The Inquisition

by Michael Baigent

  But killing was only one component of an attractive ‘package deal’. In addition to a licence to kill, the good Christian could obtain remission from whatever time he might already have been sentenced to serve in Purgatory and from penances to be performed while still on earth. Should he perish in his holy endeavour, he was promised automatic absolution from all his sins. Should he survive, he would be protected against temporal punishment for any sins he might commit. Like the monk or the priest, the crusader was rendered independent of secular justice and subject only to spiritual jurisdiction. Were he to be found guilty of any crime whatever, he would simply have his crusader's red cross removed or confiscated and would then be ‘punished with the same leniency as ecclesiastics’. In the years to come, the same benefits were to be made available on a broader scale. In order to partake of them, one did not even have to embark on a crusade oneself. It was sufficient simply to donate money to a crusade.

  Quite apart from the spiritual and moral benefits, there were numerous perks to be enjoyed by the crusader on his way through this world, even before he passed through the heavenly gates. He could lay claim to goods, lands, women and titles in the territory he conquered. He could amass as much booty and plunder as he wished. Whatever his status at home – as a landless younger son, for instance – he could establish himself as an august secular potentate, with a court, a harem and a substantial terrestrial estate. Such was the bounty to be reaped simply by embarking on crusade. It was a package whose allure and marketability might well be envied by the insurance salesmen of today.

  Thus the crusades ensued. In 1099, the First Crusade established the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem – the first instance in history of what would be perceived centuries later as Western imperialism and colonialism. The Second Crusade occurred in 1147, the Third in 1189, the Fourth in 1202. Altogether, there were seven crusades. In between the full-scale campaigns organised and financed from Europe, periods of fighting between Christians and Muslims alternated with lulls of uneasy peace, during which trade – in ideas as well as goods – prospered.

  ‘Outremer’, the ‘land across the sea’ as it was also known, came to comprise a self-contained European principality in the heart of the Islamic Middle East, sustained and supported by European arms and manpower from almost every European kingdom. The city of Jerusalem itself was to be recaptured by the Saracens in 1187. As an outpost of European Christendom, however, Outremer would survive for another century. Only in May 1291 was Acre, the sole remaining fortress, overrun, its last tower collapsing in a cascade of stone, rubble and flame that buried both attackers and defenders.

  Whether the insurance salesmen of the time were able to honour their spiritual guarantees – of estates in heaven and a seat by God's side – we do not, of course, know. Fulfilment of temporal promises is easier to monitor. Like a great many package deals and bargain schemes, this one proved a windfall for a few, a disappointment for most. A staggeringly large number of European nobles, knights, men-at-arms, merchants, entrepreneurs, craftsmen and others, including women and children, perished to no purpose whatever, often after bitter ordeals and in gruesome conditions, sometimes eaten by their starving companions. But there were enough who prospered, who obtained land, titles, booty, wealth and other tangible rewards; and they served to provide an inducement for others. If nothing else, one could acquire expertise in arms, in the techniques and technologies of warfare, in fighting and killing; and if the Holy Land failed to offer adequate recompense for a man's newly acquired aptitudes, he could always bring them back to Europe and turn them to account there.

  Holy Fratricide

  In 1208, while the crusades in the Holy Land were still in progress and the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem was fighting for survival, a new crusade was launched by Pope Innocent III. The enemy this time was not to be the Islamic infidel across the Mediterranean, but the adherents of a heresy in the south of France. The heretics in question were sometimes referred to as ‘Cathari’, denoting ‘the purified’ or ‘the perfected’. By others, including their enemies, they were called ‘Albigensian’ or ‘Albigenses’, a designation derived from an early centre for their activities, the southern French town of Albi.

  The Cathars are much in vogue today, made topical by current interests in comparative mysticism and by general millennial fever. They have come to be mantled with the romanticism, the poetry and the sympathy often associated with tragically lost causes. But if they do not quite warrant the more extravagant idealisations recently conferred upon them, they must still rank among history's most poignant victims, and they deserve to be recognised as being among the earliest targets of organised and systematic genocide in the evolution of Western civilisation.

  Although they might in a loose sense be called Christian (they did ascribe a theological significance to Jesus), the Cathars were adamantly opposed to Rome and the Roman Church. As later Protestant denominations were to do, they saw in Rome the embodiment of evil, the biblical ‘Whore of Babylon’. Among established Christian congregations at the time, they were closer in some of their teachings to the Byzantine or Greek Orthodox Church. In certain respects – their belief in reincarnation, for instance – they had elements in common with traditions from even further east, such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

  Ultimately, however, and despite the sympathy accorded them by recent commentators, the Cathars subscribed to a number of tenets which few people in the West today would find altogether congenial – and which more than a few might well find morbidly unbalanced. Essentially the Cathars were dualist. In other words, they regarded all material creation as intrinsically evil, the work of a lesser and inferior deity. All flesh, all matter, all substance was ultimately to be repudiated and transcended in favour of an exclusively spiritual reality; and it was only in the realm of the spirit that true divinity resided.

  To this extent, the Cathars represented a late development of a tradition long established on the perimeters of the Christianised West. They had much in common with the heretical Bogomils of the Balkans, from whom a number of their beliefs derived. They echoed the older third-century heresy of Manichaeanism, promulgated by the teacher Mani in Persia. And they incorporated many elements of the Gnostic dualism which had flourished in Alexandria and elsewhere during the first two centuries of the Christian era, and which probably originated in ancient Zoroastrian thought.

  Like the Bogomils, the Manichaeans and the Gnostic dualists, the Cathars emphasised the importance of direct contact with, and knowledge of, the divine. This contact was deemed to constitute ‘gnosis’, which means ‘knowledge’ – knowledge of a specifically sacred kind. And by insisting on such direct and first-hand experience of the sacred, the Cathars, like their predecessors, effectively preempted the need for a priesthood, for an ecclesiastical hierarchy. If the greatest virtue was one's own individual and experiential apprehension of the spiritual, the priest became superfluous as custodian and interpreter of spirituality; and theological dogma became irrelevant, a mere intellectual construct which issued from man's arrogant mind, not from any higher or numinous source. Such a position implied a flagrant challenge not only to the teachings, but to the very structure of the Roman Church.

  Ultimately, of course, Christianity is itself implicitly dualist, extolling the spirit, repudiating the flesh and the whole of ‘unregenerate nature’. The Cathars preached what might be seen as an extreme form of Christian theology – or as an attempt to pursue Christian theology to its logical conclusions. They themselves saw their teachings as being closer to what Jesus himself and his apostles were alleged to have taught. Certainly it was closer than what was being promulgated by Rome. And in their simplicity and repudiation of worldly luxury, the Cathars were closer than the Roman priesthood to the lifestyle embraced by Jesus and his followers in the Gospels.

  In practice, of course, the Cathars lived in the physical world and had perforce to avail themselves of its resources. Thus, for example, they were forbidden to do violence to the
corporeal, to seek a shortcut out of the realm of matter by suicide. Like previous dualist sects, they, too, procreated and propagated, tilled the soil, practised crafts and trades and – despite their nominal pacifism – when necessary resorted to arms. Their rituals and training, however, taught them to regard such activity as a testing ground, an arena in which they could pit themselves against the challenge of evil and, if successful, overcome it. There must obviously have been ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Cathars, just as there have always been rigorous and lax adherents of any creed. But on the whole, and regardless of their beliefs, the Cathars were generally perceived by their contemporaries as conspicuously virtuous. In many respects they were regarded as the Quakers would later be regarded. Their qualities earned them considerable respect and made the Roman priesthood all the less attractive by comparison. According to a deposition now in the Vatican's library, a man described how, when he was young, two associates came up to him and said:

  The good Christians have come into this land; they follow the path of Saint Peter, Saint Paul and the other Apostles; they follow the Lord; they do not lie; they do not do to others what they would not have others do to them.1

  The same witness also reports being told that the Cathars

  are the only ones to walk in the ways of justice and truth which the Apostles followed. They do not lie. They do not take what belongs to others. Even if they found gold or silver lying in their path, they would not ‘lift’ it unless someone made them a present of it. Salvation is better achieved in the faith of these men called heretics than in any other faith.2

  By the beginning of the thirteenth century, Catharism had begun threatening to supplant Catholicism in the south of France, and itinerant Cathar preachers, travelling on foot through the countryside, constantly garnered new converts. These preachers did not bully, did not extort, did not traffic in guilt or emotional blackmail, did not tyrannise or terrorise with dire threats of damnation, did not demand payment or bribes at every opportunity. They were noted, like the Quakers after them, for their ‘gentle persuasion’.

  It is doubtful that all professed converts to Catharism became practising believers. Many, one suspects, took their new faith no more seriously than other Christians of the time took their Catholicism. But Catharism unquestionably exercised an allure. For knights, nobles, tradesmen, merchants and peasants in the south of France, it seemed to offer a congenial alternative to Rome – a flexibility, a tolerance, a generosity, an honesty not readily to be found in the established ecclesiastical hierarchy. More practically, it offered an escape from Rome's ubiquitous clergy, from clerical arrogance and from the abuses of a corrupt Church, whose extortions were becoming increasingly insufferable.

  There is no question that the Church at the time was shamelessly corrupt. In the early thirteenth century, the Pope described his own priests as ‘worse than beasts wallowing in their dung’.3 According to the greatest German lyric poet of the Middle Ages, Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170–c. 1230):

  How long wilt thou in slumber lie, O Lord?… Thy treasurer steals the wealth that thou hast stored. Thy ministers rob here and murder there, And o‘er thy sheep a wolf has shepherd's care.4

  Bishops of the period were described by a contemporary as ‘fishers for money and not for souls, with a thousand frauds to empty the pockets of the poor’.5 The Papal legate in Germany complained that clergy in his jurisdiction revelled in luxury and gluttony, failed to observe fasts, hunted, hawked, gambled and engaged in commercial transactions. The opportunities for corruption were immense, and few priests made any serious effort to withstand temptation. Many demanded fees even for the performance of their official duties. Weddings and funerals could not proceed until money had been paid in advance. Communion would be refused until a donation was received. Last rites were even withheld from the dying until a sum of money had been extorted. The power to grant indulgences, remission for penances due in expiation of sin, raised immense additional revenue.

  In the south of France, such corruption was particularly rife. There were churches, for example, in which no Mass had been said for more than thirty years. Many priests ignored their parishioners and conducted commercial businesses or maintained large estates. The Archbishop of Tours, a notorious homosexual who had been his predecessor's lover, demanded that the vacant bishopric of Orléans be conferred on his own lover. The Archbishop of Narbonne never actually visited the city or his diocese. Many other ecclesiastics feasted, took mistresses, travelled in opulent coaches, employed enormous retinues of servants and maintained lifestyles worthy of the highest nobility, while the souls entrusted to their care were tyrannised and squeezed into ever deeper squalor and poverty.

  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a substantial portion of the region's population, quite apart from any question of spiritual welfare, turned their backs on Rome and embraced Catharism. Nor is it surprising that Rome, confronted with such defections and a noticeable drop in revenues, began to feel progressively more threatened. Such anxiety was not unjustified. There was a very real prospect of Catharism displacing Catholicism as the predominant religion in the south of France – and from here it could easily spread elsewhere.

  In November 1207, Pope Innocent III wrote to the King of France and a number of high-ranking French nobles, urging them to suppress the heretics in their domains by military force. In return, they would be granted rewards of confiscated property and the same indulgences as those conferred on crusaders in the Holy Land. These incentives do not seem to have provided much spur to action, especially in the south. The Count of Toulouse, for example, promised to exterminate all heretics in his fiefdom, but did nothing to implement his promise. Deeming his bloodlust insufficiently enthusiastic, the Papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau, demanded a meeting with him. The meeting quickly degenerated into a furious row, with Pierre accusing the count of supporting the Cathars, and summarily excommunicating him. The count, who may himself have been a Cathar, responded predictably with threats of his own.

  On the morning of 14 January 1208, as Pierre was preparing to make his way across the river Rhône, a knight in the count's service accosted him and stabbed him to death. The Pope was enraged and immediately issued a Bull to all nobles of southern France, accusing the count of instigating the murder and renewing his excommunication. The pontiff further demanded that the count be publicly condemned in all churches and authorised any Catholic to hunt him down, as well as to occupy and confiscate his lands.

  Nor was that all. The Pope also wrote to the King of France demanding that a ‘sacred war’ be undertaken to exterminate the Cathar heretics, who were described as worse than the Muslim infidel. All who participated in this campaign were to be placed under the immediate protection of the Papacy. They were to be freed from the payment of all interest on their debts. They were to be exempt from the jurisdiction of secular courts. They were to be granted full absolution for their sins and vices, provided they served a minimum of forty days.

  Thus did Pope Innocent III preach the undertaking subsequently known as the Albigensian Crusade. It was the first crusade ever to be launched in a Christian country, against other Christians (heretical though they might be). In addition to its explicit benefits, it offered, of course, an implicit licence to loot, pillage, plunder and expropriate property. And it offered other advantages as well. The crusader who took up arms against the Cathars did not, for example, have to cross the sea. He was spared the complications and expenses of transport. He was spared, too, the strain of campaigning in the desert and the oppressive climate of the Middle East. If things did not go well, he would not be left isolated in an alien and hostile milieu. On the contrary, he could make his way back to safety easily enough, or even disappear into the local populace.

  By late June of 1209, an army of between fifteen and twenty thousand northern nobles, knights, men-at-arms, servitors, adventurers and camp followers had gathered on the Rhône. A minor French baron, Simon de Montfort, was to emerge as their military c
ommander. Their spiritual leader was the Papal legate Arnald-Amaury – a fanatic, a Cistercian and, at the time, Abbot of Cîteaux.

  By 22 July, the army had arrived at the strategic city of Béziers, whose population included a substantial number of Cathars. In the ensuing sack and pillage of the town, Arnald-Amaury was asked how to distinguish heretics from loyal and devout Catholics. The Papal legate replied with one of the most infamous statements in the whole of Church history: ‘Kill them all. God will recognise His own.’6 In the massacre that followed, some 15,000 men, women and children perished. With a triumphalism verging on ecstatic glee, Arnald-Amaury wrote to the Pope that ‘neither age, nor sex, nor status had been spared’.7

  The sack of Béziers terrified the whole of southern France. Even as the crusaders attempted to regroup amid the smoking ruins, a deputation arrived from Narbonne, offering to surrender all their town's Cathars and Jews (who had also by now become ‘legitimate targets‘), as well as to supply the army with food and money. The inhabitants of other towns and villages abandoned their homes, fleeing to the mountains and forests. But the crusaders were not just intent on restoring the supremacy of Rome. They were also bent on complete extermination of all heretics, as well as on everything they could plunder. In consequence, the campaign dragged on.

  On 15 August, after a short siege, Carcassonne surrendered and Simon de Montfort became Viscount of Carcassonne. Throughout the south, heretics were being burned by the score, and anyone else who attempted opposition was hanged. Nevertheless, the Cathars – supported by many southern nobles who sought to resist the depredations visited upon them – struck back, and many towns and castles changed hands repeatedly. The bitterness and the scale of the slaughter increased. In 1213, the King of Aragón attempted to intervene on behalf of the Cathars and southern nobles; but his army was defeated by the crusaders at the Battle of Muret, and he himself was killed. In the autumn of 1217, the crusaders descended on Toulouse, and a siege of nine months ensued. On 25 June 1218, Simon de Montfort himself perished at the city walls, struck by a chunk of masonry which a woman among the defenders had catapulted from a trebuchet.