by Sean Martin
Once the Inquisition had names, it was merciless in its pursuit of suspected heretics. The Inquisitors had the power to search a house, and burn down any building where heretics were known to have hidden. Anyone caught in possession of an Old or New Testament was seen as suspicious, and the sick and dying were watched closely lest ‘wicked and abominable things’76 occur (i.e., they receive the consolamentum). Once a suspect was caught, they were bombarded with questions: Have they seen a heretic or been acquainted with one? How many times have they seen them? Where did they see them? Who was with the heretics? Has the suspect admitted heretics into their home? If so, who brought them? How many times did the heretics visit? Where did they go after they left? Did the suspect adore them? Did the suspect see others adore the heretics? Did the suspect witness an heretication? If so, what were the names of the people at the ceremony? If the person was hereticated on their deathbed, where were they buried? If they recovered, where are they now?77
The ruthless fanaticism with which the Inquisitors carried out their duties is illustrated by the fate of an old woman in Toulouse. A Cathar Believer, she wanted to receive the consolamentum while she was still able. On her deathbed, her family sent out for a Perfect to come and administer the sacrament. A Perfect was located, ministered to the woman and left before the Inquisitors got wind of his presence in the woman’s house. However, they did get to hear of the deathbed consolamentum, and went to question the woman. Under the impression she was talking to the Cathar bishop, Guilhabert de Castres, she described her faith in detail. This was enough. Despite the fact that she only had a matter of hours left to live, she was taken out, still in her bed, and burnt.
Despite the power they wielded, the Inquisition met fierce – and frequently violent – resistance. In Albi, the Inquisitor Arnold Catalan’s assistants were too frightened to enter the cemetery to dig up the body of a woman who had been posthumously accused of heresy. Incensed, Arnold went to the cemetery himself with several of the bishop’s staff in tow. He broke the topsoil, intending to leave the actual digging to the bishop’s underlings, but before any further work could be done, a mob set upon Arnold and nearly beat him to death. They were only prevented from throwing the body of the unconscious Inquisitor into the River Tarn by the intervention of an armed delegation from the bishop. While Arnold was recovering in the safety of the cathedral, the mob outside shouted for his head to be cut off, put in a sack and then thrown into the river. Without even waiting to recover from his ordeal, Arnold excommunicated the entire town. There were similar incidents elsewhere. At Cordes two agents of the Inquisitor were thrown to their deaths down a well; in Moissac, while the Inquisitors Peter Seila and William Arnold were burning heretics, Cistercian monks were hiding them; in Narbonne, when Dominicans attempted to arrest a suspect an argument broke out that led to the sacking of the Dominican convent there.
Raymond VII was initially supportive – he was not in a position to be otherwise – but in 1235 a chance arose to fight back. Relations between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, were becoming increasingly strained. Indeed, they had never been good: one of Gregory’s first actions as pontiff had been to excommunicate Frederick for dallying over his crusading commitments. When Frederick did finally set off for the Sixth Crusade in 1227, Gregory excommunicated him again for going on Crusade while excommunicated. Raymond offered to intervene in the Languedoc on Gregory’s behalf if the Inquisitors could be made to show more restraint. Gregory agreed, and tried to curb the Inquisition’s most fanatical agents in the Languedoc. Seeing that they had regained some ground, the Toulousains began to resist even more. Cathars and their sympathisers were hidden or whisked out of town. Matters escalated until, in October, the Inquisitors were thrown out of Toulouse by a jeering mob, which pelted them with stones and excrement. Realising he needed Raymond as an ally, the pope could do little more than write the count an angry letter, and installed a Franciscan friar, Stephen of St Thibéry, as the new Inquisitor, hoping that the Franciscans’ reputation for being more humane than their Dominican brothers might go some way to alleviate tensions. Unfortunately, the move backfired as Stephen proved to be as fanatical as any Dominican.
The Inquisition did score some successes, however. Two Perfect who had converted to Catholicism, Raymond Gros and William of Soler, provided dozens of names, and also told the Inquisitors that the Perfect had adopted a number of strategies to help them escape detection. Some male and female Perfect travelled in pairs, pretending to be married couples; some deliberately ate meat in public; others swapped their black robes for blue or dark green ones. Such ploys were seen as evidence of the cunning and deceit of heretics, despite the fact that it was the Catholic Church that made such cunning and deceit necessary.
The Trencavel and St Gilles Revolts
As the Inquisition continued to go about its detested business, discontent grew. Raymond Trencavel, son of Raymond Roger, attempted to capitalise on the ill-will shown towards the agents of the Church. From exile in Aragon, he assembled an army which in 1240 besieged his ancestral seat of Carcassonne. After a tense and bloody stand-off that lasted for over a month, the two sides agreed a truce. Raymond would never regain his birthright, but was at least still alive.
Raymond VII had played no part in the Trencavel revolt, but, with the death of Gregory VII the following year, he saw a chance to intervene militarily. The papacy was in no position to stop him, as Gregory’s successor, Celestine IV, was pope for only 17 days, and, due to Frederick II’s attacks on Rome, it wasn’t until June 1243 that his successor, Innocent IV, was elected. By the spring of 1242, Raymond had persuaded King Henry III of England and Hugh de Lusignan, the most powerful baron in Aquitaine, to join forces with him.
As if to announce the start of the revolt, the Inquisitors Stephen of St Thibéry and William Arnold were murdered on 28 May at Avignonet by a small group of Cathar supporters from Montségur. News of the incident spread quickly, and was greeted with enthusiasm; one country priest even rang the bell of his church to celebrate the deaths of the Inquisitors. Within days, Raymond’s forces struck, taking French possessions and Dominican properties with decisive ease. By late summer, it looked as if the coup would be successful, but then things began to go wrong: Henry landed with a force that was too small to do anything other than get itself wiped out, which it successfully managed to do in an engagement with French forces near Bordeaux. Among Henry’s knights was Simon de Montfort the younger, whose changing of sides was on a par with that of Arnold Amaury, and would no doubt have made his father turn in his grave. Hugh of Lusignan, suddenly fearing he might be on the losing side, joined the French. But the death knell was sounded by none other than Roger Bernard of Foix. Despite his family’s long history of pro-southern, pro-Cathar, anti-French activism, Roger Bernard too felt that the revolt was doomed, and negotiated a separate peace with the French. Raymond VII realised that all was lost, and he too came to terms in January 1243. It was the end of the St Gilles family’s power in the Languedoc, and everyone knew it.
The Fall of Montségur
With Raymond now a spent force, the Church had only one place left to tackle that openly defied them: the Pyrenean fortress of Montségur, the so-called ‘Synagogue of Satan’ that had been a Cathar stronghold ever since the days of Innocent’s ‘peace and faith’ campaign. At a council at Béziers in the spring of 1243, it was decided that action against Montségur had to be taken. By the end of May, an army led by Hugh of Arcis, the royal seneschal in Carcassonne, was in place at the foot of Montségur, but given the fortress’s reputation for impregnability, they knew they would be in for a long wait.
Montségur had been refortified in 1204 by Raymond of Pereille. He was a Believer, and both his mother and mother-in-law were Perfect. The castle had been a refuge for Cathars during the Albigensian Crusade, and when the Inquisition began its work, Guilhabert de Castres, the Cathar bishop of Toulouse, approached Raymond with the request that the castle become the centre of the fai
th. By the time Guilhabert died (of natural causes) around 1240, it was home to around 200 Perfect, overseen by Guilhabert’s successor, Bertrand Marty. They were protected by a garrison of 98 knights, under Peter Roger of Mirepoix, whom Raymond of Pereille had appointed co-lord of Montségur at some point prior to 1240. Raymond had guessed – rightly – that the community would need armed protection as the noose of the Inquisition tightened around the Languedoc. Peter Roger, who was from a family of Cathar Believers, had more in common with the bellicose Paulicians than the pacifist Perfect: he was not averse to armed robbery in order to keep the community fed, and had been the instigator of the assassinations at Avignonet. During its heyday, Montségur had been busy as a centre of both intense devotion and industry. Pilgrims travelled great distances to hear the Perfect preach, to be consoled, or simply to spend time in retreat. When not busy with tending to the needs of the Believers, the Perfect helped support the community by working as weavers (a craft long associated with heresy), blacksmiths, chandlers, doctors and herbalists. By the time the siege began, the total number of people living there – including the knights’ families – was somewhere in the region of 400.
Hugh of Arcis did not have enough men to encircle the two-mile base of the mountain, and in such craggy terrain siege engines were useless. Hugh had no choice but to try to take the fortress by direct assault. His forces made numerous attempts to scale the peak, but each time were driven back by arrows and other missiles lobbed over Montségur’s ramparts by Peter Roger and his men. The months dragged on wearily and, by Christmas, Hugh’s army was becoming disillusioned. He needed a breakthrough if there was any chance of raising morale. He ordered an attack on the bastion that sat atop the Roc de la Tour, a needle of rock at the eastern end of the summit. The men climbed the Roc by night, and caught the garrison at the top by surprise. The defenders were all killed. When daylight came, the royal troops looked down in horror at the sheer face they had scaled, swearing they could never have made the ascent by day. Nevertheless, it gave the royal forces a strong foothold just a few hundred yards from the main castle itself, and work began immediately on winching up catapults and mangonels. Bombardment began immediately.
Inside the walls of Montségur, the atmosphere of devotion intensified. While Peter Roger’s men returned fire on the French troops, who were edging ever nearer from their foothold at the Roc, Bertrand Marty and Raymond Agulher, the Cathar bishop of the Razès, attended the spiritual needs of both the garrison and the non-combatants. A messenger arrived to say that Raymond VII might intervene to lift the siege. Rumour had it that Frederick II was also planning a rescue mission to liberate Montségur. The weeks dragged on, but no one came. Finally, on 2 March 1244, Peter Roger walked out to announce the surrender of the fortress to Hugh of Arcis. The victors were lenient with their terms: everyone could go free, provided they allowed themselves to be questioned by the Inquisition, and swore an oath of loyalty to the Church. Past crimes, including the assassinations at Avignonet, were forgiven. For the Perfect, the choice was as stark as it had been for their forebears at Minerve and Lavaur: renounce Catharism, or burn. They had two weeks to think about it.
For the Perfect, it was no choice at all. Not one of their 200-strong number was willing to recant. They spent the two weeks of the truce distributing their goods to their families and followers. Peter Roger was given 50 doublets that the Perfect had made to sell or give away as he saw fit. The atmosphere inside the castle during this period must have been indescribable, a sorrow touched with the joy in knowing that, for the Perfect, their journey through the vale of tears that is the material world would soon be over. On the final Sunday of the truce, 21 Believers – some of whom had originally gone to Montségur merely as mercenaries to help Peter Roger defend the castle, and all of whom had the option of going free – asked to be given the consolamentum. They knew that in doing so, they were giving themselves up to the pyres already being built at the foot of the mountain. If there is anything in the entire history of Catharism that illustrates the appeal and power of the faith, it is this extraordinary moment. All of them were consoled.
At first light on Wednesday, 16 March 1244, Montségur was evacuated. Peter Roger and his knights and their families went free, watching as the Perfect were lashed together on the pyres. They were from all walks of life: Corba of Pereille and her daughter Esclarmonde were nobles (as well as being Raymond of Pereille’s wife and daughter), while William Garnier was, if not a peasant, certainly a man of humbler means than the Pereilles. The 21 last-minute converts were also among their number, as were Bertrand Marty and Raymond Agulher. Hugh of Arcis and Peter Amiel, the Archbishop of Narbonne, looked on as the pyres were lit. The site of the burnings is still known to this day as the Field of the Cremated.
The Inquisition after Montségur
With the last major redoubt of Catharism gone, Perfect and Believers found themselves in a world with little shelter and fewer protectors. No one was safe, as Peter Garcias found out to his cost in Toulouse during Lent 1247. His relative, William, a Franciscan, had invited him to their convent in order to discuss issues of faith and doctrine. Naturally, Peter had no qualms about telling William about his Cathar faith; after all, William was family. Peter railed against the Church of Rome, declaring that it was a ‘harlot who gives poison’, while the law of Moses was ‘nothing but shadow and vanity’.78 Peter was too trusting: in a scene reminiscent of the exposing of Basil the Physician, a curtain was pulled back to reveal that Peter’s testimony had been carefully transcribed by a team of secretaries. Peter was handed over to the Inquisition.
William Garcias was not the only person to betray his family to the Inquisitors. A former Cathar Perfect, Sicard of Lunel, denounced scores of his former associates and supporters ‘whether they had offered him a bed for the night or given him a jar of honey.’79 The list of people he denounced included his parents. Sicard’s treachery was amply rewarded by the Church, and he survived well into old age.
These two examples were but among many. The Languedoc in the years immediately after the fall of Montségur was subject to inquisitorial scrutiny of proto-Stalinist proportions. Heading this clampdown on the thirteenth-century equivalent of thoughtcrime were Bernard of Caux and John of St Pierre. Over 5,000 depositions survive, but this is only a fraction of what was actually taken down at the time. As Malcolm Lambert notes, Bernard, John and their brethren were attempting to build ‘a total, all-embracing picture’80 of Cathar belief, practices and support in the areas in which they operated.
For the Cathars, being caught presented a major dilemma: the Perfect were forbidden to lie or to swear oaths. Whatever they did, they would be compromising their beliefs. Some chose to tell the truth, and thereby implicate other Perfect, Believers and supporters, while others either lied or gave away as little information as possible. Others opted for collaboration, and became double agents, continuing to live as Cathar Believers and receiving the fugitive Perfect into their homes, and then reporting them. Collaboration, however, was risky, as there were frequent reprisals against turncoats. One such was Arnold Pradier, who had been a Perfect during the de Montfort years, but later converted to Catholicism along with his wife (who had also been a Perfect) and began naming names. The Inquisition installed them in a safe house, the Château Narbonnais in Toulouse, where they lived well at the Church’s expense.
Although resistance continued – at Castelbon, the Inquisitor was poisoned and the castle attacked – there was ultimately little people could do. The Inquisition became a fact of life, ‘an entrenched institution rather than a single, unrepeated ordeal.’81 If people were suspected of giving false or incomplete testimony, they were hauled back in front of the Inquisitors to be reinterrogated, regardless of whether they were high-born or peasant. Faced with such intensive action, most nobility realised there was no point anymore in trying to oppose the Church; even Raymond VII began to persecute suspected heretics, burning 80 at Agen in June 1249.
The Fall o
f Quéribus
While the Inquisition was doing its inexorable work, there was still one Cathar castle attempting to hold out against all the odds. The eleventh-century castle of Quéribus sat on a rocky outcrop high in the Corbières. Like Montségur, its remoteness and the difficulty of the terrain protected it from the attentions of northern forces. The castle had been sheltering fugitive Cathars for years, ever since Oliver Termes regained lordship over his ancestral lands at Termes after the death of Alan of Roucy, the northern Crusader who had been given the fief by Simon de Montfort, in the early 1220s. Oliver had played a part in the Trencavel and St Gilles revolts of the early 1240s, which had led to the loss of his castle at Aguilar, to the north-east of Quéribus, and to his excommunication. The Church trusted him about as much as it had Raymond VI of Toulouse. Like Raymond VI, he was undeterred by excommunication, and together with his co-lord, Chabert of Barbéra, he continued to shelter Cathars at Quéribus until Oliver was forced to submit to King Louis IX in 1247. Oliver redeemed himself sufficiently during the Seventh Crusade (1249–54) that some of his possessions, including Aguilar, were returned to him. However, upon his return from the Crusade in 1255, he was forced into one final act of betrayal: he had to ambush and hand over Chabert of Barbéra to the Inquisition.
Unlike the fall of Montségur, the fall of Quéribus is still shrouded in mystery. It is not known how many Cathars were in residence at the time, and neither is it certain whether the castle fell by force or surrender. But fall it did, in August 1255. Oliver managed to save the life of Chabert through negotiation, and all the Cathars in the castle managed to escape. During the winter of 1255–56 Peter of Auteuil, Louis’s seneschal in Carcassonne, took over the castle, and also the neighbouring castle of Puylaurens, which was also known to be sympathetic to the Cathars. There were now no walls the Good Christians could hide in safety behind. The Cathar church was driven underground.
