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A Most Holy War RTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTY P{PIVOTAL MOMENTS IN WORLD HISTORY P{ P{This series examines choices made at historical turning P{points—and the figures who made them—and reveals P{the effect these choices had, and continue to have, on the P{course of world events. rtttttttttttttttttty Americanos Latin America’s Struggle for Independence John Charles Chasteen A Most Holy War The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom Mark Gregory Pegg Also by Mark Gregory Pegg The Corruption of Angels The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246 A Most Holy War The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom Mark Gregory Pegg 1 2008 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright ß 2008 by Mark Gregory Pegg Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pegg, Mark Gregory, 1963– A most holy war : the Albigensian crusade and the battle for Christendom / Mark Gregory Pegg. p. cm. — (Pivotal moments in world history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-517131-0 1. Albigenses—History. 2. France—Church history—987–1515. 3. Heresies, Christian—France—Languedoc—History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 4. Languedoc (France)—History, Military—Religious aspects. 5. France, Southern—History. 6. Crusades. I. Title. DC83.3.P45 2008 944’.023—dc22 2007027108 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Mary Douglas and William Jordan This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Maps viii Preface ix Acknowledgments xv Dramatis Personae xvii Genealogical Charts xxiii A Most Holy War 1 Glossary 193 Abbreviations Used in Notes 195 Notes 197 Bibliography 223 Index 243 Maps Medieval World c. 1200 4 The Lands between the Garonne and the Rhoˆne Rivers c. 1200 9 Toulousain and Lauragais at the Time of the Albigensian Crusade 29 Be´ziers c. 1209 72 Narbonne c. 1209 80 Carcassonne c. 1209 83 Toulouse in the Thirteenth Century 96 Iberian Peninsula, 1212 124 The Church of Saint John Lateran, the Papal Palace, and Audience Halls, Rome 1215 142 Preface I first climbed Montse´gur in the spring of 1995. I was living in Toulouse, researching a dissertation on medieval heresy, and thought it about time I visited this hallowed mountain stronghold of the Cathars, who, wreathed in myth and tragedy, are the most famous heretics of the Middle Ages. I borrowed a tiny Citroe¨n that, if the carcinogenic purr of the engine was anything to go by, smoked at least sixty Gitanes a day, and headed for the Pyre´ne´es. Two hours later the car wheezed into a cul-de-sac below Montse´gur. Recent rains had washed away most of the nearly vertical track to the top. Scrapes and muddy shins on the way up did, if nothing else, recall why French soldiers had so much trouble assaulting this escarpment in 1243. At the summit I walked around the ruins of a small castle. It was all very picturesque, especially the view of snowy peaks and green valleys. ‘‘You feel the sacred aura too?’’ I turned with a start and saw a woman, handsome, late middle-aged, staring at me. ‘‘You were feeling the energy of this place, weren’t you?’’ The vowels were southern Californian. ‘‘What do you think of the Cathars? The Cathars threatened the Catholic Church, right? The Albigensian Crusade wiped out the Cathar Church, right?’’ As abruptly as my interrogator appeared, she vanished among the castle ruins, apparently satisfied that my stunned silence marked me as a fellow traveler in Catharism. Over the years I’ve had similar conversations (often as one-sided, frequently as bizarre) about the Cathars. The seductive appeal of these heretics is understandable, as they seemingly represent an alternative, more tolerant Christianity to that of the medieval Catholic Church. Catharism is usually cited as a form of Christian dualism in which the universe was split by a vast cosmic chasm where an active, malign Devil (or bad God) manipulated the earth, and a passive, good God quietly dwelt in heaven. Body and soul, matter and spirit, were irreconcilably divided. Day-to-day existence was an unrequited yearning for an indifferent God, and, if such longing was to be endured, then equanimity in mind and manner had to be practiced. Consequently, thousands of Cathars lived in spiritual and social tranquility (tinged with holy melancholia) between the Garonne and Rhoˆne Rivers, that vast region encompassing all of southern France. This religious idyll was shattered by twenty years of savage holy war during the early thirteenth century. Some Cathars fled as refugees into northern Italy; most stayed behind, furtive and frightened, hunted down by the Inquisition. Montse´gur was the last heroic stand of the Cathar elite. My spectral Californian probably knew all this and more. Although if she quizzed me now (and stayed for the answer) I would tell her—politely, passionately— that everything about the Cathars is utter fantasy, even down to their name. In fact, I would tell her that more than a century of scholarship on both the Albigensian Crusade and heresy hasn’t been merely vaguely mistaken, or somewhat misguided, it has been breathtakingly wrong. As much as I disavow this learned tradition of misreading and mispri- sion, I do admire it. What I most deplore are the popular attempts to exploit it. I enjoy page-turners—they distract during turbulence, they go with summer holidays—except when they pretend to historical truth. My book- shelves groan with novels and histories dedicated to the ‘‘secret history’’ of the Cathars—which leads directly to the ‘‘secret history’’ of Western civilization itself. The Da Vinci Code is the most widely known retelling of this untold story. This sub-rosa history usually goes something like this: Jesus survives the cross; He and Mary Magdalene have kids; they all go to southern Gaul; the medieval Church hates this bloodline because it fizzes with the Holy Feminine; the Cathars know the truth; and the Albigensian Crusade was the reactionary, repressive attempt to expunge that knowledge from the world. Swirling around this esoteric tale are troubadours, every dualist heresy under the sun, the Holy Grail, the Templars, the Inquisition, Montse´gur, Rennes-le-Chaˆteau, the Priory of Sion, Masonic Lodges, and enigmatic incunabula. What is so astonishing about this unlocking, decoding narrative is that it resembles the standard history to be found in many academic studies. Both accounts argue from silence (the Church suppressed all the evidence); see continuities where none exist (a nod’s as good as a wink); rely on documents of dubious provenance (or rather copies of copies of missing documents); and accept a priori aCatharChurch. x Preface As cliche´d as it now is to see the Albigensian Crusade as a war against the Cathars, such a proposition was new around 1900. Until then the crusade was, rather straightforwardly, regarded as a campaign against the ‘‘Albigensians.’’ The legendary eleventh edition (1910) of the Encyclopae- dia Britannica deftly illustrates (as it does with so much Victorian-into- Edwardian thought) the scholarly metamorphosis of Albigenses into Cathari. Both heretics have entries (an editorial concession that, even when ideas change, old notions persist), and, while each essay is erudite, ‘‘Albigenses’’ (by a Frenchman) is clearly the musty antecedent that ‘‘Cathars’’ (by an Englishman) so exuberantly supersedes. The Albigensians miraculously appeared in the Limousin (an upland region of the Massif Central) at the beginning of the eleventh century before finally settling in the Toulousain at the beginning of the twelfth. These heretics were basically southwestern French indige`nes with a dualist bent, a parochial people with a folkloric faith. The crusade against them was a bitter war of national unity. The Cathars, on the other hand, ‘‘were the de´bris of an early Christianity,’’ the remnant of ancient Manichaeans (maybe even Gnostics), who, after a long and hidden Diaspora, reappeared between the tenth and fourteenth cen- turies as heretical Paulicians and Bogomils in the Balkans and, although scattered throughout western Europe, these dualist immigrants flourished in southern France. These heretics were a venerable and cosmopolitan race with a long and secret history, whose religion was highly ritualistic and textual. The crusade against them was a war of religious persecution, colonization, and racial extermination. The Cathars were very much here- tics for a modern age, for a new and turbulent century—which is why they keep on keeping on from one ripped up belle e´poque into another. Hand in handwith the Cathars (indeed, the intellectual support that allows these centenarian views to keep tottering on) are some equally mistaken notions about religion, which is narrowly defined by abiding doctrines, perennial philosophies, and timeless ideals. Scriptural consistency and theo- logical cogency are what supposedly make religions, not poorly articulated thoughts or anomalous opinions, which get tossed aside as notional (and historical) irrelevancies. The fallacy behind it all is that pure principles form the core of every religion and that no matter how many civilizations rise and fall through the millennia, how many prophets come and go, the principles enduringly persist.

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