the Count of Foix, Roger-Bernard III, in March 1302 in the hall
of Tarascon castle, even though he was later buried by the Bishop of
Carcassonne. It shows how many local lords still remained loyal to the Cathar
cause.
The underground survival of Catharism has become
symbolised by the events that occurred in and to the small village of
Montaillou, near Montségur, as it was the subject of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s
pioneering book of the same name. From 1294 to 1324, the daily routines of
Montaillou’s 250 inhabitants are known, as they survived in the records of
Jacques Fournier, later to be Pope Benedict XII. It was Fournier, then the
local Catholic bishop, who unleashed the Inquisition at Pamiers against the
villagers, even resulting in the arrest of the entire village in 1308. One
should, perhaps, be happy they weren’t all killed…
Fournier also captured the last Cathar Parfait to be
burnt at the stake: Guillaume Bélibaste, in 1321. Bélibaste’s bailiwick was the
area between Rennes-le-Château – known for the mysterious 19th century
priest Bérenger Saunière, who is at the core of the mystery of the so-called Priory
of Sion and Dan Brown’s bestselling The Da Vinci Code – and the
coastal city of Perpignan.
Bélibaste was the son of a rich farmer from
Cubières. He became a shepherd and a Parfait, the pupil of the Parfaits Pierre
and Jacques Authié, whom had stayed with Bélibaste’s family in Cubières. As the
Inquisition’s stranglehold tightened, Bélibaste settled across the border, in
Catalonia, where the political regime did not persecute Cathars, and he was
able to make baskets and carding combs, as well as become the mentor to a local
Cathar community. He nevertheless decided to return to his homeland, but was
caught, tried, and burnt at Villerouge-Termenès.
Bélibaste’s death signalled the end of the official
Occitan Cathar Church, which blossomed in the 11thcentury, organised in 1167,
and perished in 1321. But though officially defeated in France, elsewhere, e.g.
in Bosnia, Catharism continued to exist into the 15th century, when its
adherents converted to Islam. Some, however, argue that Catharism in France may
have disappeared as an organised Church in 1321, but that as a religion… it
remains alive until today.
Though it was the Inquisition – the accusers – that
wrote down the life of Authié and Bélibaste, there is general consensus the
insights the accounts provide into their lives and beliefs are credible.
Indeed, what precisely the Cathars believed, remains somewhat of an enigma.
Some have even used it as a blank canvas, to paint their own thoughts or convictions
on. Hence, a lot of myths and falsehoods now exist about Catharism.
The Cathar Revival
At the core of the Cathar faith was the rejection of
the material world, which was seen as a trap imprisoning the soul. All things
material were seen as evil and to be opposed and rejected. Hence, they built no
churches, were largely vegetarian and shared both common possessions and ate
common meals. Though it is true that their doctrine had room for Jesus and the
Bible, especially the Gospel of John, and that they proclaimed Christ had no
real body (if he was the Son of God, how could he have a body of flesh, which
was evil?) and hence also died no real death, all of these accommodations
should be seen as educational tools so that they could explain to those that
had been raised as Christians where both teachings differed.
But in the end, their doctrine was appealing not
so much for its core beliefs, but because the Catholic clergy were corrupt and
as materialistic as one could be.
Today, Catharism is largely seen as a dualist
religion, like most Gnostic and oriental teachings. The man largely responsible
for identifying Catharism as such was Déodat Roche (1877-1978), often referred
to both as ‘the Cathar Bishop’, if not ‘the Cathar Pope’. However, outside of
France, his name is relatively unknown, as is that of his friend and Professor
of Sociology René Nelli of the University of Toulouse (and often referred to as
‘the vicar of Catharism’), who lectured on the subject all over France.
Their fame has largely been eclipsed by the likes of
Otto Rahn and Antonin Gadal, who saw the caves of the valley south of Foix as
secret initiation centres for the Cathars – a theory that is now often widely
accepted, but which has very little academic support.
Gadal continued the work started by the local
historian Adolphe Garrigou. From the 1930s onwards, circles were formed around
Gadal and the already mentioned Roche and Nelli. Together, they formed “La
Société du souvenir de Montségur et du Graal,” to promote the forgotten history
of Catharism – but specifically tying it to the Holy Grail – and the promotion
of Montségur, and the region as a whole. It is here that what is now known as
‘neo-Catharism’ was born, and it has little to do with the original belief.
A second circle of Cathar enthusiasts had the
countess Pujol-Murat as a key figure; she was one of Otto Rahn’s patrons. Rahn
was a young German academic, whose books greatly advanced interest in Montségur
and Catharism, both in the 1930s and now (see my article ‘The Strange Life of
Otto Rahn: Author, Poet, Grail Seeker, SS Officer’, in New Dawn No.
109, July-August 2008). The countess claimed to be a descendent of Esclarmonde
de Foix, who was seen (though historically inaccurately so) as one of the most
esteemed Cathar Parfaits of the early 13th century and in some accounts
held to be responsible for the rise of Montségur as the ‘Vatican’ of Catharism.
It should be pointed out that these hilltop castles (like Montségur) were never
‘Cathar cathedrals’, as some would have it, but merely refuges for the Parfaits
escaping the Inquisition.
The Countess hoped to discover the lost treasure of
the Cathars – and the Templars – which she believed was the Grail itself,
supposedly hidden at Montségur by Esclarmonde, just before she threw herself
off the mountain to escape from the papal troops. Some therefore believed the
Grail was hidden there, whereas others felt the Grail had been secreted out of
Montségur, days before its fall. It is said four Cathars descended down the steep
slopes, carrying with them a ‘treasure’. Though the story of this escape is
true, whether they carried anything is a matter of debate. Furthermore, as the
descent was steep and arduous, whatever they carried must have been small.
Amidst the wild speculation as to what they might
have secured, some believe it was a holy book, containing the wisdom of the
Cathar religion. It is indeed unlikely the Cathars secured a physical treasure,
if only because it would have been too heavy, and in their eyes, unimportant:
Catharism saw everything on this plane of existence as evil and despicable;
money and wealth were chief amongst Earth’s – and Satan’s – vices.
Authors such as Walter Birks and R.A. Gilbert, as
well as Elizabeth van Buren, have suggested the Cathars guarded a manuscript,
knowledge – a spiritual treasure. This manuscript is often said to be the ‘Book
of Love’ and is linked with the Gospel of John, and is claimed to contain
“sublime teachings, marvellous revelations, the most secret words confided by
our Lord Jesus Christ to the beloved disciple [John the Evangelist]. Their
power would be such that all hatred, all anger, all jealousy would vanish from
the hearts of men. The Divine Love, like a new flood, would submerge all souls
and never again would blood be shed on this earth.”
It is known that books were very important to the
Cathars, and some, such as “Stella,” by the Cathars of Desenzano, talk about
the wars between God and Lucifer – underlining their dualist doctrine. But as
Saint Dominic, founder of the Inquisition, is often depicted committing these
books to the fire, it should come as little surprise that few have survived his
‘intervention’.
However beautiful Montségur is, the ‘real’ Cathar
heartland are somewhat gentler slopes where now desolate villages once thrived.
One such village, Arques, near Rennes-le-Château, is where the hunted Parfait
Pierre Authié preached and found refuge, and the modern Cathar researcher
Déodat Roche was born and lived. Today there is a museum dedicated to him.
Deodat Roche
Though Roche was part of the modern Cathar Revival,
he never focused too much on the promotion of Montségur or the ‘initiation
caves’, which for him were distractions – tourist attractions. Roche focused on
the true Cathar belief. But the question needs to be asked whether he
discovered this, or whether he knew so all along.
For those who have studied and known Roche, there
are hints that somehow Roche’s interest in Catharism was very fundamental –
that he may have been one himself. He is known to have made solitary early
morning walks to a hill just outside of Arques, where he was taken as a young
child by his father. The site holds a statue of the Virgin Mary, and though
this might appear typically Christian, the Cathars of the 14th century are
known to have made similar pilgrimages to the nearby basilica of
Notre-Dame-de-Marceille, which held a Black Madonna. As in
Notre-Dame-de-Marceille, did the Virgin Mary in Arques have a secondary –
dualist – meaning for Cathars – and Roche?
As mentioned, his home town of Arques also had a
strong connection with Authié. Roche once unearthed an image of Pierre Authié
and both he and others who saw this noted how remarkably similar the two men
looked. Roche was not only mayor of Arques; he had also held important positions
within the French judicial system. He was also a very private individual. He
never spoke about whether or not he felt that he was indeed the possible
reincarnation of Authié. Roche must have understood that what he was doing was
uncovering what had been buried with Authié. If he did feel that he was the
incarnation of Authié, then it was clear that upon this Parfait’s death, he had
after all not entered Heaven.
So, what was Catharism? A dualist religion is
primarily seen as a religion that believes in two competing forces, good versus
evil, but it is much more than that. An insight into the Cathar cosmography
comes from Authié himself. He preached that the Devil had sneaked into
Paradise, after waiting 1,000 years at it doors. Once inside, he seduced the
spirits, who all fell from a hole in Paradise for nine days and nine nights.
After this Fall, they ended up on Earth. When Heaven had largely become
depleted, God immediately plugged the hole. But the souls on Earth soon were
saddened by their loss and the Devil offered them as comfort such overcoats
that would make them forget the bliss of Heaven: the human body, which began a
series of incarnations. It thus became Mankind’s mission to ascend back to
Heaven, i.e. break the cycle of incarnations. By accepting this cosmography and
performing the Consolamentum, one’s next death would end the soul’s odyssey and
return it to Heaven.
The two most important Cathar rituals were the
Consolamentum and the Endura (see side bar on adjacent page).
In conclusion, neo-Catharism had little to do with
Catharism as such. The notion of Jesus as a man of flesh and blood was rejected
by the Cathars, yet neo-Cathars underline how the Cathars believed that Mary
Magdalene was the wife of Christ. Yuri Stoyanov has indeed confirmed that the
Cathars claimed as such and that this belief had no counterpart in Bogomil
doctrines, meaning that the Cathars were unique amongst the dualists to have
this belief. Their religion was not at all based on the knowledge that Jesus
and Mary Magdalene created a dynasty but that, instead, Cathars in Southern
France, where Mary Magdalene was a popular saint, used her in their
cosmography, to illustrate the feminine aspect of the divine duality.
Cathars underlined the 1,000 years the Devil had to
wait at the gates of Paradise before he entered it. Cathars saw it as their
mission to have the soul repent for the sin of being seduced by the Devil, and
once accomplished, it would return to Heaven. The Church, however, saw it
differently, using especially Revelation 20:7, where it is said that after
1,000 years, Satan would be released from his prison. Seeing Catharism rose
approximately one millennium after the death of Christ, chronicler Ralph the
Bard and St Hildegard of Bingen – the latter who stated she had a vision in
which she saw Satan released from his chains – said Catharism was in fact the
return of Satan, there to destroy the Church. It was the very reason why it had
to be destroyed; for many Christians, conquering Catharism meant slaying Satan.
Thus, not only Catharism, but the Cathar Crusade itself, had an innate dualism
to it too.
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.
PHILIP COPPENS (25 January 1971 – 30 December
2012) was a Belgian author, radio host, and commentator whose writings,
speeches and television appearances focused on areas of alternative and fringe
science and history. Coppens was born in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. He was married
to Kathleen McGowan on September 22, 2011. He was a cohost of the Spirit
Revolution radio show, his writing was featured in Nexus, Atlantis Rising, and New
Dawn magazines, and he appeared in 16 episodes of the History Channel’s
Ancient Aliens television series.
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