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Praise for Andrew Phillip Smith

A Dictionary of Gnosticism

‘A long-awaited and indispensable grammar of classical Gnosticism – essential for any serious student, and a practical gem for the curious.’

—Jordan Stratford, author of Living Gnosticism

‘A Dictionary of Gnosticism is a valuable resource for any student of Gnosis. If you need a helpful translator of the language, or a sympathetic guide to the beliefs of these extraordinary women and men who lived a long time ago, in a world far, far away, then this is the book for you. Think of it as the ‘Lonely Cosmos Guide to Gnosis’, and always pack a copy when you are setting out for that strange and exciting country. Have a great trip!’

—Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, authors of The Jesus Mysteries and The Gospel of the Second Coming

The Gospel of Philip

‘Provides us with a wealth of insightful annotations, and the translation is the most accessible to date. All of those with an interest in Gnostic tradition and its sacraments will be happy to receive this splendid work!’

—Stephan A. Hoeller, author of Jung and The Lost Gospels and The Gnostic Jung

‘How refreshing to move from our contemporary culture of Christian literalism to a spiritual world alive with symbol, metaphor and the poetry of the Divine.’

—Ron Miller, Religion Department chair, Lake Forest College, author of The Gospel of Thomas: A Guide book for Spiritual Practice

The Lost Sayings of Jesus

‘If the gospels represent the tip [of Jesus’s sayings], Andrew Phillip Smith has provided the rest of the iceberg. Here is proof that [Jesus’s] voice has never fallen silent.’

—Robert M. Price, professor of scriptural studies, Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary

‘Marvellous ... Will provide spiritual seekers, committed Christians, and academic scholars [insight into] sayings attributed to Jesus that they may not know existed. A valuable sourcebook and significant contribution to the study of the history of Christian ideas.’ —Stevan Davies, professor of religious studies, College Misericordia and author of The Gospel of Thomas: Annotated & Explained

Gnostic Writings on the Soul

‘Artful and erudite ... brings these allegories into three-dimensional relief, making them more memorable, accessible, and significant.’

—Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz, author of Does the Soul Survive?

By the same author

The Gospel of Thomas: A New Version Based on its Inner Meaning

The Gospel of Philip: Annotated & Explained

The Lost Sayings Of Jesus: Teachings from Ancient Christian,

Jewish, Gnostic and Islamic Sources – Annotated & Explained Gnostic Writings on the Soul: Annotated & Explained

A Dictionary of Gnosticism

The Gnostics: History Tradition Scriptures Influence

The Secret History of the Gnostics

The Gnostic: A Journal of Gnosticism, Western Eroticism and Spirituality, 1-6 (editor)

ANDREW PHILLIP SMITH

THE LOST
TEACHINGS OF THE

CATHARS

THEIR BELIEFS
& PRACTICES

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This edition published in the UK and USA 2015 by

Watkins, an imprint of Watkins Media Limited

19 Cecil Court, London WC2N 4EZ

enquiries@watkinspublishing.co.uk

Andrew Phillip Smith has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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Designed and typeset by Gail Jones

Printed and bound in Finland

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78028-715-7

www.watkinspublishing.com

Contents

Foreword by Sean Martin

Introduction

Chapter 1The History of Crime: The Albigensian Crusade

Chapter 2Hammer of the Heretics: The Inquisition

Chapter 3A Good God, an Evil God: Dualism

Chapter 4The Fall of the Angels: The Cathar Myth

Chapter 5The Soul, the Spirit and Mary Magdalene: Other Cathar Beliefs

Chapter 6A Baptism of Fire and Spirit: The Consolamentum and Other Practices

Chapter 7‘When I Was a Horse, One Night I Lost My Shoe’: The Transmigration of Souls

Chapter 8Thermopylae of the Gnostic Spirit: Montségur

Chapter 9The Notary and the Murderer: The Autier Revival and Bélibaste, the Last Perfect of the Languedoc

Chapter 10Secret Origins

Chapter 11Surviving the Apocalypse

Chapter 12Forty-One Cathar Bishops: The Modern Revival

Chapter 13Otto Rahn: The Fate of the Holy Grail

Chapter 14Arthur Guirdham and Modern Cathar Reincarnation

Afterword

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

For Lala Ashford-Brown, who unknowingly received a dream consolamentum in a French field in 1973

******

Foreword

In an apocryphal saying, Jesus said, ‘The world is a bridge. Pass over it, but build no house upon it.’ Logion 42 in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas echoes this: ‘Become passers-by.’ The Cathars, I am sure, would have been sympathetic to such a view. They left no churches or cathedrals of their own and, aside from a few crude sketches and graffiti, no art to attest to their presence. They did not, as a rule, write books, either. Consequently, we only have one major Cathar text, The Book of the Two Principles. (They were known to have also used a Bogomil tract, The Secret Supper, while a third book, The Vision of Isaiah, was used by the Cathars and the Bogomils, but actually predated both.)

What we know about the Cathars comes mainly from Inquisitors and crusade apologists. If the world is a bridge, then the Cathars crossed over it leaving very little behind. In the centuries since, the void has been filled by historians with pronounced romantic overtones, conspiracy theorists, airport bestsellers, fervent Languedocian nationalists, singular English psychiatrists and German archaeologists with highly questionable politics. All of which has obscured who the Cathars were, what they did, and why they stood in opposition to the teachings of the mediaeval Church. It is an opposition to institutionalised power and lies, and a quest for purity; a message every bit as relevant today as it was in 1200.

By focussing on their beliefs more than their history, The Lost Teachings of the Cathars restores what we could term ‘day-to-day’ Catharism to visibility. Aside from the drama, tragedy and atrocity of the Albigensian Crusade that almost wiped the faith out in the Languedoc in the thirteenth century, Andrew Phillip Smith draws our attention to the workaday side of Catharism: the melioramentum (ritual greeting) and apparellamentum (monthly meeting); the need for a second consolamentum, if the Perfect bestowing the first one had ‘made a bad end’ (and there were quite a few of those).

This book also presents the Cathar faith with all its contradictions and foibles, not shying away from its confusions, obscurities and borrowings from folk magic traditions. The story of the Cathars is replete with all of these, from the mysteries of their origins (still unsolved); the spiritual lineage they claimed, stretching all the way back to the time of Christ (doubtful); to their hostility to marriage, while at the same time believing that Jesus and the Magdalene were married (an ancient belief of unknown provenance, but seemingly widespread in the Cathar homeland of the Languedoc). Then there is the issue of reincarnation, to which some Cathars adhered, while others did not. The whole issue of Cathar unity – both doctrinal and political – is still being debated by scholars, with some going so far as to suggest that it was not a coherent movement, more a collection of freethinkers, cranks and rabble-rousing preachers, with a fair smattering of village cunning women. By its very nature, however, Catharism could not and would not be centralised or organized like the ‘Church of Satan’ (as they dubbed Rome). A patchwork of beliefs and practices should be expected, even celebrated. The Gnostics of antiquity were derided by the emerging church for producing ‘a new gospel every day’, unaware that such was a strength of Gnosticism, rather than a weakness.

Since the posthumous burning of Italian Cathars at Chieri in 1412 – a date that marks the very end of the faith in western Europe – the movement’s ideas went underground. But with their emphasis on nonviolence, the equality of women, and their reputation for sanctity in the face of a corrupt and rapacious church, perhaps it would only be a matter of time before the ‘lost teachings’ found a new and receptive audience. Enter Languedocian nationalists, Rosicrucians, writers influenced by Buddhism and Druidry, and the German archaeologist Otto Rahn, allegedly the role model for Indiana Jones, among others. Amid such a thicket of heretical theology, free thinking, folk belief, to say nothing of their modern (sometimes wilful) reinterpretations, The Lost Teachings of the Cathars conveys the lingering and powerful appeal of the movement.

Arthur Guirdham is perhaps the most interesting modern case of spiritual seeker drawn to the Great Heresy. Guirdham, an English psychiatrist, believed that he himself, and a number of his patients, were reincarnated Cathars. The subsequent books he produced are a fascinating mixture of case-study and spiritual autobiography, with varying degrees of fabrication, wish-fulfilment and self-deception. At the same time, it’s difficult to dismiss Guirdham. He was, after all, a sincere man, and one cannot fault him for being attracted, like so many, to the revolutionary – yet simple – message of a movement the church feared like no other.

Perhaps this is as it should be. Just as the Cathars left very few tangible traces of their time on earth, they left very little proof of having returned to it in the bodies of Guirdham and his circle of patients. Perhaps to be a truly Good Christian – as the Cathars called themselves – really was to pass over the bridge of this world, building no house, leaving no memorial, other than the memory of goodness, and a determination to stand in eternal opposition to the corrupt powers of this world.

Perhaps that was the real treasure smuggled out of Montségur. It is a treasure that lives still, and is one of which today we still have the profoundest need.

Sean Martin, 2015

Sean Martin is a writer based in Edinburgh. Among his books are The Gnostics: The First Christian Heretics, The Cathars: The Rise & Fall of the Great Heresy, and The Knights Templar: The History & Myths of the Legendary Military Order.

Introduction

I first heard of the Cathars in the late 1980s from a friend of mine who had tramped around Europe during his wild youth.¹ He told me about a trip to the Languedoc in the south of France, bringing to life the fairytale castle of Carcassonne, but most memorably he told me about a strange experience he had in the area. He had slept out in a field – this was the 1970s! – and woke suddenly to a vision of a hand thrusting a black book towards him. Although he later heard a little about the Cathars and thought them fascinating he never found out what the book was. Recently, I was able to tell him that it was probably the Gospel of John, the book that was placed on the head of the initiate during the ritual, known as the consolamentum, that was at the heart of the Cathar faith.²

It took me a long time to become interested in the Cathars. They were somehow off the beaten track of the esoteric material I was interested in. It was only during my research for The Secret History of the Gnostics, a new edition of which is the companion volume to this book, that they really fired my enthusiasm.

In 1209 the pope launched the Albigensian Crusade specifically to attack the Cathars of southern France and their sympathizers. In 1231 the Inquisition was founded in order to root out and eliminate the Cathars and other heretics. These were such appalling developments that they have eclipsed the teachings and practices of the Cathars. If the teachings of the Cathars are even mentioned, they are something to be over and done with so that the genuine and dreadful horrors of the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition can be sifted through. But those teachings and practices were the reason that the Cathars endured the atrocities and why they preferred persecution and execution over recanting their faith. Victims of the medieval Church and politics, the Cathars are also great victims of history, known not for what they did and believed but for the violence that was done to them.

Yet it has always been their teachings that have fascinated me. As a researcher into Gnosticism I knew that the Cathars are often classified as Gnostics. But a multitude of questions arise out of that statement. How could ancient Gnosticism, suppressed and squeezed out by the dominance of Catholic Christianity, have re-emerged in medieval France? How Gnostic were Cathar ideas? Was Catharism completely exterminated or did it survive beyond the 14th century? How close to the ancient Cathars, in letter or spirit, are modern neo-Cathar groups?³ What did they really believe?⁴ What did they actually do?

Ongoing interest in the Cathars is still very much wedded to the Languedoc region. For decades it has been promoted as ‘Cathar country’, with attendant road signs pointing out significant sites. This is a double-edged sword, making the medieval sites available to casual visitors, but somewhat cheapening the experience, which blends natural beauty with the foreboding atmosphere of ruined hilltop castles. The significance of some locations is brought home through knowledge of the history of suffering in these places; others say that the psychic residue of the atrocities performed by the crusaders and the Inquisition needs no amplification.

The initiated inner circle of the movement were known as Perfects, and those individuals followed a strict dietary code. They were almost vegan, but, in accordance with medieval conceptions, ate fish, which were believed not to breed sexually, and hence to be in a separate category to beasts and birds. Today, the restaurants of the Aude region are littered with special ‘Cathar’ menus, most of which contain large amounts of excellent beef. In Carcassonne citadel there is a restaurant named Le Chaudron Cathare – the Cathar Cauldron – that conjures up the image of a cauldron full of burning oil rather than cassoulet. During the sieges of the Albigensian Crusade starvation and dysentery were commonplace. In the decades that followed, Cathars sometimes chose the endura, a fast to the death undertaken by newly initiated Perfects, which allowed them to die in good standing – facing death by starvation being preferable to undergoing the attentions of the Inquisition. Like other tourists, when I visited I tucked into my beefsteak, monkfish, cassoulet, goat’s cheese, duck, gazpacho and crème brulée.

Most of what we know about the beliefs of the Cathars is what has been preserved by their enemies – particularly the Inquisition, which was formed to combat and eliminate their heresy. Yet the following extract from Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, 13th-century Catholic author of The History of the Albigensian Crusade, paradoxically preserves an accurate epitome of their beliefs. It is a pattern we should get used to:

‘It should first be understood that the heretics postulated two creators, to wit, one of the invisible world, whom they called the benign God, and one of the visible world, or the malign God. They ascribed the New Testament to the benign God, the Old Testament to the malign one; the latter book they wholly rejected, except for a few passages which have found their way into the New Testament and which on this account they esteemed worthy of acceptance.’⁵

Although Catharism is not a story of brilliant individuals, but of a largely decentralized movement that depended intensely on personal responsibility, some names are resonant even though their histories are lightly sketched: Guilhabert de Castres, Esclarmonde de Foix, Peter Autier and William Bélibaste.

The chapters in this book fall into three sections. Chapters 1– 9 look at the history of the Cathars in the Middle Ages and what we know of their beliefs and practices. In these chapters most of what I have written draws upon the same sources that historians use. My focus, however, is not on the politics or social history of the medieval world, the social consequences of authority or the nature of heresy, but on the teaching of the historical Cathars as a form of Gnosticism – a spiritual path to which I am to some extent sympathetic.

Chapters 12– 14 look at what people in recent centuries – esotericists, occultists, modern Gnostics and reincarnationists – have made of the Cathars. While I would hope that my scholarship in this section is sound, these people’s beliefs are often rooted in misinterpretations of those of the original Cathars. Nevertheless, I find the range of responses fascinating, and I also have a lot of sympathy with those involved. I attempt simultaneously to understand the meaningfulness of, for example, connecting the Cathars with the Holy Grail, while acknowledging that there are many problems with the idea. I am at heart a romantic but critical thinking is very important to me too.

Chapters 10 and 11 form a bridge between the other two sections; these chapters discuss the origins of the Cathars and how they may have survived beyond the 14th century. When I discuss their survival I examine arguments that the Cathars – or, more often, their beliefs – have endured in esoteric form.

It has become a cliché to declare that history is written by the winners, yet this is particularly true for the story of the Cathars. All the historical accounts come from hostile sources, written by adherents of the Catholic Church. The most dedicated enemy of the Cathars was the Inquisition, which was stringent in its accuracy and attention to detail when recording its interrogations with heretics. Its bureaucratic methods may on the surface resemble modern standards of due process, but in the assumption of guilt and its belief that the accused were evil heretics, the entire edifice resembles the KGB or Stasi rather than the relative fairness of the systems of justice in modern Western democracy. The Inquisition used scribes, thus we have near-verbatim transcriptions of interviews with the accused. Obviously the subjects’ statements are likely to be distorted by fear, threats and (in later years) actual physical torture, but in the Inquisition’s records we do at least hear something of the other side of the story – and a very human side at that – even though it has been preserved by the Catholic Church.

P. D. Ouspensky, esoteric writer and pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff, wrote that there are two histories:

‘One history passes by in full view and, strictly speaking, is the history of crime, for if there were no crimes there would be no history. All the most important turning-points and stages of this history are marked by crimes: murders, acts of violence, robberies, wars, rebellions, massacres, tortures, executions ... This is one history, the history which everybody knows, the history which is taught in schools. The other is the history which is known to very few.’⁶

My intention in the book is to explore the hidden history, what might be called the esoteric history: the beliefs and practices of the Cathar Perfects, as they have been preserved by the processes of ordinary history. This hidden history is the chronicle of human transformation. But in order to explore, I am first compelled to lead the reader through the external history of the Cathars. It is impossible to get our bearings without this, or to construct the body of the Cathar teachings without this as a skeleton. This external history truly is a history of crime and it is packed with violence and atrocities.

A Note On Names

Every writer on the Cathars has to decide versions of personal names to adopt as it is too cumbersome to use all of the original names. Many of the names are also unfamiliar and there are variations to several of them, e.g. Peire, Peyre and Pere; Ramon, Raimon, Raimond. French versions of the names may superficially seem the best option, but these people from Languedoc were not French. The large-scale historical story partly concerns how the Languedoc was annexed to France. Even after the Crusade the Languedocian Cathars were neither linguistically nor culturally French. Thus translating the names into English is no worse than translating them into French.

Malcolm Lambert, Malcolm Barber, Stephen O’ Shea, Sean Martin and R. I. Moore all use English versions primarily, as does the Englishlanguage translation of Oldenbourg’s Massacre at Montségur. This does mean that I have occasionally needed to make some pragmatic choices. None of the names of personages in medieval Languedoc that crop up in connection with Arthur Guirdham have been translated.

Chapter 1

The History of Crime:
The Albigensian
Crusade

Although the Cathars had a sizeable presence in northern Italy and were also found in northern France, Flanders and the Rhineland, they are best remembered in the Languedoc, in the central south of France, taking in the French Pyrenees and bordering on the Basque Country, with Provence to the southeast. Similarly, they are best known for the calamities that befell them in that region: the blight of the Albigensian Crusade and the pestilence of the Inquisition.

The history of the medieval Cathars may be split into four parts: the growth of the religion; the Albigensian Crusade, which devastated and transformed Catharism’s political and social base; the Inquisition, which, like a plague, obliterated the faith through arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, social stigmatization and mass burnings; and, lastly, a brief period of revival before the Cathars’ total destruction.

Western Europe in the Middle Ages was substantially different to today. Well-established nation states such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy did not exist. The whole of Europe was Roman Catholic and the Church wielded immense influence, both locally through its parish churches and at the highest level through papal influence on royalty and aristocracy. Any ruler who refused to comply with the papacy’s wishes might find himself excommunicated. Yet the Church’s power was not absolute nor was it unchallenged. The Holy Roman Emperor held sway over the multiplicity of countries, regions and city states that loosely made up the Holy Roman Empire – chiefly modern Germany and northern and central Italy, but also parts of central Europe and at times Burgundy. The Holy Roman Empire was very much a Catholic federation too, yet it might oppose the pope in purely political matters and limit the effective power of the Church.

The First Crusade to the Holy Land had taken place between 1095 and 1099 and had established the fragile Christian kingdom of Outremer. The Knights Templar had been founded in 1119 and the second crusade took place in 1145–1149. There had been only sporadic outbreaks of heresy from the 9th century to the 11th century. Clerics knew of heresy as a potential threat to the Church mainly via St Augustine’s account of Manichaeism in the 4th century. Founded by Mani in the 3rd century, the Manichaean religion was dualistic and incorporated elements of Gnosticism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and other religions. Hence heretics were labelled as Manichaeans and the broad gaps in their knowledge of heretical practice were filled in with Augustine’s slander against the Manichaeans, such as claiming that any meetings they held were orgies, said to occur ‘after the lamps had been toppled’, in which activities such as eating semen cakes and viaticums (Eucharists) of babies took place. These allegations were astonishingly persistent, rather like some of the conspiracy theory tropes of today, and applied in antiquity to any religious group perceived as an enemy. (Of course, it is possible, even likely, that some of the many sects in the ancient world really did carry out these practices.)

Heresies in western Europe just after the turn of the millennium seem to have been mostly sui generis, local and individualistic, perpetrated by eccentrics or simply by those who wished for a more fulfilling form of religion. Yet by the 12th century there was a widespread anti-clerical reaction to priests and the Church as a whole. The caricature of a priest was someone who kept a mistress, ate and lived well, paid lip service to Church doctrine and fulfilled the minimum of priestly functions, yet still exercised power over his congregation. In addition to the popular perception of the priesthood, growing literacy in the developing urban areas helped people to think for themselves. In contrast, people said of the Cathar Perfects, ‘They save souls, they do not eat meat, they do not touch women.’¹

Despite the high levels of corruption and low levels of spiritual satisfaction, many people still owed their loyalties to the Church of Rome, rather as today people may vilify their politicians but still maintain loyalty to their country. For example, in Liège in 1135 three heretics were captured; one was burnt to death by the authorities and the other two recanted and returned to the Catholic fold. Following their detention the locals had wanted to stone them. Years later, again in Liège, a mob wanted to burn an entire underground group of heretics, who were saved by the clergy.² All these heretics were said to hail from a single village, Mont Aimé in Champagne, and they persisted there for around 100 years. In 1239, there was a mass burning of some unknown heretics who were, reportedly, divided into classes of Auditors (a class that was also recognized in Manichaeism) and Believers and rejected marriage. The Cathars were also divided into two classes and rejected marriage. There are reports of other early heretics, who may or may not be linked.³

Bernard of Clairvaux

The first record of the Cathars in the history of crime is in a letter sent, in around 1143–1144, to Bernard (1090–1153), abbot of Clairvaux, from one Eberwin, a prior from Steinfeld near Cologne. In 1112, at the age of 22, Bernard had arrived at the abbey of Citeaux, headquarters of the Cistercian religious order, with 30 other nobles from Burgundy, most of whom were relatives. With his self-denying discipline and austere fervour Bernard went on to reinvigorate the order and by the 1140s had become a major figure.

According to the tales, Bernard had his first vision of the Virgin Mary at the age of three. He was supremely influential in transforming the Knights Templar into an approved military order, writing much of their initial Rule and using all his influence with the pope to obtain papal authorization for them at the Council of Troyes in 1129. He was so extreme in his fasting that he was said to have smelled constantly of vomit, and would nowadays be diagnosed as anorexic. He was so determined in his celibacy that he would not even sit on a chair where a woman had sat. As a discipline this more than verges on the kinky: what must have been going through Bernard’s mind as he contemplated the parts of female anatomy with which he was avoiding even indirect contact? His asceticism was equal to that of the Cathar Perfects, yet there is something more fanatical – and perhaps self-hating – in Bernard’s approach.

Despite his nervousness about sitting on warm seats, Bernard may be considered a major proponent of the divine feminine in Christianity. He delivered 120 sermons on the Song of Songs, using the allegorical method to interpret the erotic qualities of the poem as references to the relationship between man and God. His reverence for the Virgin Mary helped to amplify her existing importance and has survived as a central part of Catholicism to this day.

He translated sacred geometrical texts and helped to develop a sacred geometry, defining God as, ‘length, width, height and depth’. The Cistercians were to be very influential in promoting the Gothic style of cathedral architecture, which contains extensive esoteric symbolism, including elements that were incorporated after being brought back from the East by the Templars.⁴

All these aspects we can find admirable in various ways, but all that Bernard did he did for the Church of Rome, a trait that will be seen as a common theme in this story. The cute verse ‘Seize the little foxes that are destroying the vineyard’ (Song of Songs 2:15) received an ominous interpretation in the hands of Bernard. The ‘foxes’ that should be seized were the Cathars.

Many of the men of these times who were later designated as saints were willing to endure extreme personal discomfort and to deny themselves ordinary human pleasures for the sake of their faith. They could behave decently, even heroically, towards other pious Catholics, yet when they confronted the Cathars their reactions were authoritarian, not to say murderous. Should we expect a saint-to-be to have been sympathetic to the Cathars or to wage war against them? One might hope that a true saint could see the good in anyone and respect other paths towards God. Yet these people are saints precisely because they are approved by the Roman Catholic Church: Roman Catholic saints are, by definition, first and foremost Roman Catholics.

Catharism in the Rhineland

By about 1140 Catharism had appeared in the Rhineland. In 1143 the delightfully named Eckbert of Schönau tried a Cathar bishop and his assistant, presumably the ‘son’ or filius major, in Bonn when they refused to accept the arguments given to them to support the Roman Catholic Church. They asked if they could call on their own teachers for assistance in addressing the Catholic arguments. Having lost the trial, their punishment was to be burnt at the stake. Intrigued by the apparent strength of devotion of those prepared to die rather than change their teachings, Bernard went to the Languedoc in 1145 to preach against these Cathars and try to convert them back to the Church of Rome. His success was mixed: in Albi the entire crowd raised their right hands in answer to Bernard, to declare that they were Catholics; in Verfeil, near Toulouse, the local knights clashed their armour loudly to prevent him delivering his sermon.

After 1163 Eckbert encountered Cathars in Mainz who were sufficiently established in the area to have their own burial ground. Their leader recanted and took the Catholic faith but the others were expelled. Eckbert claimed erroneously that they celebrated Bema, a spring feast that commemorated the death of Mani, 3rd-century prophet of the Manichaean sect.⁵ However, Eckbert does describe the consolamentum, the asceticism of the Perfects, and he allowed that their discipline trained them well to endure the pain of being burnt at the stake.

In 1163 Hildegard of Bingen, she of the delicate yet soaring music that became an almost ubiquitous part of the New Age experience, had an apocalyptic vision of the Cathars. It represented the release of Satan from the bottomless pit described in the Apocalypse, or Revelation, of John. Little did Hildegard know that the Cathars believed that the God she worshipped was Satan himself and that our world may have been that bottomless pit. In 1165 there were further attempts at public debates in Languedoc to draw people away from the Cathars via the power of the word.

Unrest brews in enlightened Languedoc

The rich province of Languedoc (named for its distinctive Romance language langue d’oc, or Occitan, in which the word for ‘yes’ was oc rather than oil (‘oui’) or si) was not part of the kingdom of France. Although the region’s competing noble rulers recognized the Capetian monarchs as suzerain, their own control was almost total. The greatest power in the area was the principality of Toulouse.

There was hostility between Raymond V, count of Toulouse, and Roger Trencavel, viscount of Albi, Carcassonne and Razes. Raymond V appealed to the Cistercians for help with what he felt was Trencavel’s toleration of heresy. The public debate that followed, at Toulouse in 1178, turned into an interrogation of the Cathar bishop and the filius major of Toulouse by the Catholic bishops. (There is an unfortunate profusion of Raymonds or Ramons at this point in the story: the two Cathars were named Bernard Raymond and Raymond de Baimiac.) The two Cathars read from a prepared speech in Occitan, which through omission implied that they were Catholics. The pro-Catholic crowd objected to this and the Catholic bishops then insisted that the discussion continue in Latin, which the two Cathars refused to do. Then they refused to swear an oath, which Cathars were prohibited from doing (based on the text in the Gospel of Matthew 5:34). They were excommunicated and returned to Lavaur, which was ruled by Roger Trencavel, who allowed heretics to live there safely. The pair were lucky: Cathars had already been killed in such circumstances.

In 1167 there were important developments in Catharism.⁶ A bishop named Papa Nicetas, from the Bogomil dualist Church in the Balkans and Bulgaria, came to St Felix in the Languedoc, along with some Italian Cathars, and helped the local Cathars to reorganize their bishoprics and dioceses and generally establish a solid foundation for their ecclesiastical structure. Hierarchies and territorial disputes were not the essence of Catharism, but it was essential to have structures in place that could accommodate the growing community of followers. The lineage that the Cathars had going back to the Bogomils had developed complications. The line of transmission, called an ordo, had become corrupt due to a bishop who had transgressed the strict vows that the Perfects had to keep. Therefore the whole line had to be renewed and the consolamentum rites repeated via Nicetas and the entire lineage traced back via him.

Problems aside, this was the largest assembly of Cathar Perfects there would ever be, and it represented a turning point in the status of the religion. It was now organized, had substantial and established grassroots support in many parts of the Languedoc, and was spreading in northern Italy. It was no longer an odd, emerging phenomenon but a serious threat to the power of the Catholic Church – and to the political clout of the papacy in those areas where it was popular. Public debates had proved insufficient to persuade most of the public over to the Catholic Church (or ‘back’, as the Church would have it, but by then many Cathars had been raised as such and therefore were not Catholics who had switched allegiances), so other options had to be considered.

The first sniff of violent action arrived in 1181 when Henri de Marcy, legate to the kingdom of France, attacked the castle of Lavaur, because of the connection with Bernard Raymond and Raymond de Baimiac. Two captured Cathars admitted heresy but recanted and were rewarded by being made Catholic canons in Toulouse. After the death of Roger Trencavel in 1194, the tutor and regent of Roger’s son, Bertrand de Saissac, swore an oath not to shelter Cathars. But, like many other Languedoc nobles, he broke it and continued in active sympathy with the Cathars. Lady Fizas of Saint Michel even had a Perfect to accompany her when she went with Eleanor of Toulouse (who is also Eleanor of Aquitaine) to have an audience with the pope in Rome.⁷ In contrast, the Cathar social ideal was less hierarchical and more egalitarian, ‘where great and small live together’.⁸

The Catholic bishops were hesitant about acting against groups deemed heretical. In addition to the Cathars, in the 1170s another movement had emerged in France. A wealthy merchant from Lyon, Peter Valdès (Waldo), had given away his worldly riches and adopted a life of poverty, which acquired him a following. Pope Alexander III had approved his vow but forbidden him from preaching about the scriptures, which was the preserve of the clergy. When Peter continued to do so, Pope Lucius III excommunicated the Waldenses, or Waldensians, in 1184. The papacy then began replacing the bishops, one by one, with men more willing to suppress heresy. The Waldensians resemble a proto-Protestantism and lack the dualist Gnostic aspects of Catharism.

Raymond V of Toulouse died in 1194 too. His son, Raymond VI, was also a Catholic but, unlike his father, he was sympathetic to the Cathars. Thus for 14 years – until 1208, when the crusade was proclaimed – the Toulouse and Albi-Carcassonne-Razes regions, under the control of the Trencavels, were entirely tolerant to the Cathars. Jews also could pursue their religion there without persecution, and although the Languedoc was no utopia – bands of warriors had for generations mounted regular raids against their neighbours – it was in many ways an exceptionally enlightened region.

The troubadours were one of the most delightful products of the Languedoc, that sunny region of poets who wrote in Occitan or Provencal. The people of the Languedoc were renowned for their bright clothing and although critics might characterize the Cathars as having a world-hating philosophy, they never struck others as being miserable or grim. Throughout Occitania, the chief theme of the troubadours was courtly love: the ideal love of a man for an unattainable woman within the context of the code of chivalry, which could also lead to spiritual love. Yet the troubadours were also bards in the wider sense and wrote poems of history and of satire. The troubadors were particularly attached to the nobles of the Languedoc, and, as with the Templars, there was an overlap between families who were Cathar and families who were patrons of the troubadours. William de Durfort, for example, was both Cathar and troubadour. In northern France the equivalents of the troubadours were known as trouvères, and in Germany they were minnesingers.⁹

The Song of the Cathar Wars, ¹⁰ one of the two main near-contemporary chronicles of the Albigensian Crusade, was begun by William of Tudela, who was on the side of the crusaders, and it was continued and concluded by an anonymous troubadour who was not a Cathar, but was in sympathy with them and the south.

The Dominicans and the road to crusade

Domingo (Dominic) Guzmán (1170–1221, canonized as St Dominic in 1234), from Castile, travelled through Cathar country in 1207 with his accomplice Diego, the bishop of Osma. They were struck by the sight of the humble and committed Perfects, in stark contrast to most of the Cistercians who travelled around in large and luxurious entourages, obviously benefitting materially from the wealth of the Church. Inspired to counter-imitation of the Perfects, Dominic walked barefoot through the region begging for alms and preaching the true Church, eventually persuading the papal legates to follow his example. For around two years Dominic and his cronies publicly debated the Cathars in various towns and cities of the Languedoc. The invective was powerful on both sides, and Dominic was in many ways trying to out-Cathar the Cathars. Dominic Guzmán was certainly determined. He once argued all night against a Toulouse innkeeper who was a Cathar to win him back to the Catholic church.¹¹ Depite the branding of the Languedoc as ‘Cathar Country’, today it is Dominic who is commemorated with a street name in modern Carcassonne, not a famous Cathar like Guilhabert de Castres.

But the campaign, although a noble effort in comparison with the corruption that had preceded it and the violence that would follow, was not generally very productive if measured in the quantity of souls that were saved for Catholicism. However, there were positives: 150 Believers were converted after a debate in Montréal, and it did result in the foundation of the Dominicans as an order. Defined by their founder’s tireless and terrier-like pursuit of heretics, the Dominicans would get their own back on the intractable Cathars when the Inquisition moved in.

The pope had three legates in the Languedoc, obnoxious and hated members of the Cistercian order: Peter of Castelnau, Ralph of Fontfroide and Arnold Amaury (who would play a major part in the oncoming crusade). Peter of Castelnau was especially unpopular with the crowds and with Raymond VI of Toulouse, on whom he served an impromptu excommunication when Raymond refused to cease fighting local conflicts in order to persecute the heretics. Everything changed when, on 13 January 1208, Peter of Castelnau was murdered as he waited for a ferry to cross the Rhône on his way back to Rome.¹²

Innocent III was convinced that Raymond VI of Toulouse was behind the killing because Peter of Castelnau had tried, unsuccessfully, to coerce Raymond into persecuting heretics. There was no apology forthcoming from Raymond. According to the story, Innocent III buried his head in his hands when he heard the news and went away to a private garden to pray. On 10 March 1208 Innocent III called for a crusade against the region. This really was a momentous decision because previous and subsequent crusades were directed towards the East and principally, or notionally, against Muslim enemies. This was to be a crusade against western European Christians, in the heart of Christendom.

Arnold Amaury and Fulk of Marseilles spent 1208 gaining support from kings and aristocrats.¹³ Any participating crusaders were to be offered a full range of spiritual and material benefits. Their past, present – and even future – sins¹⁴ would be officially forgiven, their debts suspended and those to Jewish moneylenders cancelled; they would be able to plunder and land-grab.

In comparison to the difficulties involved in travelling to the Holy Land, the Languedoc was a very convenient location for a crusade. Crusaders only had to serve a 40-day term. Most of the crusaders were from the northern kingdom of France and the German-speaking lands. The French king, Philip II Augustus (reigned 1180–1223), attempted to resist the call to crusade as he was busy with other concerns and conflicts. He reluctantly agreed to it after months of badgering, but refused to lead it in person. The Albigensian Crusade would go ahead because of the determination of a single man: Pope Innocent III. Although this was not a papal army, controlled by the pope, as is sometimes misconstrued in the popular mind, the crusade was conceived and launched by the pope and the army was initially led by the papal legate, Arnold Amaury.

Crush the Templars

In the same year as Pope Innocent III declared the start of the Albigensian Crusade he accused the Templars not only of pride and arrogance but also necromancy.

The Templars were strong in the Languedoc. The Templars revered John the Baptist while the Cathars rejected Catholicism’s water baptism and believed that John was sent by the devil to lead people away from Jesus. Despite this divide, the Templars accepted Cathars and in some parts of the Languedoc Cathars outnumbered Catholics in the Templar preceptories. The sixth grandmaster of the Templars, from 1156 to 1169, Bertrand de Blancfort was actually from a Cathar family.¹⁵

The Templars had always accepted excommunicates into their organization in the East, which was explained as being due to a lack of manpower. A western European Christian who had been excommunicated for some political reason was still, in the East, on the same side. However, just as it was for the Cathars, the kingdom of France would prove to be the undoing of the Templars. It is quite possible that the ‘success’ of the Albigensian Crusade, which indeed it was when viewed from the perspective of the French monarchy, inspired Philip II Augustus to move against the Templars, who represented a powerful independent interest in his kingdom. The same slander that was hurled at the Cathars, and possibly gave them their name (of delivering an obscene kiss to the anus of a cat), was applied to the Templars.

The Templars, the ultimate crusaders, didn’t fight during the Albigensian Crusade, rather they sheltered Cathars and even allowed Cathars to be buried on Templar grounds. The Inquisition later dug up Cathar corpses so they could be burnt for heresy.¹⁶

Given the difference in attitudes to John the Baptist, the overall picture that emerges means we should expect the Templars to be unsympathetic to the Cathars. Bernard of Clairvaux was a mentor to and promoter of the early Templars and an enemy of the Cathars. And yet, within a century, we find these hardened warriors and wealthy bankers sheltering Cathars, rather than fighting against them, and accused of heresy, they were vanquished by the forces from northern France that destroyed the Cathars.

The butchering of Béziers

On 18 June 1209, Raymond VI was whipped naked outside a church in front of the papal legate. Twenty-four bishops and a crowd of Raymond’s fellow Toulousians then swore allegiance to the Catholic Church. He would have to crusade for 40 days; seven of his castles were to be forfeit; he was to employ no mercenaries; and all Jews were to be dismissed from his service. Raymond Roger Trencavel, son of Roger II, also offered to submit to the Church but Amaury refused to accept his offer, preferring to target Trencavel and his dominions as supporters of heresy.

The crusading army assembled at Lyon and staggered towards the Languedoc. It consisted not only of mounted knights, archers and foot soldiers, but of all sorts of professions necessary to feed and maintain an army: cooks, servants, carpenters, metalworkers, priests and, straggling at the back, a beggar army of the underclasses; known in French as ribauds, these hangers-on were caught up by the rhetoric of crusade and had more chance of food and adventure than they would have had by remaining in the cities. The first location in the army’s sights was to be Trencavel’s city of Béziers, which was reached after a month-long march down the Rhône valley from Lyon.

William of Tudela, a supporter of the crusade, would write the first part of The Song of the Cathar Wars. He was a steadfast Catholic, hated the Cathars and approved of many of the atrocities performed; he was also skilled in divination. ‘He had long studied geomancy and was skilled in this art, so that he knew that fire and devastation would lay the whole region waste, that the rich citizens would lose all the wealth they had stored up, and the knights would flee, sad and defeated, into exile in other lands, all because of the insane belief held in that country.’¹⁷ There is no better illustration of the bizarre nature of the late Middle Ages than this. A rigid Catholic who wrote a celebratory saga of a vicious war against heretics can nevertheless, immediately after invoking the Trinity, boast that he already knew it was going to happen because of his excellence at divination.

It was on 22 July, the feast day of St Mary Magdalene, popularly associated with the Cathars, in 1209 that the crusaders invaded Béziers. There were said to be 222 Cathars in Béziers, which had a population of over 10,000.¹⁸ Trencavel had already left Béziers for heavily fortified Carcassonne, taking the city’s Jews with him. In 1205 the elderly Catholic bishop of Béziers had declined to turn over its Cathars, but faced with the huge force of crusaders and the papal legate he now advised the townspeople to hand them over. The town elders refused to do it, but the bishop left with a list of names. The Cathars were from a wide range of employment and class, including ‘a baron, four doctors, and a medley of craftsmen: hosiers, blacksmiths, cobblers, a carpenter, weaver, saddler, corn-merchant, cutler, tailor, taverner, baker, money-lender.’¹⁹

The ribauds usually served as cannon-fodder but at Béziers they had an unexpected influence. The beggars, armed only with daggers and clubs, had come to the forefront of the army and were loitering beneath the walls. When a band of young men from Béziers came out from the gate, carrying improvised flags of white cloth, the beggars took their chance and rushed the young men, forcing their way into the city and slaughtering any of the surprised inhabitants who stood in their way. The crusaders had no way of distinguishing the small percentage of Cathars from the Catholic inhabitants. It was then that Arnold Amaury was reputed to have said, ‘Kill them all. God will know his own.’²⁰ It was all over within three hours.

Surviving townspeople had retreated into the cathedral and churches, hoping for sanctuary, but those in the cathedral of Saint Nazaire were cudgelled to death, and over a thousand sheltering in the church of Mary Magdelene were butchered by knife and club, including Catholic priests who were reputedly praying and saying mass. The death toll was possibly around 15,000 and the timber buildings were set alight.

Narbonne was next on the list, but surrendered instantly having heard the news of Béziers. So the crusaders set forth for Carcassonne, an ancient citadel, founded by Visigoths in the 6th century. The fortifications were considerable and had been strengthened extensively in the 12th century. Although the walls were able to withstand heavy siege, the citadel had no independent water source.

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