He is pitiless toward the weak but prostrates himself before the powerful. He is the valet of bishops, the slave of the Pope. The lion is his heraldic emblem. Nothing expresses evil better than the face of that monstrous and ferocious feline. Simon de Montfort resembles a lion. He has the courage that the certainty of being the stronger gives him. He is the symbol of evil incarnate in man and that evil is exercised in a fashion all the more redoubtable because it has put over its face the mask of the Archangel Michael.48
A great saint lifts a cross behind the head of Montfort in order to make him a sort of aureole and permits him to draw from an ideal spring that exceptional power for the destruction of cities and slaughtering men. That saint is the Spaniard Dominic de Guzman. He is for the spiritual domain what Montfort is for stone and flesh. But the enemy he attacks has more resistance than the walls of Carcassonne or those of the Château Narbonnais. It is the hydra of heresy that he glimpses in souls. It is the thoughts of purity that rise higher than towers, the divine dreams lighter than clouds.
In order to arrive at his objectives, he imitates the Albigensian ascetics; he goes barefoot, asking for his bread, along the southern roads, avid to speak and to convert. His faith is as absolute, as disinterested, and as perfect as that of his enemies. But he does not know how to beg. He does it with pride, and desires to strike with his staff anyone who has filled his wallet generously but remains mute when he talks about the Holy Church. Those he encounters on his travels have heads as hard as his Spanish head, and in his rage in being unable to convert them he forges the plan for a terrible Order, an Order that will convert, a little later, by force.
The sound of his voice is hoarse and he has not lost his Spanish accent. On this side of the Pyrenees the voice is musical and the man of the south recognizes his race by a gleam in the dark eyes that the monk from Osna does not possess. He is incapable of winning hearts. He only finds those like his own among the Barons of the orth. Simon de Montfort never does anything without seeking his advice. The mystic follows the warrior. There is never a word of clemency. He never intervenes in favor of the wives or children of heretics who are massacred before his eyes and he assists in all the slaughter.
In any case, he regards the crusade as the just punishment of sins that do not merit pardon. At Prouille he says to the crowd: “Where the blessing is unwarranted, the rod is warranted. We will excite princes and prelates against you. The towers will be destroyed, the walls felled, and you will be reduced to servitude.”
He has no scruple about installing himself in the dwellings that Montfort gives him, which are stolen from the seigneurs of the Midi, in order to make them monasteries of his Order. A globe of fire falling by night in a miraculous fashion on the domain of Prouille indicates to him that God wants to see the school of converters erected that will bear his name, and he does not hesitate to dispossess Guilem de Prouille of his hereditary property. His subsequent disciples glorify the saint and are proud of the miracle, without finding it implausible that God would send a globe of fire to designate the place of a rapine.
The significance of his life is indicated by another miracle that occurs in Toulouse in 1234, the day of his canonization. Bishop Raymond has just celebrated that canonization with a mass in the Dominican convent. As he goes to the refectory to complete the religious feast with a meal, someone comes to tell him that a heretic woman of Toulouse is dying in the Rue de l’Olmet and is waiting for the Cathar bishop to receive the consolamentum. Immediately, he sets forth with his soldiers. The dying woman’s relatives cry: “Here comes the Bishop!” The deceived woman thinks that he is the Cathar bishop and delightedly affirms her faith before Raymond; she replies to all his questions, giving him the names of the believers she knows.
The Bishop and the Dominicans have her condemned rapidly and there is time to see her burned in the nearby square without the meal having suffered an exaggerated delay. But such a fortunate error and a pyre so rapidly lit are signs of the favor of Saint Dominic. The monks return to the refectory singing canticles and celebrate with an unaccustomed appetite the miracle that marks the saint’s canonization.
Everyone knows, or ought to know, the history of the Albigensian crusade. I shall summarize rapidly.
Catharism had spread with an extraordinary rapidity through the south of France. It was the radiant cult of the pure spirit that took possession of souls and caused the greatest danger to the materialistic Church of the Pope. Innocent III understood that and dispatched several apostolic legates to the south of France. These legates went to Toulouse, which was the capital of Catharism.
They were determined to strike a resounding blow that would make the Midi weep and terrify it.
There as then in Toulouse, in the Rue du Taur, a venerable old man named Pierre Maurand, who had been Nicetas’ host and who held nocturnal meetings in his house in which he preached the new religion. He was compared to Saint John because of is illuminated eyes. He was a Capitoul and his fortune was one of the largest in Toulouse. The legates summoned him solemnly before the people, interrogated him, convicted him of heresy and condemned him to death. The strength of a martyr was not in him. He was afraid of death, harsher for a rich old man than another, and he promised to reenter the Roman Church; but a difficult return was imposed upon him.
He had to go barefoot to the prison of the Church of Saint Sernin between the Bishop of Toulouse and one of the legates, who whipped him forcefully with rods. There he begged pardon on his knees, abjured, and heard himself condemned to have his châteaux destroyed and his property confiscated. He had to depart for the Holy Land and devote himself for three years to assisting the poor of Jerusalem. In addition, before his departure, in order that no inhabitant of Toulouse should be unaware of his abjuration, he had to visit all the churches in Toulouse, flagellating himself, for forty days.
Pierre Maurand, who was then eighty years old, whipped himself and wandered naked in the streets for the prescribed forty days. He departed, crossed the sea and reached the Orient. In Arabia he went to discuss mystical subjects with the Persian sufi Farid Uddin, sojourned in Tripoli, became acquainted with the philosopher Maimonides, spent three years in Jerusalem and was able to return to Toulouse, where his friends had not expected to see him again.
His career was not over. It was almost beginning. A symbol of the tenacious race of the people of Toulouse, he recommenced preaching secretly and five times, every three years, he was elected consul of the city by his compatriots, desirous of honoring in him the national resistance to the foreign Pope. People were so accustomed to the idea that death could not strike him that he was reputed for a long time to have taken refuge in the forests of Comminges, and a century afterwards the people of the outlying districts claimed to have seen Pierre Maurand making a tour of the ramparts of Toulouse in order to examine their solidity, leaning on his staff and standing very straight, as of old.49
The Midi had been terrified by the condemnation of Pierre Maurand. The Pope who dared to touch an old man of such perfect virtue could only be a Pope of evil. Catharism grew; the churches were abandoned. A new spiritual church devoid of monuments, devoid of hierarchy and devoid of ceremonial costumes was created secretly. The voice of the Spaniard Dominic resounded impotently on the parvis of cathedrals.
The legate Pierre de Castelnau departed for Rome discouraged. He was a former abbé of Maguelonne. On the day when he was promoted to the title of papal legate he had been hit by an arrow; by a sort of folly of pride he had his guards dress in red and he traveled clad in a strange ecclesiastical uniform brocaded with gold. He had just excommunicated Raymond VI, Comte de Toulouse. He had gathered the Capitouls, the notable citizens and the people had repeated in addressing the Comte the terms of a letter from Innocent III:
“Pestilential man! Tremble, perverse individual! You are like the crows that live on cadavers. Impious, cruel and barbaric tyrant, are you not confused by protecting heretics?”
He had threatened Toulouse with destruct
ion, and had asserted that by his personal care people would soon be tiling the land where its towers and ramparts stood.
A young man whose name has not been retained had keenly resented the insult addressed to his city. He resolved to punish the proud legate. He followed him as far as the Rhône, which must have been easy because of the brightness of his escort’s costumes. Near Fourques, as night fell, as Pierre de Castelnau was preparing to cross the river, the Toulousan launched himself upon him and struck him with a lance, a blow of which he died. He was able to escape to Beaucaire and to return to Toulouse, where no one punished him for his action.
Pope Innocent III “sang the song of the crusade” on learning of the death of his legate “the affliction of which he had for a long time in his hand and his jaw, and invoking Saint Jacques de Compostelle.” He was not to stop there. He sent messages to all the Christian kings. All the Roman pulpits fulminated with maledictions. The crusade against the Albigensian heretics was preached with the promise of the rich cities of Languedoc to pillage. The nobility of France, at the head of German mercenaries, got ready to descend southwards via the Rhône, the Velay and the Agenois.
The Midi could have stood up to the North. If Raymond VI, the most powerful lord in the Occident after the King of France, had united his armies and had reached an understanding with the heroic Trencavel, Vicomte de Béziers, victory might have remained with him. But he was more possessed by the love of women than that of his people. While still an adolescent he had excited the wrath of his father because he was obstinate in deceiving him with his mistresses. He had just married, for the fifth time, the beautiful Eleonore of Aragon, who was sixteen years old and whose father had been obliged to keep her captive in a tower because he could not see a man without swooning. He desired to savor the possession of such an ardent creature in peace. Albigensian at heart, he was beginning to get used to excommunications, but he feared an open struggle with the Church. Perhaps he had the taste for self-betrayal that one encounters in certain men worn away by the love of pleasure. In any case, one cannot expect anything great from a man who has gummed-up eyes and excessively flabby and soft hands that are always slightly damp. He submitted to the Pope. He was sufficiently wretched to guide the crusader army in the plains of the south and fight against those who were placed under his protection.
The crusaders arrived at Béziers, where the rural populations fleeing the invaders had taken refuge. With those who had accumulated there, the city contained more than sixty thousand people. A large number had not participated in the heresy and were excellent Christians. It was there, in the name of the religion of Jesus, by virtue of the fanaticism of one of its most venerated Popes, that one of the most savage massacres in history took place. In fact, history, so skillfully adapted for children by official historians, scarcely mentions in passing the taking of Béziers and seems to consider it as an event devoid of importance
The gates were forced on the first days by an advance guard of ribauds.50 That was the name given to bands of brigands that accompanied armies in order to profit from pillages and robbing the dead. The crusaders launched forth behind them. The day before, a council of chiefs and legatees had decided on the extermination of the entire population.
“But how shall we distinguish the Catholics from the Cathars?” asked one ingenuous Baron.
And the Abbot of Cîteaux had replied, doubtless suppressing the smile that such candor inspired in him: “Kill them all, God will recognize his own.”51
As the streets were full of corpses and the doors of the houses had been broken down, the people sought salvation by taking refuge in the churches. The crusaders set fire to them. Twelve thousand people perished in the Cathedral of Saint Nazaire, whose roof and three sides collapsed simultaneously. The entire city was delivered to the flames, and the Pope’s soldiers encircled that immense pyre, putting to death those who attempted to emerge from it.
“May God receive the souls of the dead in his paradise!” said one pious chronicler, after having narrated the taking of Béziers.
The Abbot of Cîteaux, in the letter he wrote to the Pope to inform his of the event showed a singular modesty, estimating the number of the dead at scarcely twenty thousand.52
The young Vicomte Trencavel, who was twenty-five years old, as courageous as Roland and as handsome as the hero of a chivalric romance, was enclosed in his impregnable city of Carcassonne. His skin was the color of milk and he was astonishingly beardless, with blue eyes full of credulity, which gave him a child-like appearance. But he had a square cranium that was reminiscent of the towers that the Templars built. He was confident to the point of absurdity, and extremely violent. In Béziers, once, he had cruelly avenged his father, murdered by the notable citizens of the city. Not only had he put to death the notables but, as he had heard that their wives had played a role in the affair, he forced them to marry their husbands’ murderers, men of low condition. His subjects had seen that as fine evidence of energy.
It was in vain that the crusade battered the stone towers and thick walls of Carcassonne with the joists of machines, rains of arrows and the work of sappers. The valor of the besieged repelled the attacks. A sort of legend was attached to Trencavel’s courage. The northern Barons sensed that the young man full of faith was like the heart of Languedoc and that it was necessary to tear out that heart in order to obtain victory. In order to doom him they made use of his divine credulity. Under the safeguard of Christ, so authentically represented by the Roman legates, he was asked to come unarmed to the crusaders’ camp in order to discuss the conditions of a possible peace.
The confident hero, incapable of suspecting an unprecedented treason, emerged from the city in spite of the anxiety of his companions in arms, who begged him to remain. Scarcely had he arrived at the tents where the elite of the French nobility were than he was seized and kept prisoner.
He was awaited all day on the ramparts. When night fell, the defenders of Carcassonne understood that they would never see their leader again. Then moans burst forth; they propagated from tower to tower, from street to street, and a funereal plaint rose into the night everywhere, the despair of the city deprived of the heroic leader who incarnated its life.
That was the fifteenth of August, the day of the festival of the Virgin, protectress of the Crusade. The night was extraordinarily bright. The besiegers thought they saw from afar the silhouettes of the archers keeping watch become lees numerous on the ramparts and then disappear. The nocturnal plaint diminished and died away, and an impressive silence descended upon desperate Carcassonne. The assault was to commence at daybreak. The fortress seemed dead, like an immense stone tomb. Knights and soldiers advanced with precaution behind their shields, believing it to be a trap.
They forced one of the silent gates and when it had fallen they advanced at a slow pace, chilled with amazement, into a deserted, mute city like a city of the Thousand-and-One Nights struck by an enchantment. Through open windows they could see the interiors of houses filled with abandoned riches. At the crossroads, dogs were howling mortally. There were empty suits of armor on the ground and horses were running hither and yon. It was thought at first to be a miracle, and then the truth was discovered.
The old baron Pierre de Cabaret, a friend of Trencavel, had hollowed out a subterranean tunnel several years before, going from the keep of Carcassonne to his Château de Cabardez in the Black Mountains. The warriors, the consuls and the entire population had fled during the night. The crusaders were only able to find, gone to ground in cellars, four or five hundred forgotten Cathars for their gibbets and pyres, and thought that very few.53
The Midi was virtually vanquished. The victors gave it by election to Simon de Montfort, who stayed there to finish extinguishing the heresy with his troops from the Low Countries and Germany.
The days after that election it was published that Trencavel, Vicomte de Béziers, had died of disease in the prison where he was locked. It was known throughout Christendom that Montfort had
had the man he had despoiled murdered, but a murder was very little when it as a matter of heresy.
And the heresy was tenacious. It was necessary to take the châteaux one by one, recommencing siege after siege. At Minerve, near Narbonne, at Limoux, not from the mountain of ruins and bones that was the unfortunate city of Béziers, at Pamiers and Mirepoix, Simon de Montfort raised scaffolds everywhere and burned heretics. The monks of the abbeys and the ecclesiastical functionaries, traitors to their homeland, summoned the man from the north, sent by the Pope, while the Albigensians retreated toward the forests of the Pyrenees. The tireless army of crusaders went along the Ariège and then the Garonne, drew back toward the Aude and recommenced a new massacre of the entire population of Lavaur, whose beautiful chatelaine, Dame Geralda, was thrown alive into a well in order that her death might be slow and worthy of the grandeur of her impiety.
“We exterminated them with an immense joy,” said the pious Pierre de Vaux de Cernay, the chronicler of the crusade. Elsewhere he claimed that the Albigensians “precipitated themselves into the pyres, so perverse and obstinate in their malice were they.”
One prey, however, and perhaps the most desirable, escaped Montfort’s fury. That was the Château de Cabardez, with its three towers, situated in the foothills of the Black Mountains, where Pierre de Cabaret and the defenders of Carcassonne had taken refuge. Pierre de Cabaret was married to Brunissande, the most beautiful chatelaine of Languedoc, whose beauty had been rendered widely celebrated by the troubadours. He had a daughter of an earlier marriage, the blonde Nova, and a goddaughter, the brunette Stephania de Sardaigne, who were no less illustrious than Brunissande for the beauty of the body and the amorous sentimentality of the soul.
The Blood of Toulouse Page 23
