The Cathars: The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages

The Cross was seen as the instrument of Christ’s torture, and Bogomils and Cathars alike refused to venerate it. They interpreted the Eucharist allegorically, and took the Docetic line on Christ’s nature, his miracles, Passion and Resurrection. Cathars and Bogomils alike regarded marriage as fornication, and saw it as a means by which further…

Some

After Carcasonne, things only became more difficult for the legates. No one liked them being there: the Cathars naturally regarded them as the servants of Satan, but the clergy also were uncomfortable with the presence of the three Cistercians, no doubt fearful their cosy lifestyles and riches would disappear overnight. The nobility saw them as for

if you were a woman in the Languedoc of 1200, it made more sense to be a Cathar than a Catholic.

Bernard himself visited the Languedoc in 1145, suspicious that the count of Toulouse, Alfonso-Jordan, was not doing enough to check the apparent growth of heresy in his lands.

Raymond Roger was coaxed out of the city by a relative to negotiate. The precise details of the deal are not known, but Raymond Roger managed to save the lives of all the people of Carcasonne – including all the Cathars – on the condition that they leave the city. On 15 August, they did just that. They were not allowed to take with them anything mo

On Sunday, 13 January, negotiations broke down completely. Peter left for Rome at first light next morning. He was never to get there. While waiting for the ferry across the Rhône, a hooded rider galloped up to Peter and put a sword through him. The identity of the assassin remains unknown, but it mattered little: it was now war. The Albigensian Cr

Manichaeism might have been extinguished from Europe, but the name lived on as a byword for dualist, heretic or merely a political opponent. (Indeed, the word ‘maniac’ derives from a derogatory term for Manichaean.)

After a month of dealing with other issues – the preparations for the Fifth Crusade, the forcing of all Jews and Muslims to wear a yellow mark on their clothes to distinguish them from Christians – Innocent finally had time to address the situation in the Languedoc, which was, as ever, grave.

Peyrat’s mythologised, semi-fictional Cathars had a big impact on the likes of the Félibrige, a group of scholars who were keen to preserve works written in Occitan. Underneath this goal lay a separatist movement, who wanted to restore Languedocian independence and identity. Peyrat was regarded as something of a guru, and the group began to produce

The group’s principal activity was in administering the consolamentum to the dying.