Lost Teachings of the Cathars, page 12
For Cathars transmigration was a logical consequence of the Fall and a prerequisite for salvation because there were so many situations in life in which it would seem to be impossible to attain salvation. If a person didn’t make contact with the Good Men and Good Women, salvation was impossible. Salvation depended on ending this life as a Cathar Perfect with a valid consolamentum. As The Book of the Two Principles argues, there are all sorts of impediments in life which are not directly the fault of an individual human being – infant death, imbecility, physical disability – but which render an individual incapable of ever becoming a Cathar Perfect. The subject opens up vistas that the medieval Cathars probably spent little time thinking about. What of those whose geographical distance prevented them from becoming exposed to Cathar ideas, which meant most people beyond Europe? Cathars would have known of Muslims from the various crusades. It seems unlikely that the Cathars would have considered Islam to have been any better than the Catholic Church, although one would hope that on a personal basis a Cathar Perfect would have extended the hand of welcome to anyone who seemed to be a spiritual or simply decent person. Although Cathar beliefs had aspects that are as narrow and exclusive as any religion, they give the impression of generally being kind and tolerant in their dealings with others.
Final states of reality
And what of us, seven, eight, nine centuries on from the Cathars? Despite the claims of some esoteric groups, there has surely been no valid consolamentum for centuries. Although some of us may be vegetarians or piscatarians, very few of us moderns are willing to abstain from sex purely for the sake of spiritual development. Would the Perfects have seen our interest in their religion as a sign of contact with the Good and ultimately salvation, or would the end of Catharism have been seen as the final, and unexpected, triumph of Satan?
If each human and animal (and possibly every other living thing) contains a spirit that passes from life to life, every living creature will eventually be saved – and in a way that is obviously reminiscent of Buddhism. This viewpoint is justified by the mitigated dualist versions of the myth, in which there is a single true and good God and Lucifer is an angel who falls.
But the absolute dualist type of myth assumes separate kingdoms of light and darkness from the outset. This kind of myth has a more direct link with Manichaeism, in which the ultimate stage of the story will not be a return to a restored and united heavenly world (with perhaps a leftover detritus in which any irredeemable elements from the cosmic disaster remain), but a total separation of light and darkness, of heaven and hell, that represents the final state of reality (or of existence, or the universe – no term seems adequate to express the whole of things in such a context).
Preceding the final turn of events we may find a day of judgment, as in non-Cathar forms of Christianity or in Islam. Where this ties in to reincarnation is that when this final judgment occurs not all the remaining souls will be returned to heaven. The souls of those angels who intentionally sided with Lucifer may not be finally saved.
There were also disagreements over which aspect of a person or creature was involved in transmigration. In the story of the horse, it is the spirit that remembers. In some Catholic accounts of the Cathar heresy, it is the soul that goes from body to body, and the spirit is a separate entity. The Albigensian Crusade may have set Cathars thinking about ultimate salvation. Could the brutes who had slaughtered so many Good Men and Good Women, let alone children, ever receive salvation? Perhaps the penance of life after life as downtrodden and abused animals might lead those crusaders back into situations in which they could attain the Good. Or perhaps even the continual grinding of the wheel of fortune would never be enough to absolve them of their evil.
Some moderate dualists described by Moneta of Cremona, a Dominican friar who wrote about 1241,12 believed that no one was able to obtain salvation before the coming of Christ to the world. But this didn’t mean that all such souls would be tortured in hell or be wallowing in limbo, as per the implications of Catholic Christian doctrine when applied to all who were born in the era Before Christ (BC) apart from the Jews. These Cathars acknowledged that those who couldn’t be saved before Christ came would ‘assume flesh’ again and could be reborn into a milieu in which they could meet the Good Christians and receive the consolamentum.
Despite the relatively high status of women in Catharism in general, Cathars disagreed whether one’s final life could be as a woman. Bélibaste, who could be quite misogynist, believed that the final life, however brief, had to be male.13 But the mere fact that women could be Perfects would seem to refute this. If to die in good standing as a Perfect meant that one’s soul no longer had to be incarnated, then any female Perfect who died without breaking her vows would go to heaven, it’s as simple as that.14
Infant mortality was as high as we might expect of the period, and the birth rate was high to match it. Reincarnation offered compensation to mothers of the stillborn or the infant dead. When a bereaved mother spoke of having lost four sons she was told by a Cathar that she would see them again:
‘Yes, in Paradise!’
‘No, you will get them back again in this world. For you are still young. You will be pregnant again. The soul of one of your dead children will enter into the new foetus. And so on!’15
This illustrates how even an apparently clear doctrine such as Cathar transmigration can be turned this way or that. Bélibaste stated that it would be desirable if there were no more births, so that the gathering of everyone into heaven would take place sooner. Some Montaillou people may have practised contraception, perhaps using magical methods. Bélibaste himself was a hypocrite here because he went to great lengths to have sex with women and also to conceal his activities.
There were numerous variations in the understanding of how transmigration worked. Noblewoman Béatrice de Planisolles was told:‘... when the spirits of men and women who are not Good Christians, leave their bodies, they enter into the bodies of other men and women until they have entered nine bodies. If amongst these nine bodies the body of a good Christian is not found, the spirit is damned. If on the contrary it finds the body of a good Christian, the spirit is saved.’16
Reincarnation could be seen as more rational than having a single life and going to heaven. Where would there be room for all the souls in the world, both those already dead and those already living? One Cathar answer was that souls were re-used over and over again so that there would be no concern about having room enough for all the souls. It must be added that the context of this discussion was very parochial – ‘The entire space between the city of Toulouse and the Mérens Pass would not be enough to hold them all!’ – and adds a comical touch to a metaphysical discussion. Of course, the number game is also a problem for reincarnationists. If there are seven billion people on Earth now, where do all the souls come from? If each must have had at least one, and probably many more than one, previous life souls must be made anew when the population increases so drastically. In fact, some Cathars thought that souls must have bred new souls, thus offering a solution to the problem.
Alain of Lille, a Cistercian theologican, poet and heresiologist, mentions that some Cathars believed that the spirit could be ‘infused successively into eight bodies, so if penance is not completed in one, it may be done in another.’17
When a death occurred, souls were believed to enter into a developing foetus. If that dead person had had a wicked life, the soul would pass ‘through the opening’ into the belly of a pregnant animal, bitch, rabbit or mare and go on to have a life as an animal. If the life had been innocent, the soul would pass into the womb of a human. (This, as with many of the specifics on reincarnation, comes from the Montaillou records and the beliefs may of course have been different in other areas in other decades.) According to an Italian Cathar group called the Belesmanza, it is the devil who implants souls in humans and animals daily, transferring them from body to body until all of them are brought back to heaven. They are his responsibility because he carried them away from heaven with him when he fell.18
Gnostics have often been accused of having metaphysical reasons to abort babies, to keep souls or spirits out of matter and to hasten the end of the material world. But these Cathar beliefs stated that the soul that entered a human foetus was by definition an innocent one, as wicked souls went into animals instead.19
Animals were arranged into a kind of hierarchy according to kinds of souls for which they might be receptacles. Bélibaste believed that rats, snakes and toads were so evil that it was even acceptable for them to be killed. The most virtuous souls would enter humans, then horses, then perhaps oxen or cows, then rabbits, and so on. Fish were not part of the cycle because Cathars shared the medieval belief that fish had no souls. Perfects ate fish, just as fish could be eaten by Catholics on days on which they had to fast from meat. Bélibaste explained this using colourful and concrete terms: ‘When the spirits come out of a fleshy tunic, that is a dead body, they run very fast, for they are fearful. They run so fast that if a spirit came out of a dead body in Valencia and had to go into another living body in the Comté de Foix, if it was raining hard, scarcely three drops of rain would touch it! Running like this, the terrified spirit hurls itself into the first hole it finds free! In other words into the womb of some animal which has just conceived an embryo not yet supplied with a soul; whether a bitch, a female rabbit, or a mare. Or even in the womb of a woman.’20
The intimate link between the vegetarianism of the Cathars and their belief in transmigration is illustrated by another of those stories that crops up more than once in the Inquisition records. Two Perfects were going through a forest when they came upon (in one version) a squirrel or (in another version) a pheasant caught in a snare. Instead of taking the animal and killing it in order to sell it or eat it just for pleasure, they set it free, out of reverence for the human soul which might be shut in the animal’s body. They placed the equivalent in money beside the snare so that the hunter, who had to earn his living, would not lose by their actions.21
The resurrection of the body, though it might be expected to make sense to the physically oriented, didn’t necessarily appeal to country people. Guillaume Fort, a farmer from Montaillou, didn’t believe in the bodily resurrection as he knew what happened to bodies after death: ‘a dead person is dissolved and transformed into earth and ashes.’ He believed in the survival of the soul, but rather than reincarnation he thought that souls were being tortured by demons in a nearby mountainous region.
Alongside Cathar beliefs and standard Catholicism, there were older beliefs that may have been Celtic in origin (the Celts often saw entrances to the Otherworld in liminal earthly settings), or at least were derived from longstanding folklore. Certain local people had the special function of being messengers of the dead, and the dead could be seen to walk in churches. ‘People’s bodies will be destroyed like cobwebs, because they are the work of the devil,’ said Beatrice de Planissoles, an influential Montaillou woman. The sight of a pile of bones being exhumed from a grave prompted one rich peasant to mock the idea of a bodily resurrection.’22
Perhaps some belief in reincarnation lingers on in the folk belief of the Languedoc. Arthur Guirdham recounts Professor René Nelli telling the following story: ‘Two farmers were out shooting in the Corbières and flushed a partridge. One raised his gun and the other immediately begged him to desist because he felt sure that the bird was his uncle.’23 Pythagoras would have been proud of him.
Chapter 8
Thermopylae of
the Gnostic Spirit:
Montségur
Montségur is the most famous location in the history of the Cathars. Lawrence Durrell, who lived near Avignon in Provence, just outside the Languedoc, called it ‘that Thermopylae of the Gnostic spirit’ in his foreword to Jacques Lacarrière’s The Gnostics.1
Montségur has become a summation of the entire Albigensian Crusade, even though the crusade itself was over and it was the castle of Quéribus that would be the very last holdout of the Cathars in France. Catharism would survive a little longer in Italy and would see the Autier revival in the Languedoc.
Yet the events at Montségur were the most significant for Catharism, both in historical terms, by eradicating their material support and reducing the number of Perfects to a level that could no longer sustain Catharism, and in mythical terms. The Holy Grail, the treasure of Montségur and Esclarmonde de Foix: each of these became essential to the later myth of the Cathars and will be discussed in a later chapter. Here we are concerned with what the records of the time tell us about Montségur.
The fortifications of Montségur had been redeveloped by Raymond (yet another) de Pereille from April 1204 onwards. His mother, Fournière, was a Perfect, as was his wife’s mother. In 1232 Guilhabert de Castres (d.1240/1241), the Cathar bishop of Toulouse, had asked Raymond de Pereille if he could establish the ‘head and seat’ of the Cathar Church at Montségur and thus it became so.
Guilhabert and Esclarmonde
Guilhabert de Castres was perhaps the greatest Cathar of the 13th century, perhaps indeed of the entire period. Born around 1165, he lived in Fanjeaux from 1193–1209 until Simon de Montfort commandeered the town in 1209, making it an early casualty of the Albigensian Crusade. Guilhabert presented the Cathar side in the debates of 1206–1207, debating against Dominic himself, who had also set up shop in Fanjeaux, in the final exchange at Pamiers in 1207. He took refuge in isolated Montségur in 1209 onwards, and was a presence in many different towns during the crusade, often taking charge of the local Cathar communities: we know that he was in Laurac, Castelnaudry, Mirepoix, Toulouse, Carcassonne and Foix. His activities obviously involved a good deal of selfless courage. Unfortunately we can only sketch out some of the places in which he resided and the years that he was there. The history of the winners, the history of crime written by criminals for criminals, has tarnished his character and erased his achievements.
In 1222 he escaped from Castelnaudry when it was under siege and was made bishop of Toulouse the following year, having been its filius major.2 In 1227 he led the Cathar synod at Pieusse, the last great assembly of Cathars from different areas. From 1229 to 1232 the Cathar Church’s headquarters were at Bézu, until he set up at Montségur in 1232. Guilhabert died in 1240 or 1241, before the siege of Montségur, and was succeeded by Bertrand Marty who, as we shall see, was another admirable Cathar leader.
In 1204 Guilhabert had consoled four noblewomen: three were Aude de Fanjeauz, Fays de Durfort and Raymonde de Saint-Germain. The fourth was Esclarmonde de Foix who would, in the 19th century, be celebrated to a mythical degree. She was the sister of Raymond Roger, Comté de Foix, and thus her initiation ceremony had been attended by the most notable Languedoc families, presenting a poignant image of how Catharism might have developed had it not been for the crusade. She married and had several children but was widowed in 1200. Esclarmonde received the consolamentum from Guilhabert de Castres in Fanjeaux in 1204. She ran a house for Good Women in Pamiers and in 1207 spoke against the Catholic opposition in the debate. The Catholic opponent, Étienne de Minsèricorde, infamously scolded her, ‘Go back to your distaff and spinning, Madame, it is not proper for you to speak in a debate of this nature.’
Fulk of Marseilles, the Catholic bishop of Toulouse, who had previously been a troubadour, was just as perturbed by her: ‘Through her evil doctrines she succeeded in making a number of conversions.’3
She went on to run a convent of older female Perfects and a girl’s school, in Dun in the Pyrenees. There were many such houses of female Perfects presided over by aristocratic widows or noblewomen who had given up their families to become Perfects.4 Born sometime after 1151, she died in 1215. Again our information is slight, but she was clearly a remarkable woman and not undeserving of the fantastic transformation given her by later esotericists.
The Montségur leadership
Montségur didn’t have a local peasantry, essential to the growth of crops and the keeping of animals, nor was any of the surrounding land suitable for cultivation. It was only through tithes and donations and a marketplace that it could survive. Any valuables that the Cathars possessed, any money and any treasure enabled the castle to function, enabled Perfects to travel and stopped them from starving. Although it may seem hypocritical to accrue funds for a religion that believed matter was evil, material wealth permitted the continuance of the spiritual mission in the material world. There were rumours of treasure of 1,000,000 livres in Toulouse, Mirande and Casstelsarrasin.5
It was the Trencavel revolt of 1240 that precipitated the final assault against Montségur. Raymond Trencavel, son of Raymond Roger, came from exile in Aragon to besiege Carcassonne, his dispossessed ancestral city, for a month. He ultimately failed and had to withdraw, settling for a truce. He retreated to Montréal, where he was put under siege himself until another agreement was worked out and he could escape over the Pyrenees to Aragon. Raymond VII of Toulouse took the opportunity of papal weakness – there were several short-lived popes at this time – to hatch a serious plot for Languedocian independence that by spring 1242 was to be aided by forces from Aquitaine and King Henry III of England. Raymond VII had been politically crippled by various complications of marriage and succession, which could not be resolved without the goodwill of the pope. But his careful planning would be sabotaged by a guerrilla attack on Avignonet from Montségur.6
An already nervous political situation was provoked by a rare Cathar-led skirmish. On 28 May 1242 a band of soldiers from Montségur, all of them Cathar Believers, attacked a pair of Inquisitors, Stephen of St Thibéry and William Arnald, and their small entourage at Avignonet, 43 miles from Montségur and 24 miles from Toulouse. Everyone in the group was murdered, one of the assailants later confessing that they had hoped, naively, to wipe out the entire Inquisition. As Zoé Oldenbourg points out,7 it is difficult to believe that the Perfects of Montségur, or at least leaders such as Bertrand Marty, had no knowledge of this raid. The bailiff of Avignonet certainly colluded with the warband of Cathar Believers by admitting them into the walled town and some of the townsmen took part in the violence. The attack could also be seen as revenge for the recent murder of seven Perfects, should the Albigensian Crusade and the rest of the Inquisition’s activities not be considered reason enough. If the raid was approved by the Perfects of Montségur, it represented a lapse, however understandable, in their personal pacifist code and it was one for which they would pay in extremity. It was an echo of the murder of Peter of Castelnau, the papal legate, which had set into motion the original Albigensian Crusade.
