THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE

In a nutshell

In 1209, an army of 30,000 Northern European knights and soldiers fell upon the Languedoc, the hilly north-eastern slopes of the Pyrenees in what is now southern France. During the subsequent conflict, the entire land was ravaged, harvests were destroyed, towns and cities were ravaged, and a whole population was slaughtered.

This annihilation occurred on such a large and horrifying scale that it may likely be the first occurrence of 'genocide' in modern European history.

At least 15,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered in the town of Beziers alone, many of them in the sanctuary of the church itself. When an officer asked the pope's delegate how he would discern between heretics and sincere believers, the response was, "Kill them all. God will recognize His own.” When writing to Innocent III in Rome, the pope again announced proudly that 'neither age nor sex nor status was spared'.

Following Beziers, the invading army swept across the entire Languedoc. Perpignan, Narbonne, Carcassonne, and Toulouse all fell - wherever the victors went, they left an aftermath of blood, death, and carnage behind them.

This nearly forty-year-long struggle is now known as the Albigensian Crusade.

In every sense of the word, it was a crusade. The pope himself had requested it. Its participants, like crusaders in Palestine, donned a cross on their tunics. And the benefits were the same as they were for crusaders in the Holy Land: forgiveness of all sins, penance expiation, an assured place in Heaven, and an array of spoils. There was no need to even cross the sea during this Crusade. And, under feudal rule, one was required to battle for no more than forty days - given, of course, that one had no desire to. By the end of the Crusade, the Languedoc had been completely altered, plunging back into the barbarism that characterized the rest of Europe.

Why? What had caused all of this mayhem, savagery, and devastation?

The territory currently known as Languedoc was not officially a part of France until the early thirteenth century. It was an independent principality whose language, culture, and political institutions shared more with Spain - with the kingdoms of Leon, Aragon, and Castile - than with the north. The principality was dominated by a few aristocratic families, the most prominent of whom were the counts of Toulouse (Languedocs capital city) and the great house of Trencavel. And within the boundaries of this principality thrived a civilization that was, at the time, the most advanced and sophisticated in Christendom, with the potential exception of Byzantium. In contrast to the rabid devotion that characterized other regions of Europe, the Languedoc, like Byzantium, practiced a civilized, easygoing religious tolerance. Skeins of Islamic and Judaic philosophy, for example, were brought via marine commercial centers like Marseilles or crossed the Pyrenees from Spain. At the same time, the Roman Church was not held in high regard; Roman clerics in Languedoc, by their legendary corruption, succeeded chiefly in alienating the public. For example, there were churches where no mass had been said in almost thirty years. Many priests neglected their parishioners in order to run enterprises or big estates. One Narbonne archbishop never ever visited his diocese.

Whatever the corruption of the church, the Languedoc had attained a cultural zenith not seen in Europe until the Renaissance. However, as in Byzantium, there were aspects of complacency, decadence, and fatal weakness that put the region unprepared for the attack that followed.

Both the Northern European nobility and the Roman Church had known of its fragility for some time and were keen to exploit it. For many years, the Northern elite craved the wealth and splendor of the Languedoc. And the Church was curious for its own reasons. First and foremost, its authority in the region was weak. While culture thrived in the Languedoc, another blossomed as well: the greatest heresy of medieval Christendom. According to Church officials, the Languedoc had been corrupted by the Albigensian heresy.

The heretics themselves

Although the supporters of this heresy were mainly nonviolent, they posed a serious threat to Roman power, the most serious threat that Rome would face until three centuries later, when Martin Luther's ideas sparked the Reformation.

By 1200, there was a real danger of this heresy supplanting Roman Catholicism as the dominant form of Christianity in the Languedoc. What was more concerning to the Church was that it was already spreading to other regions of Europe, particularly metropolitan areas in Germany, Flanders, and Champagne.

The heretics had been referred to by many different names. They were condemned by an ecclesiastical council in the Languedoc town of Albi in 1165. Because of this, or perhaps because Albi remained one of their centers, they were often referred to as Albigensians. On other occasions, they were referred to as Cathars, Cathares, or Cathari. Patarines were their Italian name. They were frequently labeled or stigmatized with the labels of even earlier heresies, such as Arian, Marcionite, and Manichaean.

The terms 'Albigensian' and 'Cathar' were essentially generic. They were not referring to a single unified church, such as Rome's, with a unified body of teaching and theology. The heretics in question were a diverse group of sects, many of which were led by an independent leader whose followers took his name. While these groups had several similar concepts, the detail differed greatly.

Furthermore, most of our knowledge of heretics comes from church sources such as the Inquisition. Trying to construct a picture of them from such sources is as absurd as attempting to form an image of the French Resistance from SS and Gestapo reports. Conclusively, presenting a coherent and definitive description of what constituted 'Cathar philosophy' is nearly impossible.

Generally, the Cathars believed in reincarnation and the acknowledgement of the feminine aspect in religion. Cathar preachers and teachers, known as parfaits (perfected ones), were both men and women. Simultaneously, the Cathars rejected the traditional Catholic Church and questioned the legitimacy of all clerical hierarchies, or formal and ordained intercessors between man and God. At the heart of this viewpoint was a fundamental Cathar tenet: the rejection of 'faith,' as the Church defined it. Instead of accepting 'faith' secondhand, the Cathars insisted on direct and intimate understanding, a religious or mystical experience perceived firsthand. This experience was known as gnosis, from the Greek word for 'knowing,' and it took precedence over all creeds and dogma for the Cathars. With such a focus on direct personal communion with God, priests, bishops, and other clerical authorities became obsolete.

Also, the Cathars were dualists. Though, I do believe that all Christian theology is ultimately dualistic, insisting on a confrontation between two opposing concepts - good and evil, spirit and flesh, higher and lower. However, the Cathars took this duality much further than traditional Catholicism was willing to go. For the Cathars, men were the swords with which spirits fought, and no one could see their hands. For them, a never-ending battle raged throughout all of creation between two irreconcilable principles: light and darkness, spirit and matter, good and evil.

Catholicism believes in a one sovereign God, whose antagonist (the Devil) is ultimately subordinate to Him. The Cathars, on the other hand, declared the presence of two gods of almost equivalent power. One of these gods was completely disembodied - a being or principle. Uncontaminated by matter. He was the God of love. However, love was thought to be incompatible with power, and material creation was a representation of power. So for the Cathars, material creation (the world itself) was inherently evil. All matter was inherently evil. Therefore, naturally, the creation was the work of a "usurper god," the god of evil - or, as the Cathars termed him, "Rex Mundi," or "King of the World." Catholicism is founded on what is known as "ethical dualism." Though it may eventually come from the Devil, evil actually presents itself in man and his actions. In contrast, the Cathars practiced a type of 'cosmological dualism,' a dualism that penetrated all of existence.

Some Cathars believed that the objective of man's life on earth was to transcend matter, abandon anything associated with the principle of power, therefore achieving unity with the principle of love. Other Cathars believed that man's role was to reclaim and redeem matter, to spiritualize and alter it. This was a fundamental assumption for the Cathars, yet their reactions differed according to sect. It is vital to highlight that there are no fixed dogmas, doctrines, or theologies. There are only some loosely defined attitudes, as in most deviations from established orthodoxy, and the moral obligations inherent to these attitudes are susceptible to individual interpretation.

The Cathars were committing severe heresy in the eyes of the Roman Church by viewing material creation, for which Jesus had allegedly died, as essentially bad and hinting that God, whose word had created the universe 'in the beginning,' was a usurper. However, their most damning heresy was their attitude toward Jesus himself: The Cathars declined that Jesus could be made of matter, become incarnate in the flesh, and still be the Son of God because matter was fundamentally wicked. Some Cathars considered him to be entirely incorporeal, a phantom or a pure spirit entity that, of course, could then not be crucified. The majority of Cathars appear to have considered Him a normal prophet, a mortal being who died on the cross for the sake of the ideal love.

The Cathars also strongly denied the significance of the Crucifixion and the cross, maybe because they thought these concepts were unnecessary, or because Rome glorified them so passionately, or because the cruel conditions of a prophet's death did not seem worthy of adoration. And the cross was considered an emblem of Rex Mundi, lord of the material world, the polar opposite of the real redemptive principle, at least in relation with Calvary and the Crucifixion. If Jesus was mortal, he was a prophet of AMOR, the principle of love. And AMOR, when inverted, distorted, or warped into power, became ROMA - Rome, whose wealthy, luxurious Church looked to the Cathars to be a palpable incarnation and manifestation of Rex Mundi's supremacy on earth. As a result, the Cathars not only refused to venerate the cross, but also ignored ceremonies such as baptism and communion.

Despite these nuanced, sophisticated, abstract, and perhaps unimportant theological beliefs, most Cathars were not overly zealous about their faith. Nowadays, it's common to think of the Cathars as a group of sages, enlightened mystics, or arcane wisdom initiates, all of whom were privy to some great cosmic secret. In reality, most Cathars were 'ordinary' men and women who found in their faith sanctuary from the burdens of orthodox Catholicism - a relief from the endless tithes, penances, obsequies, strictures, and other impositions of the Roman Church.

Setting aside their enigmatic theology, the Cathars were pragmatic in reality. They opposed procreation, for example, because the propagation of the body constituted a service to Rex Mundi rather than the principle of love; yet they were not so naïve as to urge the abolition of sexuality. Indeed, there was a Cathar 'sacrament', or equivalent, called the Consolamentum, which obliged one to chastity. Except for the parfaits, who were usually ex-family men and women anyway, the Consolamentum was not given until one was on one's death-bed - being chaste when one is dying is not exactly difficult. Sexuality was allowed, if not explicitly sanctioned, by the congregation as a whole.

How can one criticize procreation while simultaneously condoning sexuality? There is evidence that the Cathars used both birth control and abortion.

When Rome later accused the heretics of 'unnatural sexual acts,' this was interpreted to mean sodomy. However, according to what is known, the Cathars were quite rigorous in their condemnation of homosexuality. 'Unnatural sexual practices' could have referred to various birth control and methods of abortion (Chadwick, 1976; Noonan, 1967). Today, we know Rome's stance on these topics. It's easy to envision the zeal and fury with which that position would have been tolerated during the Middle Ages.

In general, the Cathars appear to have lived a life of great devotion and simplicity. They were indifferent to the concept of churches and frequently held their ceremonies and worship outside or in any conveniently available venue - a barn, a house, a municipal hall. They also practiced what we would call meditation today. They were strict vegetarians, though they were allowed to consume fish. When travelling along the countryside, parfaits would always go in pairs, adding credibility to the rumors of sodomy spread by their opponents.

The cleansing of Languedoc and the surrender of Montségur

This was the article of faith that swept the Languedoc and neighboring regions on such a large scale that it threatened to displace Catholicism itself.

Many nobles found the faith appealing for a variety of understandable reasons. Some grew fond of its overall tolerance. Some were already anti-clerical. Some were put off by the Church's corruption. Some had become tired of the tithe system, which saw their estate income disappear into the distant coffers of Rome. As a result, many nobilities became parfaits in their old age. In actuality, it is estimated that Languedoc nobles made up 30% of all parfaits.

Saint Bernard himself traveled to Languedoc in 1145, half a century before the Albigensian Crusade, to preach against heresy. When he arrived, he was more shocked by his own Church's corruption than by the heretics (as far as the heretics knew, he was quite taken by them). He declared that 'No sermons are more Christian than theirs, and their morals are pure' (De Rougemont, 1983).

Needless to say, by 1200, Rome was deeply concerned about the situation and also aware of the envy with which Northern European barons looked the opulent lands and towns to the south. This envious attitude might be easily exploited, and the Northern lords would serve as the Church's storm-troopers. All that was required was a provocation or an excuse to stoke popular opinion.

Such an excuse was quickly supplied. Pierre de Castelnau, one of the Papal Legates to the Languedoc, was assassinated on January 14, 1208. The atrocity appears to have been committed by anticlerical rebels with no Cathar links. However, now that the perfect justification had appeared, Rome did not hesitate to blame the Cathars. Pope Innocent III immediately set a Crusade into motion. Although heretics had been hunted sporadically throughout the preceding century, the hunt was now in full force. This heresy was meant to be eradicated for good.

Under the command of the abbot of Citeaux, a vast army was assembled. Military operations was entrusted to Simon de Montfort, the father of the Simon de Montfort who would later change the course of English history forever. And, under Simon's leadership, the pope's crusaders set out to distinguish the most prominent European outcrop of culture of the Middle Ages. They were supported by a new and useful comrade, a Spanish zealot named Dominic Guzman. Guzman founded the Dominicans - a monastic order named after him, in 1216 - fueled by a fervent hate of heresy. The Dominicans also gave birth to a more infamous institution in 1233, the Holy Inquisition. The Cathars would not be its only victims. Many of Languedoc nobilities, particularly the powerful houses of Trencavel and Toulouse, had been exceptionally hospitable to the region's considerably large indigenous Jewish population prior to the Albigensian Crusade. All such protection and assistance was now revoked by the order.

Simon de Montfort was murdered while taking Toulouse (Languedocs capital) in 1218. Nonetheless, the plunder of the Languedoc persisted for another quarter-century, with only intermittent respites. However, by 1243, all organized resistance had basically given in. Except for a few remote and isolated strongholds, all major Cathar towns and bastions had succumbed to the Northern invaders. Most prominent among these strongholds was the majestic mountain of Montségur, standing proudly above the surrounding valleys.

Montségur was under siege for ten months, withstanding several attacks and keeping up strong resistance. Finally, in March 1244, the stronghold finally surrendered, and Catharism, at least supposedly, died out in the south of France. However, ideas can never be completely eradicated. For example, in his bestselling book Montaillou, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie writes about the lives and achievements of surviving Cathars about half a century after the fall of Montségur, drawing extensively on period archives. Small pockets of heretics remained in the mountains, living in caves, keeping to their religion and fighting a brutal underground battle against their persecutors. The Cathar faith is widely accepted to have continued in several sections of the Languedoc, notably the vicinity of the village Rennes-le-Chateau.

Many writers have linked following European heresies to offshoots of Cathar thought, such as the Waldensians, Hussites, Adamites or Brethren of the Free Spirit, Anabaptists, and the strange Camisards, many of whom took refuge in London in the early eighteenth century.

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• Chadwick, H. 1976. Priscillian of Avila: the occult and the charismatic in the early Church, Clarendon Press, 37.

• De Rougemont, D. 1983. Love in the western world, Princeton University Press, p78

• Noonan, J. T. 1967. The Church and Contraception: The Issues at Stake, Paulist Press, 281.

• Lincoln, H., Baigent, M. & Leigh, R. 2013. The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Random House.