A Pope with an ironic name—Innocent III—launched the West's first Christian-v-Christian Crusade, giving his blessing to a blood-and-guts campaign by the French king and his northern allies, who were more than happy to steal the land of the lords who harbored heretics.
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| Cathars being driven out of Carcassonne in 1209 |
In one infamous episode, the town of Béziers was sacked and its 20,000 inhabitants slaughtered at the behest of a monk who reputedly ordered: 'Kill them all, God will know his own.'
The Church followed up the Albigensian Crusade by inventing an even more insidious institution that would terrorize Catholic Europe (and the New World) for centuries to come.
Based in Toulouse, the Pope entrusted the Inquisition to the rabidly loyal Dominicans, pitting the so-called 'Dogs of God' against the supposed cat kissers.
St. Dominic himself had got his start trying to win back Cathar sympathizers with open-air debates and preach-offs against the Perfects.
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| In this preach-off, the books of St. Dominic and the Cathars were thrown into the fire-- guess whose miraculously survived (Pedro Berruguete, 1480) |
To his credit, the Spaniard had realized that one of the Cathars' key selling points was that they lived simply, like Christ himself, so he tried to copy them, traveling throughout the south of France as a dirt-poor preacher. Even so, he didn't have much success.
His successors, in contrast, opted to use force.
HUMAN BONFIRES
In 1234, the Dominican Bishop of Toulouse had just finished saying mass in honor of the newly canonized St. Dominic when he received a tip-off that a dying woman in the city had requested the final sacrament from a Cathar.
So he and his friars responded like good, medieval Catholics: they marched to her house, had her carried to a meadow, and burned her alive on her deathbed.
They then returned to their convent, gave thanks to God and St. Dominic, and 'fell cheerfully upon the food set before them.'
The human bonfires raged for decades, but the Cathars were effectively defeated when their last major safe haven fell in 1244.
Unfortunately, the fortress of Montsegur wasn't as secure as its name implied.
After surrendering, the surviving Perfects were led to a clearing at the base of the mountain and burned en masse—all 220 of them.
By the end of the century, the Cathars had been wiped out and most of Languedoc annexed to the north, creating the forerunner of the modern French nation while destroying the culture that first linked France with romance.
The last troubadour died in 1294, lamenting that 'I have come into the world too late.'
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| Montsegur: the Cathars' last stand |
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