Lost Teachings of the Cathars, page 13
Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix was appointed co-lord of Montségur. He was a warrior who, as Sean Martin says, perhaps had more in common with the Paulician warriors, Christian dualists who were arguably spiritual ancestors of the Cathars (see pages 140–141). He commanded 98 soldiers and would sometimes lead raids to steal provisions, upholding a tradition of neighbourly skirmishes that had been Languedoc practice for generations. Montségur was thus an unlikely community, comprising warriors and pacifists.
Raymond VII took his opportunity to pounce and briefly liberated French-held castles and towns and villages as far north as Toulouse and as far east as Narbonne and Béziers. All looked promising but when Henry III did arrive at the end of summer his army was too small and was thoroughly defeated. By January 1243 Raymond VII had capitulated and Montségur was the only castle in the Languedoc that was not under French control.
The importance at this time of certain Believers who were of high social rank, or who were soldiers, emphasizes the practical significance of the two classes of Cathars. Although the Perfects were not as dependent on Believers as the Manichaean Elect had been on Auditors – who had to perform most practical tasks for the Elect, who could not commit any act that might be construed as violent, even the uprooting of vegetables or the preparation of food – there were tasks that were essential to medieval life from which the Perfects were barred by their vows. Believers dirtied their hands with animal husbandry, but it was particularly soldiering that emphasized their ability to act in situations where the Perfects were powerless. Men like Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix or, at Quéribus, Chabert de Barbaira, could fight for the Perfects knowing that their own acts prevented them from being a Perfect, at least until the war was won or until they were on their deathbeds.
Besieged
The 10-month siege began in May 1243. The omens were not good, at least in retrospect: ‘In July there was a very clear Milky Way in which thirty or forty falling stars were observed, a portion, it was thought, of the ending of many lives somewhere.’8 But for the Cathars those stars had already fallen, in the early days of the material world, along with Lucifer, and some of those ancient fallen stars were within the inhabitants of Montségur, within the Perfects, and were almost ready to return to the spiritual realm.
Montségur was well stocked and the village beneath the castle had been functioning as a market town for years. Believers of all levels of wealth had contributed goods, money and food to Montségur for years. The names of over 300 of the defenders were recorded by the Inquisition. The siege went on and on, with up to 10,000 besiegers present, the difficult mountainous terrain providing a natural defence and making use of the usual siege machines difficult. Throughout the siege small groups of Cathars or sympathizers were able to come and go in secret, it being impossible for the besieging army to guard every winding mountain path. The spiritual needs of the community of Montségur were presided over by Bertrand Marty, a Perfect and the bishop of Toulouse.
In May, a deacon called Clamens, along with another Perfect, left Montségur and travelled to Causson and elsewhere before returning to the castle. Around the same time, Raymond de Caussa and a companion went to Ussan, a fortress, and held the apparellamentum there and broke bread. They were escorted by men-at-arms who returned to the castle without them.9
A Believer, Mathieu Bonnet and a Perfect, Pierre Bonnet, escaped from Montségur with the treasure, which they perhaps hid in a cave in Sabarthès. They hid in the woods on Sabarthès mountain a great deal of silver and gold, pecuniam infinitam as the Inquisition records put it. They were able to exit the rock, even though all the roads had by this point been closed off, because they had an agreement with two of the sentries who hailed from Mirepoix, and that agreement probably involved a certain redistribution of wealth.10
Shortly before Christmas, after seven months of attrition, a crew of Gascons or Basques was able to climb the Roc de la Tour, a slender outcrop adjacent to the fortress itself, at night and kill its defenders. (They were said to have looked down in the daytime and been incredulous that they could ever have made such a steep ascent.) Control of the rock gave the besiegers a high-altitude foothold close to the garrison from which projectiles could be used to bombard the castle. As the siege deepened and the stones from catapults chipped away at the defences there were rumours that the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II might send an army to Montségur, or that Raymond VII might send his men. Although these two would indeed have had political reasons to fight for Montségur, the Cathars should have known better than to pin their hopes on the materialistic forces of the secular world. From Inquisition records we have examples of the Perfects showing kindnesses to the soldiers who were besieged with them, including the odd detail of Bertrand Marty handing out sealing wax and packets of salt and pepper to the soldiers.
Spiritual leader alongside Bertrand Marty was Raymond Agulher, the Cathar bishop of Razès. Raymond Agulher was an old man who had debated with Dominic Guzmán early in the century. As Zoé Oldenbourg put it, ‘It is possible that the many perfecti and perfectae in retreat at Montségur were, for the most part, either aged persons, or mystics given up wholly to contemplation and the study of Holy Writ, or neophytes accomplishing their period of probation. Montségur was one of the last Catharist convents and seminaries.’11 Although the narrative must emphasise the exigencies of survival, the waking hours of the Perfects must have been wholly occupied with prayer, contemplation and consideration of scripture and the Cathar myth. Although Oldenbourg may be slightly romanticizing Montségur, she is probably not far off the mark.
A murderous pyre
On 1 March several of the wives and daughters of the knights took the covenensa before helping to attempt to repulse the crusaders on the barbican. The besieged community suffered casualties and the Perfects turned from accepting the promise of a future consolamentum implied by the covenensa to giving the consolamentum immediately to dying Believers.
On 2 March 1244 the siege of Montségur was lifted when Pierre-Roger surrendered. After Toulouse, which was a major city, the siege of the tiny citadel of Montségur was the longest one of the anti-Cathar wars. The terms were generous, the exception in a decades-long fight renowned for its atrocities. Temporal crimes were to be ignored, even the murder of the Inquisitors at Avignonet where Pierre-Roger had demanded the skull of William Arnald as a wine cup. Everyone would be spared as long as they submitted themselves to the Inquisition. For the Perfects this meant either that they would have to renounce their faith or be burnt alive.
The occupants of Montségur were given 15 days respite. It is unclear what the intention was behind the granting of this long period. Perhaps the French forces and the Inquisition were hoping that the Cathars might all decide to convert to Catholicism given that the threat of the flames was hanging over them for more than two weeks. Or perhaps the besieging force might have expected some of them to commit suicide, given the reputation of the endura? One of the odder suggestions is that the Cathars wanted the two-week delay so that they could celebrate the Bema, the feast that commemorates Mani.12 There is no indication that the Cathars of the Languedoc and the rest of western Europe even knew who Mani was, aside from ‘Manichaean’ being used as a term of abuse for them, synonymous with heretic. They were as unlikely to have celebrated Bema as they were to have celebrated Easter, but perhaps the Cathars did have a festival at that time that they wished to celebrate.
Either way, the outcome of the 15-day period was that the Perfects decided that they would all refuse to recant their faith. Half of the population under siege (around 210 of 415) were Perfects. Extraordinarily, on 13 March 21 Believers and soldiers received the consolamentum and added their numbers to those who would be burnt to death.
On 16 March 1244, a Wednesday, 225 Perfects were burnt to death on a pyre built on the Field of the Burnt Ones, or Field of the Cremated, at the bottom of the pog, the limestone rock on which the fortress stands. (Cremated is a bizarre euphemism that emerges in English translation because it is normally performed on a corpse rather than a living human. This field is the traditional location but there have been other suggestions.) Although it was March and the vast pyre of faggots, logs and kindling would have been difficult to ignite, the Inquisition was vast and efficient and by that point there would have been secular employees who were expert at starting fires and burning heretics. One imagines they would have developed special methods to deal with the practical difficulties involved in burning large numbers of living humans: how to stop them from jumping out, how to support their weight, how to prevent them from throwing burning objects, using restraints that aren’t going to disintegrate quickly, and so on. Those involved must have experimented with techniques and passed them on to others.
Those immolated Perfects knew that the elements were fashioned by the devil, that all matter was evil and that all bodies would die. The extreme pain and suffering that they now experienced was merely an epitome of physical existence itself and when the flesh was burnt off they would become pure spirit again. It was a temporal catastrophe but a spiritual triumph.
Montségur was subsequently claimed as a royal fortress by Louis IX and given to Guy de Lévis. As Arnald-Roger de Mirepoix testified to the Inquisitor Alzeu de Massabrac:
‘When the haertetici came forth from the fortress of Montségur ft Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix held back within the said fortress Amiel Aicart and his friend Hugo, they being haertetici; and the night on which the other haertetici were burnt, he concealed the said heretics, and did cause them to escape; and this was done that the Church of the heretics might not lose its treasure, which was hidden in the forest; and the fugitives knew the place where it lay ...’13
The four who were held back and thus escaped were: Amiel Aicart and Hugo (both Perfects), Poitevin and an unnamed man who may have been a mountain guide. This intriguing detail in the Inquisition record would later become the seed of intense speculation over the treasure of Montségur.
In September 1249 Raymond VII died, but not before he had burnt 80 Cathars at Agen earlier in the year.
The loss of the last sanctuaries
After the fall of Montségur the two remaining Cathar sanctuaries would follow. The castle of Puylaurens had a more tenuous connection to the Cathars, but the fortress was indeed used as a shelter. Cathars sought refuge after Montségur had capitulated. Benoit de Termes, the Cathar bishop of Razès, had lived in Puylaurens since 1233 and in 1241 he died there. By 1246, two years after the fall of Montségur, Pierre Paraire, a Perfect, and some Believers, were living there. The inhabitants finally had to surrender around 1255.
In May 1255, after a three-week siege, Quéribus fell to forces led by Hugh de Arcis, the seneschal of Carcassonne and supported by the archbishop of Narbonne. Chabert de Barbaira, a Believer and a seasoned warrior, was probably absent from the castle at Quéribus during the siege, which may not have been as brief if he had been present.14 It seems that he was taken prisoner by Oliver de Termes near Carcassonne in March of that year.
The fall of Quéribus represented the very last holdout of Languedoc Catharism in the form it had been known for the past hundred years. For a century it had been supported at all levels of society, from peasants to merchants to the highest aristocracy of the region. It would experience a comeback, but among isolated peasantry and shepherds.
Chapter 9
The Notary and
the Murderer:
The Autier Revival
and Bélibaste,
the Last Perfect
of the Languedoc
After Montségur the remaining Perfects were hunted down by the Inquisition, no longer having any central location to cling to where they could establish some sort of critical mass. There was also the threat, or promise, of immediate punishment for any convicted yellow-crossbearing Cathar Believers who involved themselves in any rituals or teaching. The Inquisition had scoured the Languedoc successfully, with the effect that there were almost no practising Perfects or Cathar activity in the later 13th century. Under the strict terms of the consolamentum vow it only required a Perfect to eat meat for his or her status to become invalid and require re-consoling, which would be an impossibility unless another Perfect, or ideally a bishop or filius, could be contacted. Thus, much like the situation with religious Jews after the destruction of the Temple in the 1st century, surviving Perfects were considered ritually unclean, or the Cathar equivalent, and unable to initiate other Perfects. The Perfects had sometimes broken their vows intentionally to preserve their own safety but they could not have been unaware of the effect this could have on their status.
Aside from the ceremony of the laying on of hands, the process of becoming a Perfect took a year’s probation before the vow was undertaken, and in ideal circumstances took what could be several years of training and gaining experience. The practical impossibilities of keeping the flame of Catharism alive in the Languedoc were dwarfed by the Inquisitorial fires that had burnt the Perfects to death. The most basic fact was that there were very few Perfects left alive in the Languedoc and those who were still around had to be so secretive that they either broke their vows or were practically hermits. Those Perfects who still survived by the late 1250s looked to Lombardy for sanctuary. But it cost money to travel there, and food and lodging were needed on the journey, and by this point it was difficult for a Perfect to earn any money at all without being captured.
The Autier revival
We know of 35 Perfects in the Languedoc between 1259 and 1299, a fraction of the 200 or more that still existed around 1250, but most of these were in Albi, Toulouse and Carcassonne. William Pagès was one of the most notable. He was caught in 1285 trying to steal Inquisition registers that would have incriminated others. Those Perfects who were not captured by the Inquisition or died of natural causes fled to Lombardy, particularly to Sirmione, which would be the last standing centre of Italian Catharism.1 Given these circumstances, it is particularly extraordinary that the turn of the century would see a revival of Catharism in the Languedoc that may have numbered 1,000 people.2 The revival would last for around 25 years, until the very last Perfect of the Languedoc (as far as history records), William Bélibaste, was arrested and burnt to death.
The story begins as an archetypal spiritual quest. One day, Peter Autier was reading, from a book in his collection, to his brother William. Both were prosperous notaries from Ax-les-Thermes near Foix, in the Sabartés area. We even possess legal notices written in Peter’s own hand. When Peter asked William what he thought of the text he had just read, he replied, ‘It seems to me that we have lost our souls.’
‘Let us go therefore, brother, and look for the salvation of our souls,’ decided Peter. The two immediately made arrangement to travel to Lombardy to meet the Good Christians.3
When in 1296 they sold up and vanished, Peter and William Autier epitomized the man who sold everything for the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:44–46). Peter sold his entire herd of cattle to pay for the trip and settle debts. By this point they were already in their 50s. Peter would become known as l’ancien, apparently a title given to elderly and distinguished Perfects.4
In the 1230s, the time leading up to the destruction of Montségur, a father and son who were ancestors of Peter and William had both been Perfects. By the time of Peter and William there were no Perfects in the area at all, but there were still Believers or potential sympathizers whose parents had been Believers. By themselves these people hardly represented more than a strand of hope. According to the Cathar creed there was no way that people could lift themselves up by their own bootstraps and invest themselves with Perfecthood. Perfection was a transmission that was thought to go all the way back to Christ, and some Cathars believed that there had been no Perfects before the coming (or pseudo-coming) of Christ. Although the Holy Spirit descended directly during the consolamentum, it required the laying on of hands from an existing Perfect for that to occur. Believers were not saved but after death would reincarnate into a life in which they could become Perfects. (The lineages of Perfects, had they survived, would surely tell some fascinating tales.)
In October 1296, Peter and William Autier journeyed to Lombardy to be consoled. They studied there for three years in Cuneo, Asti and Como, before they received the consolamentum. Clearly both the Italian Cathars and the Autiers took the matter seriously. The Autiers returned to the Languedoc in autumn 1299, settling again with the assistance and cooperation of their family and friends. Their disappearance had been noticed and explained away. But the very next year William Déjean, who pretended to be a Believer, denounced the Autiers to the Dominicans. As often happened, Believers stepped in as warrior-bodyguards and Déjean was beaten senseless and thrown over a ravine. It was a reluctant acknowledgment that the violence of the Inquisition required a certain amount of self-defence on the same level. Did the Perfects know of this, and if so did they admonish the Believers? Probably so, but who can blame the Believers for murdering a snitch whose continued existence would have resulted in certain death for the Autiers.
