Massacre at Montségur

MASSACRE AT MONTSEGUR By the same author THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH THE CORNERSTONE THE AWAKENED THE CHAINS OF LOVE DESTINY OF FIRE ZOE OLDENBOURG MASSACRE AT MONTSEGUR A History of the Albigensian Crusade Translated from the French by PETER GREEN PANTHEON BOOKS Originally published in French by Librairie Gallimard, Paris, under the title LE BUCHER DE MONTSEGUR@ 1959, Librairie Gallimard. English translation © 1961, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd and Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., New York. Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 62-11076. Bound by H. Wolff Book Mfg. Co., New York, N.Y. CONTENTS ------------------------·------------------------ page Chapter I The Background of the Crusade 1 I The Initial Facts 1 2 The Crusaders 7 3 The Land of Languedoc I5 Chapter II Heresy and Heretics 28 I Origins 28 2 Doctrine and Dogma 32 3 Organization and Expansion 44 4 Catharism in its Social and Moral Aspects 62 5 The Struggle against 'Babylon' 70 Chapter III The Pre-heretical Church 82 I The Period before Innocent III 82 2 The Mission and Failure of St Dominic 93 Chapter IV The Campaign of 1209 102 I Warfare in the Middle Ages 103 2 Beziers 109 3 Carcassonne I21 Chapter V Simon de Montfort 132 I Portrait of a General 132 2 The Count of Toulouse I44 3 The King of Aragon I62 Chapter VI The Consecration and Failure of the Crusade I77 I The Lateran Council 177 2 The War of Liberation I87 Chapter VII The King of France 20I I Raymond VII's Victory 201 2 King Louis's Crusade 207 vi CONTENTS Chapter VIII The Final Years of Occitan Independence 2I8 1 The Consequences of the War 218 2 Catharism as a National Religion 225 3 The Treaty of Meaux 239 Chapter IX The Church's Peace 254 I The Church and Heresy 254 2 The Council of Toulouse 267 3 The Church's Dilemma and the Dominican Reform Movement 273 Chapter X The Inquisition 286 I Early Activities 286 2 The Inquisition at Work 298 Chapter XI The Cathar Resistance 310 I The Organization of the Resistance 310 2 The Sanctuary of Montsegur 316 3 Raymond VII's Rebellion and Defeat 327 Chapter XII The Siege of Montsegur 340 1 The Stege 340 2 The Massacre 356 Epilogue 365 Appendix A: A Catharist Ritual 368 Appendix B: Preliminary Discourse Addressed to the Postulant by the Elder 373 Appendix C: A Catharist Prayer 376 Appendix D: Repressive Measures and Decrees Promul- gated against the Cathars by Councils between 1179 and 1246 377 Appendix E: Sentences of the Inquisition 383 Appendix F: The Debate between Izarn and Sicart 386 Chronological Table 390 Notes and References 396 Bibliography 402 Index 408 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS -------------------------·------------------------- facing page Painting by Berruguete (1477-1503) of Saint Dominic at the Tribunal of the Inquisition, from the Prado Gallery in Madrid (Photo : Mansell Collection) 4 2 Painting by Fra Angelico (1387-1455) of Saint Dominic and the Miracle of the Book, from the Louvre in Paris (Photo: Giraudon) 4-5 3 A thirteenth century fresco of Pope Innocent III from the church at Subiaco in Italy (Photo: Mansell Collection) 5 4 A drawing of Simon de Montfort taken from a stained glass window in the cathedral at Chartres in France (Mansell Collection) 68 5 Mediaeval seals. (a) Simon de Montfort and the crest he used on his shield from a wax impression in the British Museum, London (Photo: British Museum) and (b) enlarged drawings of wax im pressions of seals from the Archives Nationales in Paris showing (i) a Knight from Languedoc, (ii) Raymond Pelet, Squire of Alais, (iii) Ray mond Trcncavel, Viscount of Beziers, (iv) Ray mond VI, Count of Toulouse, and (v) Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse 68-69 6 & 7 Two manuscript pages from the Chanson de Ia Croisade by William of Tudela showing the taking of the town of Beziers and Count Ray mond VII re-entering the town of Toulouse. The book is in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris 69 8 Drawing from a bas-relief in the thirteenth cen tury St Nazaire Church in Carcassonne believed to depict the death of Simon de Montfort (Mansell Collection) 116 viii LIST OF JL LUSTRATIONS 9 An engraving by Nicolas Cochin (1688- I 754) taken from a painting by Pierre-Jacques Cazes (I 676--1754) showing Count Raymond VI of Toulouse receiving absolution at Saint-Gilles, first published in Volume III of the Histoire Generate de Languedoc by Dom Vaisselle 117 10 Glazed terra-cotta relief from the door of the Cathedral in Florence by Andrea della Robbia (1435-I 525) showing a meeting between Saint Dominic and Saint Francis (Photo: Mansell Collection) 117 II & 12 View and town plan of Toulouse-both from seventeenth century engravings in the Cabinet des Estampes in Paris 148 13 The fortified church at Albi 149 14 & I 5 A view of the Cathedral and town of Beziers from the river from a nineteenth century lithograph in the Cabinet des Estampes in Paris and a modern photograph (Photo: Boudot- Lamotte) 212 16 The street behind the St Nazaire Church in Carcassonne (Photo: Archives Photographiques de France) 213 17 The castle at Carcassonne (Photo: Archives Photographiques de France) 244 18 The Castle of Montsegur on its hilltop seen from the south-west (Photo: Gallimard) 245 19 A view of the town of Carcassonne (Photo : Karquel from the French Government Tourist Offic~ ~5 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE The anglicization of mediaeval French names always presents some difficulty: I cannot claim to have been consistent in this respect. The better-known names I have converted according to traditional English usage-as, for example, in Sir Steven Runciman's The Mediaeval Manichee. Elsewhere I have been somewhat arbitrary, and acted as the context seemed to demand in terms of euphony or con venience: thus, variously, William de Puylaurens, [Pierre des] Vaux de Cernay (where Sir Steven reads Peter de Vaux-Cernay), Peter Amiel, or Blanche of Castille. I trust that readers will take this cap tious attitude in the spirit with which T. E. Lawrence treated the proof-reader of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I would like to express my thanks publicly to Mme Oldenbourg for reading my entire typescript with scrupulous care, saving me from several egregious errors, and on occasion putting me to shame by suggesting a better English phrase than I could have thought of myself. It is a rare pleasure for a translator to be blessed with so amiable and co-operative an author. PETER GREEN Diagrammatic sketch of the fortress of Montsegur with the road leading up to it THE GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND OF THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE CHAPTER I THE BACKGROUND OF THE CRUSADE I. The Initial Facts ON I OTH MARCH 1208 His Holiness Pope Innocent III issued a solemn call to arms, summoning all Christian nations to launch a Crusade against a country of fellow-Christians. This Crusade, he claimed, was not only justifiable but a matter of dire necessity; the heretics who inhabited this land were 'worse than the very Saracens'. The Pope's appeal came four years after the capture of Constan tinople by a Crusaders' army. The new enemy was Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, a cousin of the King of France and brother-in law to the Kings both of England and of Aragon. Besides being bound by ties of homage to these three monarchs he owed a similar allegi ance to the German Emperor; he was, further, Duke of Narbonne, Marquis of South-West Provence, a feudal sovereign whose authority extended over the regions of Agenais, Quercy, Rouergue, Albigeois, Comminges and Carcasses, not to mention the County of Foix. He was, in short, one of the greatest princes in Western Christendom, premier baron of all the territories where the langue d'oc was spoken. Since this was a period when actual power was firmly in the hands of the nobility, and since this nobility, from the monarch down to the smallest landed proprietor, was by definition a military caste, it follows that war achieved a permanent, necessary status in their lives. Christian princes were never short of an excuse for invading their neighbours' territories. But the preceding century had seen, first a slackening, then a sharp falling off in that enormous enthusi asm with which Western Europe had hitherto regarded the Holy Land. In the hey-day of the twelfth century, the warrior-pilgrim, though he might frequently be pursuing material ends, felt confident that he was fighting on God's behalf. But the nobility, their ranks decimated on the battlefields of Palestine, chafed bitterly against the useless sacrifices they were called upon to make, while the various 2 MASSACRE AT MONTSEGUR local campaigns they had to conduct struck them as being both petty and dull. Later, at the time of the Fourth Crusade, Simon de Montfort (a warrior whose appetite for warfare even the most sceptical could hardly question) was to refuse flatly to bear arms against a Christian city, or to put himself in the Doge's service rather than that of the Pope. Even though the bulk of the Crusaders failed to copy his example, and followed up their capture of Catholic Zara with an assault on Constantinople, nevertheless the scandal occasioned by this deflection of a Crusade from its true goal left the French nobility with a certain feeling of disillusion, despite the perennially powerful lure of conquest and pillage. The Crusade itself was gradually be coming a dead end, and the Holy Land, increasingly threatened though it was, now attracted only a minority of enthusiasts.

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