The Perfect Heresy

by Stephen O'Shea

  The Autier network began unraveling in 1305, as the result of a betrayal. The turncoat was one William-Peter Cavaillé, a longtime believer who had kept his mouth admirably shut while serving time in the prison of Carcassonne. Upon his release, he badgered his fellow credentes to lend him a petty sum of money so that he could dispose of a debt he had contracted with a jail guard. For reasons unknown, the money was denied, and Cavaille, furious, took his revenge by putting the inquisitors onto the scent of the secret revival. Through his efforts, in September 1305, two Perfect were captured and a manhunt begun. The next five years saw the Perfect of Peter Autier’s revival—Peter Raymond, Amiel de Perles, William Autier, James Autier, Prades Tavernier, Philip d’Alayrac, Pons Bayle, Peter Sans, Raymond Fabre—picked off and sent to the stake. One of them, Sans Mercadier, committed suicide in despair.

  Unprecedented police actions marked the investigation, such as the raid of September 8, 1309, when the village of Montaillou was sealed off by soldiers and all of its inhabitants were arrested by the inquisitor Geoffrey d’Ablis. Although d’Ablis, detecting a recrudescence of the forbidden faith, imprisoned many of the villagers, it would take a far more skillful questioner, Jacques Fournier, to find out a decade or so later that Montaillou had been that rare pearl—a settlement where the heretics formed a majority. Fournier also discovered that its randy priest, Peter Clergue, had wheedled many village women into his bed through a peculiar interpretation of Catharism that called for carnal adventures with the Catholic clergy. Clearly, not all adepts of dualism shared the stern piety of the Perfect.

  In the summer of 1309, the elusive Peter Autier was finally caught. Precisely 100 years had passed since the armies of the north marched on Béziers and Carcassonne to begin the extermination of the Cathars. Unfortunately, the transcripts of the interrogations Autier withstood—he was held for nearly ten months—have been lost to posterity. In April 1310, the inquisitors hauled him up in front of the cathedral of St. Stephen in Toulouse and burned him alive. His last wish, which he reportedly cried out as he was being tied to the stake, was to be given a chance to preach to the huge crowd of onlookers. In no time, Peter Autier declared defiantly, he would convert them all. The request was denied.

  19.

  Bélibaste

  THERE WAS NOW ONE CATHAR LEFT in Languedoc. One Perfect in the long line that stretched back through the Inquisitions of Fournier and Gui, the wars of Raymond and Louis, the crusades of Innocent and Simon de Montfort, the debates of Dominic and Guilhabert, and the Cathar International of Nicetas and Mark—the last man in a procession of holy men and women that began, the Cathars believed, in the time of Mary Magdalene and the twelve apostles. His name was William Bélibaste.

  As befitted his singular status, Bélibaste was perhaps the most peculiar Perfect in Cathar history. A murderer and adulterer, he nonetheless proved a gentle pastor to his small following of credentes and, when his time came, showed as much courage as his far worthier predecessors. It was the sinner, not the saint, who bade good-bye to the greatest heresy of the Middle Ages.

  Believers in the “good men,” the Bélibastes were a clan of landowners in the Corbières, the rugged upland that overlooks the valley of the River Aude. William, one of several brothers, spent his early manhood as a shepherd, wandering the windswept reaches of southern Languedoc with his flock, following the paths of transhumance that had been traced through the mountain passes in antiquity. His descent from the high pastures in the autumn of 1306 had changed his life forever—in the course of a brawl, Bélibaste beat another shepherd to death. Having become notorious throughout the Corbières, he ran from the French king’s justice, taking with him a brother who was sought by the Inquisition. The two fugitives eventually came across others hiding in the hills: the hunted Perfect of the Autier revival.

  One of them, Philip d’Alayrac, befriended the remorseful shepherd. Recognizing a promising recruit, the Perfect began initiating the murderer into the arcana of the dualist faith. Belibaste’s sin was washed away when, after several seasons of instruction, he was given the consolamentum. Whether he intended to be an active missionary or simply wished to atone for his wrongdoing will never be known. What is certain is that he and d’Alayrac, arrested on suspicion of Catharism, somehow escaped from the prisons of Carcassonne in 1309 and fled over the Pyrenees to Catalonia. When d’Alayrac ventured northward on a mission of mercy the following year, he was captured and burned, leaving Bélibaste alone in Catalonia to comfort the refugees who had deserted Montaillou, Ax-les-Thermes, and other towns in the Sabartès to escape the inquisitors. The former shepherd now had a small flock of souls.

  The exiles wandered through Aragon and Catalonia, settling only temporarily wherever they went, always ready to move on when better opportunités beckoned or when the Aragonese Inquisition came too close. To allay suspicion, Bélibaste posed as a married man. Raymonda Piquier, a Languedoc native who had lost track of her husband in the confusion of arrests at home, shared the Perfect’s house and, when traveling, his room. The two became lovers. Despite this breach of the vows taken at the consolamentum, Bélibaste kept up appearances of celibacy for nearly a decade, and his indulgent followers feigned ignorance of the real relationship between their Perfect and his housekeeper. In 1319, the shepherd Peter Maury, an inveterate bachelor from Montaillou, was hectored by Bélibaste into wedding Raymonda. The Perfect performed a hasty marriage ceremony—yet another innovation for a faith that had no such sacrament—and Peter and Raymonda moved in together. Within a week, Bélibaste had released them from their vows and brought Raymonda back under his roof. Several months later, she gave birth to a child; Peter Maury, obligingly, acknowledged paternity.

  For all his failings, the last of the Cathar Perfect worked hard to edify his flock. The interrogation transcripts of his credentes—most were eventually ensnared by the Inquisition—show that Bélibaste’s sermons were remembered for years after his disappearance. The Cathar preached movingly and commanded respect. He spoke at length of never giving in to the sin of despair, of the need to love one another, of how the good God awaited us all beyond the evil veil of creation. He never wavered in his belief that the world was ruled by maleficent powers and that four demons—the king of France, the pope, the inquisitor at Carcassonne, the bishop of Pamiers—were especially active in keeping people from finding their true salvation. Knowing himself to be compromised, he refused to administer the consolamentum; it would, he assured his anxious listeners, be given to them freely in the afterlife by a Perfect-turned-angel.

  The community at last found permanent homes in Morella and Sant Mateu, towns near the delta of the River Ebro, south of Tarragona. It was a long journey—more than 200 miles—from Languedoc, yet not far enough away for the seemingly serendipitous to occur. One day in 1317, a certain Arnold Sicre, an inhabitant of Ax-les-Thermes, stumbled across the small settlement of his exiled compatriots. The coincidence was hailed as providential. Arnold claimed to have the “understanding of the Good”; his mother, Sibyl Bayle, had been a prominent believer who was burned by the Inquisition, as was his brother, Pons Bayle, one of Peter Autier’s inner circle of Perfect. The more suspicious of the villagers pointed out that Arnold’s father, a notary, had soured on Catharism and helped organize the raid on Montaillou. Even the easygoing Bélibaste had his doubts. Although Arnold boasted of having known the Autier brothers, the newcomer was woefully ignorant of the basic practices of Catharism. He couldn’t perform the melioramentum, the ritual greeting extended to the Perfect, and he had the gaucheness to bring red meat to Bélibaste’s table.

  Arnold Sicre assured the skeptics that he had found what he was seeking. He apprenticed as a shoemaker in Sant Mateu and within weeks was accepted as a member of the secretive Cathar community. He was assiduous in attending the sermons of Bélibaste and soon caught up with the others in his knowledge of dualist mythology and doctrine. He became one of the Perfect’s preferred companions; he may even have been considered as a possible successor
to Bélibaste, with or without the consolamentum. As the months turned into years, Arnold seemed content with his modest life, his only regret the beloved Cathar relatives he had left on their own in the mountains of Languedoc near Andorra. His rich aunt and beautiful maiden sister were all by themselves, bereft of the spiritual solace he received in Catalonia. Bélibaste at last instructed Arnold to go to Languedoc and fetch them. A nubile Cathar bride was needed for one of the bachelor faithful, and a wealthy benefactress was always welcome.

  After several months’ absence, Arnold returned, alone, with the news that his aunt, Alazaïs, was now gout-ridden and too frail to travel, and his sister, a loyal niece, had chosen to stay with the old lady. Both women, however, were overjoyed at the news he brought of fellow believers. The aunt, Arnold reported, had bestowed a hefty dowry on his sister and said she was willing to give far more to the struggling exiles. Thanks to her liberality, a free-spending Arnold was able to make the Christmas of 1320 the most pleasant in memory for the outcasts. His failing aunt had opened her purse and made but one request: to be blessed by a good Christian before her death. And his sister, Arnold added, was pining to meet her suitor. Surely, they deserved to be visited.

  The longtime companions of the Perfect counseled caution. Bélibaste had barely escaped Languedoc a dozen years ago, and his presence was essential in Morella and Sant Mateu to keep the last ember of Catharism aglow. It would be folly to return to the land of persecution. Arnold quieted their misgivings by pointing out that a safe, short trip to his aunt’s estate would benefit the entire community.

  In the spring of 1321, William Bélibaste, Arnold Sicre, Arnold Marty, the prospective husband for Sicre’s sister, and the ever-faithful shepherd Peter Maury headed north toward home. A soothsayer had warned Bélibaste that he would never return to Catalonia, but the Perfect ignored this advice, as well as the appearance of two magpies—a bad omen if seen in a pair—that swooped across his path while he trudged through the back-country of Barcelona. A mixture of conscientiousness and cupidity impelled Bélibaste forward on his mission to give solace and receive reward at the house of the elderly Alazaïs. Yet as the peaks of the Pyrenees grew taller on the horizon and the dangers of Languedoc neared, the old doubts about Arnold Sicre returned.

  Prior to crossing the Ebro on their journey north, as Arnold Sicre subsequently told the Inquisition, Belibaste and Maury decided to get him drunk as part of the age-old ruse of in vino ventas. At the riverside inn where they put their plan into effect, the younger man saw through the scheme and surreptitiously dumped out the goblet that his dinner companions took pains to fill and refill. Faking fall-down intoxication, Arnold eventually let Peter Maury help him off to bed. Once they were in his room, Arnold dropped his trousers and got ready to urinate on the pillow. Maury dragged him outside and as the younger man tottered in the darkness, suggested that they betray Bélibaste and collect the handsome price on his head. To which Arnold protested, “I cannot believe that you would do such a thing! I would never let you get away with it!” He staggered back to his bed and was soon emitting a stream of counterfeit snores. Maury returned to Bélibaste and told him that they should stop worrying.

  Within a week, the small party from Sant Mateu had reached an outlying possession of the counts of Foix, a small, exiguous mountain valley on the southern slopes of the Pyrenees near Andorra. They slept their first night in Castellbò; the second, in the village of Tirvia. The next dawn, an armed posse broke down their door and placed them under arrest. Arnold Sicre had tipped off the Inquisition. He was, as Bélibaste moaned in horror from his dungeon, “a Judas.”

  Bishop and Inquisitor Jacques Fournier, who became Pope Benedict XII

  (Roger-Viollet, Paris)

  In fact, he was far worse. Throughout his lengthy stay in Catalonia, Arnold had been working for Bishop Fournier, the inquisitor of Pamiers. The coincidence of his arrival, his devotion to dualism, his generous aunt and willing sister—all had been the invention of a genius of deceit. The money Arnold spent the previous Christmas had come from the treasury of Fournier, an advance on the large reward he would earn by bringing in Bélibaste. But that was not all; the bounty hunter had also struck a bargain with the bishop whereby he would recover the property confiscated from his heretical mother, Sibyl Bayle. Arnold became a rich man. After more than a century of double-dealing—the violated safe-conduct offered to Raymond Roger Trencavel, the perjury trap set by Arnold Amaury, the hostage-taking of Toulouse’s ambassadors by Bishop Fulk, the burning of the dying woman by Bishop Raymond du Fauga, the eavesdropping on Peter Garcias, the sellout of the convert Sicard of Lunel, and the thousands upon thousands of betrayals coaxed, threatened, or tortured out of simple, pious people by more than eight decades of implacable Inquisition—Catholic orthodoxy had found in Arnold Sicre a champion of treachery.

  William Bélibaste, the last of the Languedoc Perfect, was led over the Pyrenees in chains. News of his capture spread far and wide, scattering the faithful of Sant Mateu and Morella to the four winds, to be pursued for the rest of their lives. In Pamiers, Bishop Fournier was denied the pleasure of lighting the fire. The pope, ruling that Bélibaste was a native of the Corbières, ordered him tried by the episcopal tribunal of that region and punished by its secular authority. The archbishop of Narbonne combined these functions as spiritual and temporal overlord; “relaxing to the secular arm” involved nothing more than sleight of hand.

  The trial, of which no record exists, must have been swift. In the autumn of 1321, an unbowed Bélibaste, the hotheaded shepherd turned homespun pastor, walked into the courtyard of the castle at Villerouge-Termenès, a village in the bald heart of the Corbières. He mounted a pile of straw, vine cuttings, and logs and was tied to a stake. A flaming torch was lowered. The last Perfect heretic of Languedoc was gone.

  Epilogue: In Cathar Country

  AS YOU DRIVE INTO LANGUEDOC from the north, past such cities as Avignon, Nîmes, Montpellier, and Béziers, it soon becomes obvious that something odd is afoot. Large brown signs on the highway announce, Vous êtes en pays cathare (Entering Cathar Country). At one spot, on the cypress-covered hills overlooking Narbonne, there stands a trio of concrete tubes, their uppermost third cut open in the shape of a helmet visor. This specimen of French autoroute art represents les chevaliers cathares (the Cathar Knights), an Easter Island–like threesome of gigantic heretics looking impassively over the expressway as thousands of tourists, like the crusaders of yesteryear, invade Languedoc every summer. French pop singer Francis Cabrel was moved to compose a plaintive song about the sculpture in 1983:

  The commemorative spirit grows more cheerful farther west, near Carcassonne. This part of Languedoc abounds with signs celebrating Cathar country. There is an official logo, a yin-yang depiction of a half-shrouded disk suggesting the light-and-dark dualism of the Cathar faith. This tourist-board branding—the logo is affixed to everything from hotel price lists to canned duck meat—seems restrained in comparison to what can be found within the walled city, which, from without, still resembles an unspoiled dream. On the main street of Carcassonne, a polyglot pitchman distributes brochures for Torture and Cartoon Museums, adding helpfully that the first is like The Name of the Rose and the second like Cinderella. Young boys with plastic swords square off on restaurant terraces. Ads for “Catharama,” a sound-and-light show held in the nearby town of Limoux, are plastered on the hoardings outside postcard shops. All over Languedoc, the word Cathar crops up in unusual places: on cafés, real estate agencies, adult comic books, lunch menus, and wine bottles.

  It is exceedingly strange to find chamber-of-commerce boosterism for a faith that was annihilated seven centuries ago, a faith that left no physical trace—no chapel, no monument, no art—of its existence. And it seems perverse, almost Celtic, to celebrate a failed heresy. However much other Europeans revere their past, you do not see roadside attractions elsewhere announcing: “Entering Waldensian Country” or “Welcome to Spiritual Franciscan Country.” A reject
ed metaphysic is usually an embarrassment, and an obscure one at that.

  Although decried with humorless regularity by local Cathar experts, the cheesy pop exploitation of their subject attests to its presence in collective memory. The Cathars of Languedoc defy obscurity because their story has become legend, a tale which belongs to everyone. The story of their defeat has given rise to a collective, international narrative, its various strands picked up and rewoven by a succession of “alternative” movements for more than 100 years. The Cathar country advertised on the signs is an imaginary landscape first created in the nineteenth century and embellished ever since. The father of the myth is indirectly responsible for those giant concrete tubes by the highway and the logo on the hotel. His name was Napoleon Peyrat, and his peculiar legacy deserves study.

  Napoléon Peyrat was born in 1809 in the Ariège, the mountainous French département of which Foix is the capital. He was the pastor of the Reformed Church of France, in the Parisian suburb of St. Germain en Laye. More important, Peyrat was a formidable and prolific writer, a poet-turned-historian who could mix the prose styles of Chateaubriand, Walter Scott, and Jules Michelet to electrifying effect. Unfortunately, he had very little respect for the truth.

  As one of the most eloquent of that anticlerical brotherhood of the French Third Republic known popularly as bouffeurs du curé (priest eaters), Peyrat regularly launched broadsides against what he saw as a reactionary, antidemocratic Catholic establishment. Obviously, the story of the Cathars was a godsend to such a man. Until Peyrat published his multivolume Histoire des Albigeois (History of the Albigensians) in the 1870s, Cathar historiography had been a fairly low-profile shooting gallery between French Protestant and Catholic historians. The Catholics argued that the Cathars were not even Christians; the Protestants, that they were forerunners of the Reformation. Lay liberal historians, ignoring such doctrinal discussions, usually played up the sophistication of Languedoc troubadour culture and the horror of the crusade. No one work until then, however, had the sheer narrative verve of Peyrat’s. Taking the ideas and conjectures that had been floating around in earlier anticlerical, romantic treatments of the Cathars, the polemical pastor went wild.