bastions had fallen to the Northern invaders, except for a handful of remote and isolated strong points. Chief among these was the majestic mountain citadel of Montsegur, poised like a celestial ark above the surrounding valleys.
For ten months Montsegur was besieged by the invaders, withstanding repeated assaults and maintaining tenacious resistance. At length, in March 1244, the fortress capitulated, and Catharism, at least ostensibly, ceased to exist in the south of France. But ideas can never be stamped out definitively. In his best-selling book, Montaillou, for example, Emmanuel
Le Roy Ladurie, drawing extensively on documents of the period, chronicles the activities of surviving Cathars nearly half a century after the fall of
Montsegur. Small enclaves of heretics continued to survive in the mountains, living in caves, adhering to their creed and waging a bitter guerrilla war against their persecutors. In many areas of the Languedoc including the environs of Rennes-leChateau the Cathar faith is generally acknowledged to have persisted. And many writers have traced subsequent
European heresies to offshoots of Cathar thought the Waldensians, for instance, the Hussites, the Adamites or. Brethren of the Free Spirit, the
Anabaptists and the strange Camisards, numbers of whom found refuge in
London during the early eighteenth century.
The Cathar Treasure
During the Albigensian Crusade and afterwards, a mystique grew up around the
Cathars which still persists today. In part this can be put down to the element of romance that surrounds any lost and tragic cause that of Bonnie
Prince Charlie, for example with a magical lustre, with a haunting nostalgia, with the “stuff of legend’. But at the same time, we discovered, there were some very real mysteries associated with the Cathars. While the legends might be exalted and romanticised, a number of enigmas remained.
One of these pertains to the origins of the Cathars; and although this at first seemed an academic point to us, it proved subsequently to be of considerable importance.
- 42 -
Most recent historians have argued that the Cathars derived from the Bogomils, a sect active in Bulgaria during the tenth and eleventh centuries, whose missionaries migrated westwards. There is no question that the heretics of the Languedoc included a number of Bogomils.
Indeed a known
Bogomil preacher was prominent in the political and religious affairs of the time. And yet our research disclosed substantial evidence that the Cathars did not derive from the Bogomils. On the contrary, they seemed to represent the flowering of something already rooted in French soil for centuries. They seemed to have issued, almost directly, from heresies established and entrenched in France at the very advent of the Christian era. 4
There are other, considerably more intriguing, mysteries associated with the Cathars. Jean de Joinville, for example, an old man writing of his acquaintance with Louis IX during the thirteenth century, writes, “The king (Louis IX) once told me how several men from among the Albigenses had gone to the Comte de Montfort .. . and asked him to come and look at the body of Our Lord, which had become flesh and blood in the hands of their priest. ‘5 Montfort, according to the anecdote, declared that his entourage may go if they wish, but he will continue to believe in accordance with the tenets of
“Holy Church’. There is no further elaboration or explanation of this incident. Joinville himself merely recounts it in passing. But what are we to make of that enigmatic invitation? What were the Cathars doing? What kind of ritual was involved? Leaving aside the Mass, which the Cathars repudiated anyway, what could possibly make “the body of Our Lord .. . become flesh and blood’? Whatever it might be, there is certainly something disturbingly literal in the statement.
Another mystery surrounds the legendary Cathar “treasure’. It is known that the Cathars were
For ten months Montsegur was besieged by the invaders, withstanding repeated assaults and maintaining tenacious resistance. At length, in March 1244, the fortress capitulated, and Catharism, at least ostensibly, ceased to exist in the south of France. But ideas can never be stamped out definitively. In his best-selling book, Montaillou, for example, Emmanuel
Le Roy Ladurie, drawing extensively on documents of the period, chronicles the activities of surviving Cathars nearly half a century after the fall of
Montsegur. Small enclaves of heretics continued to survive in the mountains, living in caves, adhering to their creed and waging a bitter guerrilla war against their persecutors. In many areas of the Languedoc including the environs of Rennes-leChateau the Cathar faith is generally acknowledged to have persisted. And many writers have traced subsequent
European heresies to offshoots of Cathar thought the Waldensians, for instance, the Hussites, the Adamites or. Brethren of the Free Spirit, the
Anabaptists and the strange Camisards, numbers of whom found refuge in
London during the early eighteenth century.
The Cathar Treasure
During the Albigensian Crusade and afterwards, a mystique grew up around the
Cathars which still persists today. In part this can be put down to the element of romance that surrounds any lost and tragic cause that of Bonnie
Prince Charlie, for example with a magical lustre, with a haunting nostalgia, with the “stuff of legend’. But at the same time, we discovered, there were some very real mysteries associated with the Cathars. While the legends might be exalted and romanticised, a number of enigmas remained.
One of these pertains to the origins of the Cathars; and although this at first seemed an academic point to us, it proved subsequently to be of considerable importance.
- 42 -
Most recent historians have argued that the Cathars derived from the Bogomils, a sect active in Bulgaria during the tenth and eleventh centuries, whose missionaries migrated westwards. There is no question that the heretics of the Languedoc included a number of Bogomils.
Indeed a known
Bogomil preacher was prominent in the political and religious affairs of the time. And yet our research disclosed substantial evidence that the Cathars did not derive from the Bogomils. On the contrary, they seemed to represent the flowering of something already rooted in French soil for centuries. They seemed to have issued, almost directly, from heresies established and entrenched in France at the very advent of the Christian era. 4
There are other, considerably more intriguing, mysteries associated with the Cathars. Jean de Joinville, for example, an old man writing of his acquaintance with Louis IX during the thirteenth century, writes, “The king (Louis IX) once told me how several men from among the Albigenses had gone to the Comte de Montfort .. . and asked him to come and look at the body of Our Lord, which had become flesh and blood in the hands of their priest. ‘5 Montfort, according to the anecdote, declared that his entourage may go if they wish, but he will continue to believe in accordance with the tenets of
“Holy Church’. There is no further elaboration or explanation of this incident. Joinville himself merely recounts it in passing. But what are we to make of that enigmatic invitation? What were the Cathars doing? What kind of ritual was involved? Leaving aside the Mass, which the Cathars repudiated anyway, what could possibly make “the body of Our Lord .. . become flesh and blood’? Whatever it might be, there is certainly something disturbingly literal in the statement.
Another mystery surrounds the legendary Cathar “treasure’. It is known that the Cathars were
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